The Journal Anthology project
What began as a private habit - notebooks filled with sketches - has evolved to become a cohesive publication: The Journal Anthology Project. For the past five years I have kept journals filled with drawings, notes, scraps of writing, half-finished comics, and quick ideas; and they have been my constant companion through academic life, work related projects, and all the in-between times.
5 years, 6 different flats, three different cities, 18 journals.
This publication is an exploration of the body of work that emerged from these journals. It collects five years of visual and technical experiments that have shaped my practice. More than a scrapbook or “best of” compilation, It is a carefully put-together anthology that tries to show how an artist’s approach to work grows over time.
What’s Inside
This book isn’t a single, continuous story. Instead, it’s a collection of images that form a larger whole. Some pages are straightforward, while others only reveal their meaning within the context of the anthology. Every decision was made to create a cohesive and engaging reading experience. For that reason, the focus here is on the visual side of the journals - the drawings, sequences, and illustrative work - while leaving aside, for now, the short stories, research fragments, and diary entries. Words are not absent, though: the final section includes selected quotes and passages noted in the journals, integrated to give another dimension to the images.
The book reflects the nature of a journal: non-linear, experimental, fragmented, and personal.
Words and Pictures
Keeping journals has always been a space where words and images can freely overlap. In this anthology, that mix takes different forms: comic strips without a clear start or end, wordless image sequences that work like visual essays, and pages where quotes appear tucked into drawings.
The book plays with that space between words and pictures, sometimes blending them until one almost becomes the other, but without relying on long passages of text. Putting the anthology together was not just a matter of binding pages. Five years of notebooks produced an enormous, uneven body of material - experimental, contradictory, and often too raw. The challenge was to shape it into something that still felt authentic, while offering a clear rhythm and flow.
The final structure avoids a chronological order. Instead, pages are arranged by visual and thematic connection. Drawings and texts that spoke to each other were placed side by side, even if they came from different years. Readers are invited to move through it in their own way, following their own threads and associations.
Design and Structure
The design borrows from different traditions but is deliberately minimal. Most pages present a single journal image, set against a flat Pantone Yellow 102 background. This gives each fragment space, much like a gallery display. The yellow avoids the neutrality of white, which could falsely suggest these journals are finished artworks. Instead, the design holds a balance: every image is given weight on its own, but also exists as part of the larger collection.
Why Publish These Journals?
Strictly speaking, this book does not “publish” the journals in full. It’s an anthology: a curated selection from a much larger body of work.
The question remains, though : why bring this private material into the public? Journals and sketchbooks are usually hidden, full of experiments and unfinished ideas. But precisely because of that, they offer a rare insight into how an artist’s practice develops. The journals collected here span from my first year as a student through to the present, when illustration has become my profession. Across these pages are technical exercises testing line, form, and space; loose sketches made in passing; notes that read like fragments of research; and drawings that later grew into full projects. Seen together, they show how a visual language doesn’t appear ready-made, but develops gradually through trial, failure, and persistence. The Journal Anthology 2020 - 2025 makes that process visible. It doesn’t just present finished outcomes, but shares the in-between stages that usually remain unseen. At the same time, gathering this work into a single book creates a form of closure - a way of defining five years of experimenting, before moving on to what comes next. It’s a way of gathering in one place five years worth of a practice that forces you to constantly search and learn.
The Journal Anthology 2020 - 2025 is both a record of the past and a springboard into the future. It’s an art book about how a creative practice unfolds over time.