Benjamin Zephaniah. 2025. Pen and ink, sketchbook. 9″x12″.
In a distracted culture, it’s crucial to look slowly. I like faces that demand scrutiny and make you think. If I’m going to invest hours of work on a portrait, the person being drawn must be worth it.
Benjamin Zephaniah was⏤and still is.
His stanzas didn’t follow rules; they followed his internal rhythm. He didn’t kowtow to convention or the status quo.
He was a rebel.
Zephaniah was shortlisted for Oxford’s Professor of Poetry. He was never elected.
He also declined an OBE, refusing an honor tied to a history he rejected.
Titles come and go. Integrity stays.
The lines in my drawings are made with conviction and expose a truth about my subject, and ultimately, about me.
I don’t need validation.
The algorithm is meaningless.
Likes mean nothing.
I follow my internal rhythm, as Benjamin Zephaniah did, with lived conviction.
For more than four decades, my work has been shaped by the Pre-Raphaelites, particularly the art of Edward Burne-Jones and the broader Symbolist and fin de siècle traditions. The essay below, published in the Summer 2025 issue of The PRS Review as the inaugural entry in the series In an Artist’s Studio, outlines the development of that influence across my artistic life.
In it, I trace the trajectory from my early encounters with the movement to my contemporary practice as a draughtsman working consciously within — and extending — this tradition. I offer it here as a concise record of the evolution that brought me to my present aesthetic and the principles that continue to guide my work.
In 1982, when I was sixteen, I was an aspiring young artist living in California’s flat, sun-baked, agriculturally dense Central Valley, the most unlikely place to fall in love with the Pre-Raphaelites. It was there that I discovered the illustration monograph, The Studio that chronicled the formation of the famed New York City collective made up of fantasists Jeffery Catherine Jones, Michael William Kaluta, Barry Windsor-Smith, and Bernie Wrightson, which led to my profound interest in The Pre-Raphaelites. In his chapter, artist Barry Windsor-Smith spoke of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, citing Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Burne-Jones, JW Waterhouse, and Frederick Leighton as key influences on his work. Windsor-Smith’s Pre-Raphaelite-inspired style was new to me; it proved to be a sign in the road that galvanized me to seek out and learn more about the names he mentioned.
Mystery
Soon after, I discovered Christopher Wood’s seminal book The Pre-Raphaelites. That oversized tome continued the evolution that began with The Studio. At a glance, the image on its cover, Burne-Jones’s The Mirror of Venus, conveyed what was artistically possible and a direction; it also led me further down the path of fine art inspired by the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
Over the ensuing years, I continued to improve my work, graduated from art school, and began working professionally. During that time, I, like many artists, spent energy attempting to find “my style.” As always, the Pre-Raphaelites remained in the background, gently haunting me. Even though I yearned to embrace their aesthetic, I held myself back because I knew my work needed to be world-class to be worthy of their legacy.
In 2000, I had the opportunity to travel to the UK to show menu designs to a friend who had plans to open a café bookstore in Central London. During my stay, I had the opportunity to visit Tate Britain and see the work of the Pre-Raphaelites. The impact was profound. Standing in front of Millais’s Ophelia, Waterhouse’s The Lady of Shalott, and Burne-Jones’s King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid was nothing short of a religious experience that deepened my longing to commit to the aesthetic I had loved for so long.
In the years following, personal hurdles began to pile up—life circumstances, grief, and a myriad of other distractions. Due to this, I drifted from my work and considered giving up on the artistic vision I had nourished since adolescence. Still, I kept drawing, even though the work felt directionless. My skill had diminished, and my standards had slipped, but fierce resolve and perseverance kept me going. I knew things had to change, and after some genuine soul-searching, I found the answer I sought. To feel fulfilled, I had to return to where it all started: the Pre-Raphaelites, not as a nostalgic echo but as the foundation of my work. I began rebuilding, refining my skill, raising my standards, and constructing a personal ideology that would allow me to carry the Pre-Raphaelite tradition into the present while making it my own.
Fanny Eaton
Everything finally culminated in the summer of 2022 when I read Andrea Wolk Rager’s The Radical Vision of Edward Burne-Jones. Her brilliant reinterpretation of Burne-Jones’s oeuvre was the blueprint I had been seeking. Her scholarship illuminated Burne-Jones’s subtle but radical condemnations of environmental destruction, economic inequality, and empire. Her book gave me the intellectual and creative permission I had been waiting for. It proved that the Pre-Raphaelite aesthetic could be a vehicle for contemporary relevance, not just homage. The style I have embraced continues to evolve as I slowly incorporate the ideas and themes I’ve mentioned. My drawings, Mystery, and my portrait of Fanny Eaton, pictured in this article, reflect the two sides of the style I have embraced. In Mystery, you see the ethereal and dreamlike nature so prominent in the work of the PRB, and in my portrait of Fanny Eaton, you see diversity and a global point of view.
