About me

Hello. I’m Philip W H Bell (PWHB), an emerging artist based in the UK. But you are welcome to call me Phil if you prefer because most other people do. I’ll be sharing my thoughts on my ‘art’, the ups and downs of the creative life and sharing work in progress.

My art making practice at this time involves drawing, painting, and mixed media work. I tend to lean towards narrative work, sometimes with figures, sometimes just landscapes. I love sketching, photography, film making, life drawing and experimenting. My current favourite gallery is Tate Britain and I honestly find something I love about every piece of art spanning old to new, through all the decades.

If my various obsessions overlap with my art projects I’ll be talking about those here which might include thoughts on the creative process, art courses, painting, drawing, art materials, artists, art history, galleries, books, poetry, literature, writing, scriptwriting, sci-fi, films, cinematography, photography, filmmaking, music, culture, climate change, the environment, nature, science, technology, and maybe a tiny bit of politics, and loads more.

I’m a ‘second career’ artist, formerly a writer and publisher. I’ve been professionally published in a children’s story anthology by Walker Books, self-published a children’s book series, and helped many authors achieve publication over the years writing, editing, designing, publishing and selling books. Before all that I’ve meandered through life either freelance or in employment in various areas including coding, web development, interactive tv content design, copywriting, freelance writing, teaching adult learners, and technical authoring. Not that it matters anymore but my first degree is in Computer Science and I’ve got a Creative Writing diploma. A few years back I dissolved my indie publishing company to pursue my first childhood love of visual art. And so I find myself here.

This publication is a place to communicate ideas, thoughts and conclusions on the creative projects I’m working on. I hope to meet other creatives as well as lovers of creativity and art, galleries, collectors and likeminded people. Although it isn’t intended to be educational or instructive, if you do pick up some tips or relate to something I’ve said or done then all the better.

All being well, I will be posting weekly.

My posts will be free for now but please subscribe if you want updates. I hope to offer some benefits to being a paid subscriber in the future.

Thank you for reading and I look forward to your feedback.

If you’re new to Substack you can either read on the web or you can get the Substack app.

Disclaimer

Please put any factual, spelling or grammatical errors down to artistic licence. They are entirely the responsibility of the publisher.

Any misinterpretations of my writing are entirely down to you, dear reader, but I welcome your feedback.

Other than links to my own website philipwhbell.uk I am not responsible for the content shown on any external website links.

Other than through the inbuilt Substack restacking / quoting facility, if you want to repost or use any of my writing or images for non-profit use only, I’d appreciate being asked first, and having my name and copyright mentioned, and if possible a link to the source post or image where appropriate.

All writing, images, video, audio or other content, unless otherwise stated, is created by me, by hand, and not using any AI tools.

Copyright © 2026 Philip W H Bell (PWHB).