John Coulthart
@johncoulthart.com
Artist, designer, occasional writer.
• Words: https://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/
• Pictures: https://www.johncoulthart.com/
• Linktree: https://linktr.ee/johncoulthart
No DMs. Contact me here: https://www.johncoulthart.com/contact.html
• Words: https://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/
• Pictures: https://www.johncoulthart.com/
• Linktree: https://linktr.ee/johncoulthart
No DMs. Contact me here: https://www.johncoulthart.com/contact.html
Out with the old, in with the new.
January 12, 2026 at 8:09 PM
Out with the old, in with the new.
I've been waiting for years to hear that the Pennine Tower has returned to its home planet.
January 11, 2026 at 12:11 PM
I've been waiting for years to hear that the Pennine Tower has returned to its home planet.
The pinscreen in the film is relatively small (240,000 pins) compared to Alexeieff & Parker's own million-pin screen which they used for their own films and the "Before the Law" sequence in Orson Welles' The Trial.
January 9, 2026 at 11:57 AM
The pinscreen in the film is relatively small (240,000 pins) compared to Alexeieff & Parker's own million-pin screen which they used for their own films and the "Before the Law" sequence in Orson Welles' The Trial.
For David Bowie's birthday, here's Michael Heslop's cover for Stag Boy (1972), a children's novel by William Rayner. Heslop used a lot of photo reference in his illustrations but Bowie is still an odd choice for this one. The novel is reviewed here:
www.murrayewing.co.uk/mewsings/201...
www.murrayewing.co.uk/mewsings/201...
January 8, 2026 at 1:15 PM
For David Bowie's birthday, here's Michael Heslop's cover for Stag Boy (1972), a children's novel by William Rayner. Heslop used a lot of photo reference in his illustrations but Bowie is still an odd choice for this one. The novel is reviewed here:
www.murrayewing.co.uk/mewsings/201...
www.murrayewing.co.uk/mewsings/201...
#nowplaying Cover design is part of Deutsche Grammophon's "Will This Do?" series.
January 6, 2026 at 3:40 PM
#nowplaying Cover design is part of Deutsche Grammophon's "Will This Do?" series.
Sorting through old Magic: The Gathering cards after someone asked about purchasing a few. I've got thousands of the damned things from the time I was working on the game in the 1990s, all useless to me since I still don't know how you play it. These are point-of-sale boxes stuffed with cards.
January 6, 2026 at 2:36 PM
Sorting through old Magic: The Gathering cards after someone asked about purchasing a few. I've got thousands of the damned things from the time I was working on the game in the 1990s, all useless to me since I still don't know how you play it. These are point-of-sale boxes stuffed with cards.
#nowplaying I prefer the 1977 Berlin Philharmonic/Karajan recordings but I've not listened to the shiny brick for a while.
January 1, 2026 at 1:13 PM
#nowplaying I prefer the 1977 Berlin Philharmonic/Karajan recordings but I've not listened to the shiny brick for a while.
![A collection of three albums (Settin' The Pace [1961], Bahia [1965], The Last Train [1965]) on compact disc: Slowtrane (2010) by John Coltrane.](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:siyol53kzwu5f4tsylrcwc32/bafkreibudn3msd7e3uz5ggao633qq4r2zxwdbs6rra53p7d2hl24tzzspu@jpeg)
Last picture of 2025, for my Lovecraft book. Wacom Intuos Pro + Photoshop. Not quite finished yet but it's getting there. Happy new year!
December 31, 2025 at 4:10 PM
Last picture of 2025, for my Lovecraft book. Wacom Intuos Pro + Photoshop. Not quite finished yet but it's getting there. Happy new year!
"...a kind of Jules Verne modernism..." Orson Welles on the sets for The Trial:
![A photograph of a page from THIS IS ORSON WELLES – Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich (1993), edited by Jonathan Rosenbaum:
"Shortly before completing The Trial, Orson elaborated on this discovery when he was interviewed by Huw Wheldon on the BBC-TV show Monitor:
I discovered the world of Kafka: the offices of the Advocate, the law court offices, the corridors—a kind of Jules Verne modernism, which seems to me quite in the taste of Kafka. .. . The thing that gave it a particular force is that it's not only a very large place to work in, and a very beautiful place to photograph, but that it's full of sorrow—the kind of sorrow that accumulates in a railway station where people wait.... I know this sounds terribly mystical, but really a railway station is a haunted place. And the story is all about people waiting, waiting, waiting for their papers to be filled. It is full of the hopelessness of the struggle against bureaucracy. Waiting for a paper to be filled is like waiting for a train, and it's also a place [of] refugees. People were sent to Nazi prisons from there. Algerians were gathered there...
OW: We left that morning for Zagreb and I said, "It's all right, when we come back we'll shoot without sets—I've got everything. That's how it happened. And we shot there for seven weeks."](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:siyol53kzwu5f4tsylrcwc32/bafkreidmwooeazjivefi3vckn2mezupc2xwffq3sh6mnxkepsbjs7ynh3u@jpeg)
December 30, 2025 at 12:41 PM
"...a kind of Jules Verne modernism..." Orson Welles on the sets for The Trial:
#nowplaying This is a strange thing: a precise re-recording of the original album using vintage gear. And I do mean precise; it matches the original so closely that even hardcore Jarre-heads would find it difficult telling the two apart in a blind test.
December 29, 2025 at 8:31 PM
#nowplaying This is a strange thing: a precise re-recording of the original album using vintage gear. And I do mean precise; it matches the original so closely that even hardcore Jarre-heads would find it difficult telling the two apart in a blind test.
December 29, 2025 at 7:38 PM
Last night I finally watched Delaporte & Patellière's recent adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo. They mangled the ending a little but it's very good otherwise. No expense spared on the production side.
December 29, 2025 at 1:16 PM
Last night I finally watched Delaporte & Patellière's recent adaptation of The Count of Monte Cristo. They mangled the ending a little but it's very good otherwise. No expense spared on the production side.
The shiny towers of Deansgate Square, Manchester, on a very cold afternoon yesterday. I love the layered infrastructure/architecture of Deansgate: Roman ruins, 18th/19th century industry, canals, roads, trains, trams and now these things.
December 28, 2025 at 1:31 PM
The shiny towers of Deansgate Square, Manchester, on a very cold afternoon yesterday. I love the layered infrastructure/architecture of Deansgate: Roman ruins, 18th/19th century industry, canals, roads, trains, trams and now these things.
Three-badge run.
(The rust stains aren't an indication of vintage status. It's a much more recent item that got rained on.)
(The rust stains aren't an indication of vintage status. It's a much more recent item that got rained on.)
December 22, 2025 at 3:40 PM
Three-badge run.
(The rust stains aren't an indication of vintage status. It's a much more recent item that got rained on.)
(The rust stains aren't an indication of vintage status. It's a much more recent item that got rained on.)