Burne-Jones has always felt like a kindred spirit. Like me, he was an only child born to humble beginnings and shaped by the presence of a single parent. He drew to survive, to understand, to transcend. Although his sense of design and draughtsmanship have been lifelong inspirations, his painted work has spoken even more profoundly to me. Works such as The Mirror of Venus and King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid resonated most with me⏤his ability to use beauty and allegory to condemn the status quo and imagination and visual lyricism to sweep you away to what he called “a land no one can define or remember, only desire.” Burne-Jones has taught me that beauty has the power to be both ornament and epiphany. That runs through everything I create now.
This belief also informs my process. My new work always begins with an idea from something I’ve dreamed, imagined, read, listened to, or watched. Creating a new drawing starts in the pages of my sketchbook as a series of thumbnails that are transferred and developed on tracing paper, where I work through multiple layers until my composition feels right. Once I feel confident with my preliminary drawing, I transfer it to a sheet of 4-ply Bristol board. At this stage, I examine every detail with extreme precision. If something doesn’t feel right, I create separate studies or technique roughs until I resolve the issue.
Entre Sombras II
Then begins the slow, tedious process of drawing my design in ink, using mostly Rapidograph technical pens, building linework with patience and precision. Light, shadow, and value gradually develop through dense crosshatching and layered textures. Depending on the complexity, a single drawing can take over 40 hours. Once finished, minor flaws get corrected with white gouache. My process is slow by design, reflecting the same belief held by the Pre-Raphaelites: that care and intention matter in making an image.
Through my work, I aim to extend the visual language of the Pre-Raphaelites into the present. I draw from the PRB and the designers and artists of the fin de siècle and filter their legacy through a contemporary lens focused on creating work with genuine intent and a higher purpose beyond commodification that celebrates global culture and spotlights social concerns. The prescience, deeper meaning, and radical nature of Burne-Jones’s work revealed in Dr. Rager’s book have provided me with a framework to follow that allows me to express my own global point of view and concerns regarding environmental destruction, income inequality, and social injustice.
La Maja Soñadora
The Pre-Raphaelites presented me with an artistic vision that changed everything. The bar they set in my formative years has been a constant in my life, and Edward Burne-Jones’s work has continued to be a guiding light on the artistic road I am traveling. My work has undergone many changes since discovering the PRB; through years of trial and error, I have achieved a level of mastery in my draughtsmanship that has allowed me to confidently embrace an aesthetic inspired by the Pre-Raphaelites and the designers and artists of the fin de siècle. The merging of a PRB aesthetic and an ideology that reflects my worldview has finally allowed me to become the artist I envisioned when, at sixteen, I first encountered The Studio—and then, not long after, opened The Pre-Raphaelites by Christopher Wood and saw, perhaps for the first time, who I truly was.
Originally published in The PRS Review (Summer 2025) as part of In an Artist’s Studio, edited by Dr. Zaynub Zaman. Reproduced with gratitude to the Pre-Raphaelite Society.
Davis. 2025. Pen and ink in sketchbook. 8 1/2″ x 11″.
They say never meet your heroes because they might disappoint you—or because meeting them might not be as earth-shattering as you imagine.
Yesterday, I met one of mine: underground comix legend Robert Crumb.
The setting could not have been more ordinary. A quiet art store in Davis, California, The Paint Chip. Crumb lived for decades in nearby Winters before relocating to a remote village in southern France, and I’ve visited the area regularly for the past twenty-five years as a retreat from “the 209.” I always knew he lingered like a ghost in the local orbit, and somewhere in the back of my mind, I suspected our paths might cross one day.
On October 24, they did. My wife and I had come to Davis to take a break, browse a bit, and try a new Mediterranean place we’d seen on TikTok. Our stop at The Paint Chip was incidental; we were about to leave when an employee pointed us toward the elusive 0.9 mechanical pencil leads—those rare essentials of an online tutor’s life.
As my wife and I stood in front of the display, an older gentleman entered the store with a woman and a younger companion. His profile caught my eye immediately—sharp, unmistakable. I’d seen it before. Maybe. I tried not to stare, but when he shuffled past, it was clear: Robert Crumb was in the fucking Paint Chip.
I’ve never been one for chasing celebrities. Aside from a few backstage meetings with rock stars in the eighties, lunch with Burne Hogarth, studying with Barron Storey, and a brief encounter with Maya Angelou, my life has been largely devoid of brushes with fame.
Still, I knew this moment wouldn’t come again.
I walked over, extended my hand, and said, “R. Crumb.”
He looked startled. “Do I know you?”
“No,” I said, “but I know you. You have a very distinctive face.”
That broke the tension, and he smiled—half amused, half unsure.
Had this happened twenty years ago, I might have been starstruck. But those days are long gone. I’ve long since shed the fanboy impulse. Admiration remains, but it’s no longer worship; it’s recognition between artists.
I asked whether his Hup series from the 1980s would ever be collected into a hardcover volume. He said the publisher keeps promising. I almost told him they’ve been saying that for twenty-five years.
Our exchange was brief. Before we parted, the old wheeler-dealer recommended his upcoming comic, Tales of Paranoia.
“Check out my new comic.”
