Month: March 2016

Langsett Reservoir

Langsettlangsett sketch, crayons‘Doesn’t it make you feel lucky?’ says the woman who walks by as we sit drawing and writing at North America, the ruined farm overlooking Langsett reservoir. That’s just what we were thinking. Yesterday, which was equally sunny we’d been stuck inside, so we didn’t take any persuading to get out into the Peak District today.

As a change from the little wallet of children’s wax crayons that I’ve been slipping into my pocket recently, I’ve brought a selection of Derwent Watercolour pencils which I bought some years ago at the Pencil Factory in Keswick at the top end of Derwentwater. They came in a plastic pod which didn’t survive long in my art bag but they fit equally well into a long thin ArtPen tin.

crayon pod

I haven’t brought my water-brush so, after I’ve added the crayon to my drawing, I crouch by a puddle and use a wet finger to spread the colour about.

Red Grouse, Brown Trout

moor smokeThey’re burning a patch of the moor this morning, to improve the habitat for red grouse by providing a patchwork of heather at different stages of growth.

little don or porterResearchers are sampling the sediment above and below the weir on the River Little Don or Porter at the top end of the reservoir. A study by the University of Hull of tagged brown trout in Langsett Reservoir has revealed that trout attempt to move into the tributary streams from October to January, probably to spawn. Yorkshire Water are considering constructing a fish ladder here to allow the trout to access the suitable habitat upstream.

Link: Movement of brown trout in and between headwater tributaries and reservoirs (PDF), J.D. Bolland, L. Wallace, J.P. Harvey, M. Tinsdeall, J.L. Baxter & I.G. Cowx, University of Hull

Front Garden

front gardenflower bedThe heather that we planted in this bed in our front garden, alongside the pavement, was never happy, despite our attempts to make the soil more acid by adding sulphur chips. It got smothered by grass stems and ivy. The ivy was beginning to climb the mountain ash which we planted strategically to mask the lamp post behind it.

I like ivy as it’s provides year round cover for spiders and snails and a foraging area for wrens and dunnocks plus the occasional toad and hedgehog but I must admit that it was starting to look rather overgrown and uncared for.

daffodilsWe’ve been inspired by a sloping bed in a similar position right next to the road at the garden centre at Cannon Hall to try something different but hopefully equally wildlife friendly.

We’ll dispense with the old log roll that we used to create a raised bed for the heather and the conifers and go for a gentle slope instead, covered with bark chippings.

 

White Rose Centre

hand handI’ve drawn my hands a couple of times waiting by the changing rooms in one of the stores in the White Rose shopping centre, Leeds, but just as I start sketching the shoppers – by trying to take a mental snapshot as they walk away – Barbara gets fitted up and we head off to find a likely place for lunch.

shoppers

Polypody

polypody“This is one of the commonest of our Ferns, and one which is easy of recognition. It is abundant in all parts of our island, now hanging down from the gnarled branch or sturdy trunk of the old oak, now growing in large clumps on the hedge-bank, and forming a good foreground for the artist’s sketch ; while sometimes it may be seen waving its bright green leaves above the cottage thatch, or on stone wall or rugged rock.”

Ann Pratt, The Ferns of Great Britain, c. 1850

3.30 p.m., overcast, light breeze, 43ºF, 7ºC; I’m pleased to find that the fronds polypody fern that I started drawing on the Caphouse Colliery nature trail a week ago are still in the same position. The upper surface of the trunk of the old hawthorn that its growing on is covered with a gold-tipped moss.

polypody
Chromolithograph produced by Pratt’s collaborator, William Dickes, 1815-1892.

I love the quote from Anne Pratt (above) but I hadn’t realised that she also provided the illustrations for her book The Ferns of Great Britain. Searching the Internet for a date for the book I was surprised to find a portrait of her.

Anne Pratt
Anne Pratt, 1830, artist unknown. According to Wikipedia Commons, this portrait is in the public domain.

Anne Pratt, 1806-1893, was a celebrated botanist and the author of twenty books.

Links

Ferns of Great Britain by Anne Pratt

Anne Pratt, Wikipedia article

William Dickes, Wikipedia article

Spring Weeds

red dead-nettle red dead-nettle1.15 p.m., 49ºF, 9ºC, sun through high hazy cloud, cool breeze from north northwest: These weeds on the L-shaped bed are going to have to go soon as the weather has suddenly turned springlike, the vernal equinox is almost upon us and it’s time to start thinking about planting veg.

