The Artist’s Notebook is my studio journal containing notes on my ongoing artwork and related research, giving an insight into my creative process and artistic practice.
Derek Jarman’s Prospect Cottage Last Friday my friends and I drove east to Dungeness, a headland on the Kent coast. It’s most well-known for two nuclear power stations (both non-operational now), Prospect Cottage (the home of the late film-maker and artist Derek Jarman), and looking like a completely alien landscape. Sea Kale and other strange plants grow from Dungeness’ flat expanse of pebbles…
Detail from the first life-drawing from today’s session I did my last life-drawing session of July earlier today, making a total of four sessions. I’ve got another life-drawing session booked for tomorrow afternoon. Thirty minute drawing with Sanguine pencil & Conté crayons I’ll probably not keep up with four sessions a month, but if I can commit to two or three per month then I won’t feel like…
This is my monthly link dump, a regular monthly series containing a mix of links to interesting blog posts I’ve read from the past month covering arts & culture, myth, folklore, landscape punk, hauntology, anarchism, utopianism, the gothic, neo-fabulism, and the Weird - all discovered through my RSS feed reader (another reason why you should get a feed reader too ). The Sacred Potato and the £47…
I’ve managed to fit in three sessions of life-drawing so far this month—on three sequential Fridays—with the possibility of another session next week. It’s reminded me of how valuable it is not to leave large periods of time between sessions: with weekly sessions I feel like I’m building on the top of the previous session’s work, rather than starting from scratch. Similarly, the first drawing of…
I have written here about masks on twenty separate occasions (this post will make that twenty-one occasions), and my first book of artwork was titled Myth & Masks: Artwork by Paul Watson 2013–2015 . They continue to fascinate me for many reasons. I wrote Masks, Deception, and Truth and Masks - a bit of politics and a bit of history back in 2014, which probably form the two foundational blog posts…
I finally managed to organise a life-drawing session—my first since April—to get back into practice. My aim is to get back into regular life drawing about three times a month to strengthen that part of my artistic practice. I decided to change from the graphite pencils I’ve been using so far this year to Sanguine pencil & Conté crayons, which I last used a year or two ago. Thirty minute drawing…
This is my monthly link dump, a regular monthly series containing a mix of links to interesting blog posts I’ve read from the past month covering arts & culture, myth, folklore, landscape punk, hauntology, anarchism, utopianism, the gothic, neo-fabulism, and the Weird - all discovered through my RSS feed reader (another reason why you should get a feed reader too ). The commons were never theory –…
Stolen from the 1990 film “Hardware” - Angry Bob . This month started off with a colonoscopy, which, honestly, is not the best way to start a month. *record scratch* - let me explain (spoiler: I’m absolutely fine). Here in the UK the NHS sends out home testing kits for bowel cancer (called colorectal cancer in the US ) every two years to everyone over 50 years of age. You do the test, pop the…
This is my monthly link dump, a regular monthly series containing a mix of links to interesting blog posts I’ve read from the past month covering arts & culture, myth, folklore, landscape punk, hauntology, anarchism, utopianism, the gothic, neo-fabulism, and the Weird - all discovered through my RSS feed reader (another reason why you should get a feed reader too ). Notes From Psychick Albion by…
Dionysos Skêptouchos, flanked by Maenads (a collage of three of my Acid Renaissance photographs) It’s one of those times when numerous disparate articles I read, written by people who I doubt are even aware of each other, seem to be swirling around a shared theme. The zeitgeist of the past few weeks seems to be a battle between the dominant Apollonian mode and a resurgent Dionysianism, but the…
This Saturday (9 th May) EDGEWAYS presents "Acid Renaissance: Albion’s True Standard Advanced" with me talking about my artwork on Zoom from 20:00 BST . Attendance is free, but places are limited so you’ll need to register beforehand . About EDGEWAYS Welcome to EDGEWAYS… Where we explore the paths less taken, the forgotten stairwells of history and the unanswered questions of art, science and…
Jack in the Green attendees sitting on Hastings West Hill. Photograph by the author. Yesterday was the Hastings Jack in the Green festival , an annual event marked by strange costumes, drinking, and a lot of the colour green. I wrote about last year’s event , and posted a lot of photographs of the 2023 event . Jack was duly slain after 4pm and and his leaves distributed by the Bogies to the crowd…
This is my monthly link dump, a regular monthly series containing a mix of links to interesting blog posts I’ve read from the past month covering arts & culture, myth, folklore, landscape punk, hauntology, anarchism, utopianism, the gothic, neo-fabulism, and the Weird - all discovered through my RSS feed reader (another reason why you should get a feed reader too ). Incels Won the Culture War by…
A detail from another photograph from the shoot. Last weekend I worked with a model to produce a set of photographs based around the concept of the siren, a mythological character from Homer’s Odyssey . The subject matter had been suggested by the model when she was life-modelling for me some months earlier - actually the character was initially suggested as a mermaid, a cryptid often mixed up…
A night at 1200 Postcards (that’s not me DJ ing) It’s been a strangely busy past few weeks, to the point where I’m not entirely sure where all my time disappeared to. Well, I guess first there’s the fact that three friends and I have formed a band, and we’ve been starting to put some songs together with a sort of post-punk/alternative sound: tribal drums, driving bass, and two guitars. We’re all…