“I’ve seen the cover,” I told him. “The expression on your face is perfect.”
He laughed. And that was it—unexpected, low-key, almost uneventful, yet oddly perfect.
The creation of a new piece of work unfolds in ways most people never imagine. It’s nonlinear, unpredictable, and refuses to adhere to routine. This isn’t a recipe for paella, it’s the act of conjuring something from nothing.
My Lagan Love from 1985 UK 12″ of Cloudbusting by Kate Bush.
In past blog posts, when I’ve written about creating new work, I’ve fallen back on the same worn-out playbook, offering a play-by-play of pencils, pens, and technique. That approach has never done a damn thing for anyone, let alone provided any real insight into my process. It’s been nothing more than a polished façade, a false account of what it truly means to create something from nothing.
The changes my work has undergone over the past few years make it impossible for me to present anything but the raw truth behind what I do. Speaking that truth is essential to where I am now and what I create. The creative process is messy, complex, and rarely linear; it’s not a fucking Disney movie.
My drawing Mystery began as a ball of frustration after the worst bout of creative stasis I’ve ever experienced. 2024 started as a long list of projects that would move me closer to my goals, but life had other plans. In the past, whenever I’ve experienced rough patches on my journey, I’ve always turned to music to get me through; it’s never let me down. In 2005, after losing my mom and my way, I reached out to Hounds of Love, London Calling, and Point of Entry for salvation. The sounds on those albums were a balm for my mind during the bleakest period of my life.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s haunting study of Jane for Astarte Syriaca.
This time, the rescue came quietly, almost by accident. One night, after weeks of aimless sketching and abandoned starts, I sat in my petite atelier listening to Kate Bush’s reinterpretation of the traditional Irish air My Lagan Love. Stark and unaccompanied, her magnificent voice rose like a prayer in a vast, empty cathedral. Its resonance and haunting stillness carried the same ethereal quality and mystery that had first drawn me to the Pre-Raphaelites decades ago. Not long after that moment, I came across I Can’t Sleep from Wang Chung’s 1982 debut album. Its enigmatic tone, paired with the solemn beauty of My Lagan Love, reminded me of what had fueled my fascination with the Pre-Raphaelites from the beginning: beautiful mystery.
Alongside music, images play a vital role in sparking the creation of new work. In the case of Mystery, I recalled the sublime portraits of Jane Morris by Rossetti and a magnificent photograph by Clive Arrowsmith of Kate Bush–her face framed by leaves in a distinctly Pre-Raphaelite manner. Combined with the songs I’d been listening to, an image began to emerge, slowly, insistently. What followed was a long, deliberate stretch of hard graft: translating emotion and idea into form on paper.
The creative stasis I endured in 2024 was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. I’d weathered dry spells in the past, but never one so long and so sustained. Still, I’ve come to see that every pause, every obstacle, has its purpose. The path of artistic growth always comes at a price.
As Mystery began to take shape, every mark I made carried the weight of my desire to excel and create something undeniable, something that bore witness to the struggle that preceded it.
A clear idea, a balanced composition, and solid drawing are essential to any new image. There must always be rhythm as well as weight in what you put down. What has always resonated with me about the Pre-Raphaelites’ work is the brilliance of their draughtsmanship and the precision behind their iconic images. Everything they created, whether an oil on canvas or a design in pen and ink, began with sketches and studies in pencil. They worked out every facet. Their pictures were born of a deep, genuine love of drawing and painting, a truth reflected in every mark and brushstroke. Their draughtsmanship set the bar when I first discovered the Brotherhood at sixteen, and it remains the standard I hold myself to today. I will never compromise my standards.
Mystery in-progress pencil preliminary.
Mystery is a chronicle of struggle and triumph, captured in exacting pen strokes and lush crosshatching. When I began the drawing, I had no idea what would emerge after the weeks of work required to bring my idea to life. Starting was a tentative step after a year of stasis, but as always, I found solace in the long, deliberate process of creation. The act of building form through a profusion of crosshatching and the feel of the pen nib etching ink into the surface of the paper has always carried a kind of therapeutic magic, capable of dissolving whatever hurdle stands in my way.
Whenever I complete a drawing, I’m always surprised by what I see when I finally step back. It’s one thing to sense the potential in an idea; it’s another to bring it fully to life. After weeks of work, I stepped away from the drawing table and looked hard at what I had made. My gut told me I had created something powerful. Maybe.
That intuition found its echo when my wife walked into the studio to see the finished piece. The look on her face said everything: “This is my favorite of all the newer, Pre-Raphaelite-inspired work you’ve done. “She isn’t one to mince words, so perhaps my instincts had been right all along. The moment that confirmed what we both felt came unexpectedly, weeks later, when Dr. Zaynub Zaman, editor of the Pre-Raphaelite Society’s journal, the PRS Review, emailed to offer me the opportunity to help inaugurate her new series, In an Artist’s Studio. To say I was gobsmacked would be an understatement. In an instant, Dr. Zaman validated years of effort and sacrifice and gave the voice I’d long been searching for new depth and resonance.