I draw red dead-nettle and a weed, a crucifer, which I wouldn’t attempt to identify before the seed-pods start showing, and by that time I should have weeded it out.

mystery weed weed stemOur crops will need protection, not only from the wood pigeons but also from the possibility of next door’s hens coming over to scrat about. The little red hen has already made it through to us under the hedge and she must have liked what she found as our neighbour couldn’t entice her back and had to come around to retrieve her.

dunnockAs I draw there’s a loud song from the hedge just a few yards from me but every time I turn around there’s no sign of the bird. Eventually its head pops up at the top of the hedge: it’s a dunnock. It’s song has more get-up-and-go than the comparatively relaxed, reflective phrases of the robin.

Low Tide

Sandsend Ness, 2 p.m.
Sandsend Ness, 3 p.m.

cormorantLow tide is around midday, so we’re enjoying the two mile walk along the sand from Sandsend to Whitby. It was high time that we came to see the sea again. The waves heave and sigh; the surf swishes and fizzes.

Whitby harbour, 12.25 p.m., 59ºF, 15ºC, cool breeze from sea, hazy: A cormorant flies low over the water and out to sea via the harbour mouth.

crowA crow probes around the barnacle encrusted rocks on the west side of the harbour. Three or four redshanks fly up from the water’s edge, piping as they go.

turnstoneNearer the bridge, the herring gulls have the mud bank staked out. A turnstone does just that – turns over a stone – as we pass. In fact in the minute or so that we’re walking by it turns over four stones. When we humans are rock-pooling the advice is to carefully replace every stone we turn so as not to disrupt the habitat. The turnstone doesn’t bother with that.

Rhubarb Tree

rhubarbI thought that we’d lost our rhubarb this year but after losing an early leaf or two in the frost, the red buds are pushing up again through the wood chip at the edge of the path at foot of the hawthorn hedge. It’s the sunny side of the garden, facing southwest. The rhubarb has grown here since we moved in over thirty years ago, sprouting every year amongst the nettle leaves and the trailing stems of periwinkle. Snowdrops have spread along the foot of the hedge nearby.

Rhubarb leaves come pre-packed in their egg-shaped buds. As they unfurl, I would describe the wavy pattern of the emerging leaf as carunculated, like an elephants skin.

blue titThe blue tit has a hurried and rather petulant song which hints at the sound of a child’s bicycle bell. It continues this in flight.

Eggs, birds singing in the trees, leaves like elephants’ ears . . . it reminds me of a playground poem, c.1960:

The elephant is a pretty bird,
It flits from bough to bough.
It makes its nest in a rhubarb tree
And whistles like a cow.

11.40 a.m.: The high pressure is holding over the weekend. It’s still with hazy sunshine. Warm enough to simply walk out of the back door into the garden and draw gloveless. For the first time this year as I set out drawing, I’m wearing jeans not insulated outdoor trousers.

A Bird in the Hand

red henDo you ever have one of those mornings when you’re sitting on the sofa relaxing with your morning cup of tea and a woman in wellies walks through the room clutching a chicken. Well, to give her her due, our neighbour Juliet did remove her wellies beforehand and had apologised in advance, explaining that the children had let the chickens out earlier and one little red hen had made its way under the hedge into our back garden and had settled by our shed and couldn’t be enticed back even with the promise of food.

ebook guideBut the odd thing is that at the moment I’m reading How to Publish Your Own eBook, which includes, on a sample page of an Apple iBooks’ publication, a photograph of someone holding a red hen under their arm. Just like Juliet as she breezed through before breakfast (we’re semi-detached so that’s the only way from back to front).

Link: MagBooks How to Publish Your Own eBook

Which was written by journalist and photographer Nik Rawlinson

Coming up for Air

pond edgenewt12.20 p.m.: Something is coming up to the surface of the pond; I can see the odd ripple. It’s right in amongst the pondweed, so I suspect that it’s newts that are coming up for air but I’m hoping the frogs will soon start showing themselves.

robin in crabThere’s a clear song from the robin in the crab apple; it makes me think of a clear, cool trickle of water.

