In the final year (2021 to 2022) of my Comic and Concept Art BA from Leeds Arts University we were required to keep a “Project Development Journal”.

These weekly journal pages were supposed to show how we made progress on our final projects, serve as material for project check-ins, show what artist research we were doing, explain how we made stylistic choices, and provide variations on thumbnails, etc.

We were told to update it as we went along, ideally, and to regularly show it to our key tutor for feedback (I was blessed to have John J. Pearson as my tutor, who wholeheartedly encouraged my comic-style approach to the updates!).

I quickly realised that the best way to meet this PDJ requirement in a way that was sustainable for me and that could accurately express complex emotions and ideas, was to draw it (as opposed to presenting weekly updates in charts or designed layouts). I was also hugely influenced by having just read ‘See You Next Tuesday’, by Jane Mai! It’s a collection of 4-panel scribbly autobiographical comics - I was inspired by how they feel like they really were just made for her as diary entries, not for public consumption.

My PDJ became a sort-of comic of its own! Reading ‘Death Zine’, a final outcome of that year’s work, will give additional context, but this is also a pretty accurate representation of that 2021-2022 year for me by itself.

Above are some of the PDJ pages to scroll through. It’s not the entire thing, as I’d like to release it as a full work one day despite not planning for it to be seen by anyone except my tutors while I was making it. Hope you enjoy these snippets!