I have discovered that the Sussex Dialect word for a sea mist is a roke. This is my monthly link dump, a regular monthly series containing a mix of links to interesting blog posts I’ve read from the past month covering arts & culture, myth, folklore, landscape punk, hauntology, anarchism, utopianism, the gothic, neo-fabulism, and the Weird - all discovered through my RSS feed reader (another…
The new issue of Mycelium Parish News (copies are still available on Etsy - details in that last link) arrived on my doormat this morning, full of the interesting things that James Burt and Dan Sumption have seen or heard about during 2025. It is, as always, a delight to read, and in the interests of transparency and full disclosure I should mention that they kindly include in it my email…
I’ve been quite good at maintaining the life-drawing aspect of my artistic practice so far this year - yesterday was the fourth session of 2026 so far. I continued using a combination of 4B and 6B graphite pencils on smooth A2 Hahnemühle Nostalgie paper as this combination seems to be working for me. I messed up the proportions in the first and third drawings of the session—I need to be more…
I’m going to be exhibiting two pieces of my artwork as part of Hastings Arts Forum’s “New Members 2026” group exhibition . The exhibition runs from 18 th to 29 th March 2026 at the Hastings Arts Forum gallery at 20 Marine Court, St Leonards on Sea, TN38 0DX. The Open Evening will be held 6–8pm on Friday 20 th March. We are really pleased to present an exhibition of new members’ artwork, which has…
This is my monthly link dump, a regular monthly series containing a mix of links to interesting blog posts I’ve read from the past month covering arts & culture, myth, folklore, landscape punk, hauntology, anarchism, utopianism, the gothic, neo-fabulism, and the Weird - all discovered through my RSS feed reader (another reason why you should get a feed reader too ). 2036 by Anthony at Time's Flow…
In my last post at the end of January about the life-drawing aspect of my artistic practice I wrote about using the second of the two drawings as a starting point for February’s work, with a broad idea to: get the figure drawn out first, then build up the shading gradually to a more precise level without losing the dynamism of the drawing. Yesterday was the only life-drawing session I have managed…
A screenshot of the front page of this website from 2001 This post is part of February’s IndieWeb Carnival on the theme of “Intersecting Interests” being hosted by Zachary Kai : For this month's carnival, write about where your interests intersect . That might be a single unexpected overlap, a whole ecosystem, or the thread that ties parts of your life together. Well, where do I start? This entire…
I finished off the last day of January with a second session of life-drawing, following on from the session earlier this month. The first drawing (detail at the top of this post) took two forty-minute sessions. As per my notes-to-self after the life-drawing session on the 11th January I used a sharp 4B graphite pencil on smooth A2 Hahnemühle Nostalgie paper, with a 6B pencil for some of the darker…
This is my monthly link dump, a regular monthly series containing a mix of links to interesting blog posts I’ve read from the past month covering arts & culture, myth, folklore, landscape punk, hauntology, anarchism, utopianism, the gothic, neo-fabulism, and the Weird - all discovered through my RSS feed reader (another reason why you should get a feed reader too ). How small committed groups can…
Earlier today I heard that there was yet another attempt being made to reboot the late 70s TV show Blake’s 7 . I have a particular fondness for Blake’s 7 and by coincidence I recently finished my latest rewatch of all four seasons of the show on DVD . In that article there was a brief comparison of Blake’s 7 with Andor , a show that I’ve written about here before , and while superficially I guess…
A fragment of the first drawing from the session I managed to get my first 2026 session of life-drawing done this past weekend. I was trying to find a particular style of pencil work that achieved the result I wanted, which I didn’t manage to do although I feel I’m closer to it. I haven’t yet found the words to describe the style/effect that I want. When Mark Sheerin wrote about my England’s Dark…
This is my first post of 2026, the 300 th post since I added this blog to my website back in August 2008, and we have just entered the 30 th year of existence for this website (which was originally launched back in 1996). As a consequence I feel like I have earned a little latitude from you, my imaginary reader, to ramble a bit. My artistic practice and publishing an Acid Renaissance book This…
This is my monthly link dump, a regular monthly series containing a mix of links to interesting blog posts I’ve read from the past month covering arts & culture, myth, folklore, landscape punk, hauntology, anarchism, utopianism, the gothic, neo-fabulism, and the Weird - all discovered through my RSS feed reader (another reason why you should get a feed reader too ). The Face of Darkness by Ian…
This is my contribution to December’s IndieWeb Carnival hosted by V.H. Belvadi on the subject where do you see the IndieWeb in 2030 , just five short years from now? And my answer is that it’ll probably be pretty much the same as it is now. Back in the late 1990s when a huge number of personal websites (like this one) were being created the whole landscape of the web was very different. Obviously…
This is my monthly link dump, a regular monthly series containing a mix of links to interesting blog posts I’ve read from the past month covering arts & culture, myth, folklore, landscape punk, hauntology, anarchism, utopianism, the gothic, neo-fabulism, and the Weird - all discovered through my RSS feed reader (another reason why you should get a feed reader too ). The Trail of Political…