A palimpsest is created when a text or image has been partially scraped from a medieval manuscript and a new text or image inscribed over the existing layer… It is also an appropriate way to begin thinking about Watson’s sketchbooks as word and image are frequently combined within the palimpsestical layerings… The very decision to call his books ‘notebooks’ rather than ‘sketchbooks’ seems to remove the emphasis on the sketch as the primary figure and assumption that sketchbooks are not the place for writing.
McNeil, Hospitalfield, 2003 from draft Doctoral thesis, Dundee.
