#blackspringweekly

Black Spring Weekly 51 is live - A Mouth Full of Thorns Speaks Truth

This is not an art newsletter polished for an algorithm. It's a studio visit in paper form, instead welcome to a genuine messy, honest, and a little haunted zine.

Inside this week: I'm nursing a bad back, swollen eyes, and the lingering suspicion that my younger self's "magnum opus" might now belong in an archive rather than a gallery. There's a pencil sketch of a vampire princess I'm considering turning into a Hammer Horror-style oil painting. A feature on The Holy Fool, one of the more compelling analogue horror spaces on the internet. A cinema digest on magicians that asks: what is a magician, anyway? (The answer involves candles, terror, and a lot of ambiguity.)

Also this week: I'm activating a servitor, celebrating the (alleged) day Yeats kicked Crowley down a staircase, and quietly plotting an art trade with a colleague. Two canvases. One exchange. No idea what comes back.

Spring is springing. The willow moon is here. My antihistamines are working overtime.

Come as you are.

Issue 50 of Black Spring Weekly marks a quiet return and a slight reset, a recalibration, and the beginning of something new. After a short pause, this issue steps back into the studio with fresh intent, exploring the idea of the artist not just as a creator, but as something closer to a practitioner… a conjurer of form, symbol, and meaning.

This week drifts between sketchbook fragments, half-formed ideas, and the slow rebuilding of creative discipline. There’s a renewed focus on drawing and sketching, which is the foundations of practice, alongside the pressure of unfinished paintings waiting to be resolved. It’s messy, honest, and very real.

Threaded throughout is the influence of W. B. Yeats my all time faveourite poet, mystic, and magician, who helps the setting the tone for April’s deeper dive into art as ritual. The studio becomes more than a workspace; it becomes a threshold. Preparation, repetition, and intention begin to mirror something older, something almost ceremonial.

Elsewhere, the journal captures the everyday: growing cress, small wins in sketching, weight loss struggles, strange internet rabbit holes, and moments of unexpected beauty, like a sudden rainbow cutting through the noise. It’s a reminder that creativity doesn’t exist in isolation; it’s woven into everything.

The Fascination section leans fully into this idea, exploring the artist’s space as a ritual environment, where tools, process, and repetition take on symbolic weight. Paired with a dark, atmospheric playlist and a deep dive into The Inmost Light by Current 93, the issue builds a mood that’s introspective, strange, and quietly powerful. Black Spring Weekly remains a free, ongoing artist journal, part diary, part sketchbook, part ritual. Step back in. Start again.

BLACK SPRING WEEKLY — Issue 48: The Fog Between Paintings Issue 48 of Black Spring Weekly settles into a slower, more introspective rhythm, mostly due to a week shaped by quiet rituals, flickers of inspiration, and the persistent pull of creativity beneath the surface, while I try and triage my unpainted paintings!

This issue moves through the studio in fragments: charcoal-stained hands, half-finished ideas, and paintings that seem to evolve on their own terms. There’s a sense of patience here, of learning to sit with the work rather than force it.

As always, the playlist hums in the background, books like Mother Maggot are consumed, a carefully curated mix of dark, atmospheric sound to accompany late-night sketching, painting sessions, or quiet reflection. I touch on the classic short scary novel This is where we talk things out and shine some light on the artist, Edward Poynter who's art is influenceing my monthly Zine and ongoing projets.

Issue 46 is here. Vermillion beneath the laurel crown

New zine drop. This week: the colour that made mortal men into gods, gluing latex in the dark, and the art of unfinished things. Plus a print for sale and quite interesting things.

Issue 45 of Black Spring Weekly is here! A moody, spectral week of art, oracle cards, foil pumpkins, haunted formulas, and the electricity of creation through exhaustion. Free to download, steeped in gothic vibes, and perfect for dark autumn nights. 🖤📡✨

Issue 44 of Black Spring Weekly is here! A Halloween-soaked week of art, journaling, decay aesthetics, tarot, movies, mojo bags, & the strange magic of the season. Free, atmospheric, gothic, and fully fuelled by creativity. Download & share the ghostly goodness! 🖤🎃

After my illness I fell behind on making my free zines, but I've finally caught up with the last three weeks so it's a triple whammy! In theory clicking on the covers below should open/download the pdf zine. Sickness, Spirits and Sketchbooks - Issue 40: Sickness, Spirits, and Sketchbooks — fever dreams, demon oracles, and corpse roads. McDarkArt returns from illness to explore creation, decay, and renewal in a delirious gothic haze. Free zine for lovers of art, folklore, and the macabre.

Echos of the unfinished 🕯️ Issue 41 of Black Spring Weekly is here! This week: a "Dummy Supper" for artistic ghosts, finishing "Choking Thistle," & a Halloween playlist for creeping dread. Step into the autumn shadows. #ArtZine #SpookySeason