It’s so much warmer today, at last starting to feel like spring with the temperature here by the pond at lunch time up at 57ºF, 4ºC with the snowdropsbarometer at 30.5 inches of mercury, 1032 millibars, which means we’re in high pressure and the forecast is for it to be dry. It will be a change not to be out drawing in cold damp winter weather.

Published
Categorized as Pond Tagged

Farmyard Goose

farmyard gooseAt the car park at Cannon Hall a gaggle of about a dozen farmyard geese, mainly white, graze on the grass verge until a couple of walkers arrive with a bag of breadcrumbs.

The domestic goose is descended from the greylag but stands more upright than its wild relative because it has been selectively bred to be three times as heavy and to accumulate fat around its rear end. One of the geese had a dewlap and a similar flap hanging between its legs. This is a feature of the Toulouse, an old French breed.

In the American Pilgrim goose, males are always white and females grey.

daffodils‘Denied the opportunity to forage [geese] are uneconomic,’ writes John Woodward in The Field Guide, ‘for they have large appetites . . . the income derived from geese rarely justifies the use of valuable pasture.’

A toddler with a large bag of breadcrumbs is next in line to feed them.

Jumbo Grip Pencil

Oak at the corner of the car park, Cannon Hall (pen and watercolour).
Oak at the corner of the car park, Cannon Hall (pen and watercolour).

My drawing is a composite as these geese never keep still. I started with the head and worked down. When the birds set off in a different direction I kept adding to the sketch, transposing the shapes as if I was mirror-writing. Sometimes I’d be drawing one of the white geese, sometimes the one with the dewlap but the greyish-brown geese did have the white rear end, as I’ve drawn it here.

I drew the goose with a Faber-Castell Jumbo Grip pencil (below). With its triangular cross section and its rubberised ‘SoftGRIP’ stipples, this is one pencil that you’re not going drop even if you’re working in gloves. The matching pencil sharpener is easier to use on location than a craft knife. There’s a pencil-thin slot in my art bag that it fits neatly into so it’s not going to lose it’s point by getting jammed in with my pens and watercolours.

jumbo grip pencil

I’ve used various clutch pencils, otherwise known as propelling pencils, but they don’t have the bite of  a real pencil. The Jumbo Grip is rated B for hardness and is described as ‘ideal for learning to write’. But I like it for drawing too.

Link: Jumbo Grip Pencil

Leeds Trees

Trees in Hunslet

oliveRiver AireWhen we drop our car in for its annual service in Hunslet we like to walk alongside the River Aire to Leeds and make a day of it. Over the years on the river we’ve seen goosander, mallard, teal, cormorant, moorhen and kingfisher. We’ve seen goldfinches feeding on the cones of the riverside alders and a wagtail flitting about on a landing stage. Last year we saw our first warbler of the season, just flown in from Africa.

One year we met a knight walking his charger along the riverside path. This was at the time that the Royal Armouries Museum at Clarence Dock staged regular jousts in a tiltyard next to the museum.

Tree in HunsletI sketched the Birds of the Aire (left) on our first walk into Leeds from the garage, eleven years ago (on the same date, the 9th, and the same day of the week, a Wednesday).

Rain all day means that, for the first time, we miss out on our annual riverside ramble and content ourselves with dodging in and out of the shops in the city centre for a few hours. The art material stores of my college days in Leeds, Dinsdales and Jowett and Sowry have now moved out of the city centre so we were delighted to come across a new(ish) art and craft materials store, Fred Aldous, behind Leeds Market as you head towards Leeds Parish Church (now restyled as the Minster).

leuchtturm sketchbookNaturally I have to buy a sketchbook. Will the acid free paper in the pocket-sized Leuchtturm 1917 notebook prove more sympathetic to watercolour than the Moleskine sketchbooks that I was using last year? It’s going to be a while before I get around to trying it as I’m currently using my Derwent Black Journal as a pocket notebook, carrying it in my pocket along with a Lamy Vista pen and a small wallet of children’s crayons. I used it when drawing the trees as we waited for our car after its service at the Luscombe’s Suzuki.

Link: Birds of the River Aire, 9 March 2oo5.

First Warbler, 2 March 2015.

Fred Aldous, art & craft supplies

Leuchtturm 1917 sketchbooks