Month: January 2019

The Stress Solution

gulls

In his latest book The Stress Solution, Dr Rangan Chatterjee describes the ‘Micro Stress Dose’ that you’re likely to get when you check into your Facebook feed and see your friend enjoying the holiday of a lifetime, when you’ve recently returned from yours. There’s your friend, sitting by the pool with a pina colada in their hand, while . . .

“you’re looking out of your office window watching a pigeon drink out of a dirty puddle on the roof of a vandalized bus stop.”

That wouldn’t be a problem for me of course, because being forced to sit by a pool with a pina colada would be my idea of purgatory; I’d be much happier drawing that pigeon!

stare at a tree
The Arboretum, Newmillerdam

I’m lucky that my day job includes many of the elements that Dr Chatterjee suggests for trying to combat stress: a daily dose of nature, getting out on a walk or just staring at a tree.

Ikigai

Ikigai

Ideally, he says, you should be trying to find what the Japanese call your ikigai, which translates loosely as ‘a reason for being’, but it’s something more than that. It should be something you love – yes, drawing is definitely that for me; something that you’re good at (OK, the jury’s still out on that one in my case) and, ideally, something that you can make money from. Well, I’ve survived for forty years as an illustrator, so I can tick that last box.

It should also be something that the world needs. Does the world need illustration? I can’t speak for the world in general, but I know how much I feel the need for art and illustration in my life.

Brain-boosting

boathouse
The Boathouse, Newmillerdam

It seems that learning to paint is good for you. In an experiment on last week’s Twinstitute, on BBC 1, one group of volunteers were given a month to learn to paint, draw and throw pots on the wheel. This resulted in a reduction in their brain age of, on average, six years, with one of the participants reducing her brain age by nine years. A control group of twins who went on a diet of ‘brain-boosting’ foods for the same period saw no change in the their brain age.

A study by psychologist Myra Fernandes and colleagues at the University of Waterloo, Canada, suggests that the act of drawing something has “massive” benefit for memory compared with writing it down, so getting into a habit of drawing might help people who suffer from dementia.

One Small Step

One small step

But being an illustrator brings its own problems and Dr Chatterjee’s previous book, The 4 Pillar Plan, convinced me that it was about time that I did something about my posture. The hours that I spend hunched over my computer or my sketchbook aren’t ideal. He suggests plenty of simple solutions to bring movement into your daily routine and, in particular, his exercises for reawakening ‘lazy glutes’ convinced me that I should buy an exercise step. It’s in the corner of my studio so, once or twice a day, when I need to take a few minutes break, I can go through a short, simple work-out. No aerobics involved, thankfully, just getting those neglected muscles into action again.

But I won’t be giving up my daily dose of nature.

Links

Stress Solution

Dr Chatterjee’s website: drchatterjee.com

I like the use of graphics and photography in Dr Chatterjee’s books which (along with his clear explanations) gives them an accessible, friendly feel. I’ve tried to echo that by using Adobe Spark Post to add some suitably inspirational captions to my photographs of Newmillerdam Country Park, all but one of them taken on Monday morning. Newmillerdam is always suitably inspirational whatever the weather, but the winter sun on Monday gave it an extra sparkle.

Drawing and memory: a study by psychologist Myra Fernandes and colleagues at the University of Waterloo, Canada

Wild Geese

wild geese

With wintery weather expected, we’re fitting all our errands in this morning. As we come down Daisy Hill into Dewsbury, a skein of grey geese is flying high over Batley. They must have some advance warning of the change in the weather and they’re heading in the direction of Martinmere or Morecambe Bay.

They don’t stick rigidly in formation and the pattern changes continuously, forming barbed arrowheads and an elongated stick-man. This makes them difficult to count. Barbara thinks about 200, I think probably 300 or more.

Winter Check

Harris Tweed

More chevrons on a grey ground: this is a swatch of 100% pure wool Harris Tweed in a design called Winter Check. We always find strolling around the Redbrick Mill, Batley, rather inspiring and I loved the variety of colours and textures in the fabric swatches, lined up in pigeon-holes, in Sofas & Stuff. Apparently turquoise and teal are popular colours at the moment, but for me these Harris Tweeds, in natural colours are timeless.

Link

Sofas & Stuff bespoke, British and handmade sofas and chairs

Redbrick Mill the North’s leading destination for interiors (and the tumeric scone with honey and Greek yogurt at Filmore & Union is pretty good too)

Bird Rescue

bird rescue

From my diary for Monday, 9 June, 1997:

I had a reputation as a naturalist amongst the local children; once I was presented with a specimen of a dragonfly that had been trapped in a conservatory and on another occasion a neighbour’s son reported seeing a large black cat near the quarry in the wood, at a time when ‘The Black Beast of Ossett’ was roaming the nearby countryside.

Children assumed that I’d know what to do with orphaned or injured birds. In fact the only birds that I ever kept, two Bengalese finches that I bought, hoping to breed, when I worked on the illustrations for Ways of Drawing Birds, died when I allowed them to feast on too much lettuce. The best I could do was to phone a friend, a headmaster who lived in Horbury, who kept silver pheasants and owls in an aviary. I didn’t record in my diary what became of the hapless nestling.

Walking along the road in April that year, I was recognised by two skateboarding children. The girl pointed me out to her companion:
“It’s Richard Bell, he’s an artist.”
The boy must have confused me with another artist, perhaps the only one he’d so far learnt about at school . . .

children
Published
Categorized as Birds, People

Sun on the Strands

diary

Frost whitened rushes,
dark iced water,
isolated in the mist
in warm winter sun
the Strands looked at its best

Calder Valley, Addingford, 26 January 1997

Twenty-two years ago this weekend, in 1997, I was busy painting the scenery for the Pageant Players’ production of Dick Whittington at Horbury School but, instead of driving there, I put on my wellies and walked through a pristinely frosted Calder Valley, following first the canal, then the river.

In my a new page-a-day diary I’d decided a that I was going to try, every day, to make a note of the wildlife I’d seen and to add quick sketches in colour. In the following year this diary became the basis of my online Wild West Yorkshire nature diary, which was originally intended to be just one strand of a more ambitious website, which would include sections on geology, history and villages.

diary
cimet
Comet, 28 April, 1997.

I was keen to immerse myself in natural history because for the previous seven years I’d been working pretty intensively on geological projects. I was just finishing my illustrations for Steve Cribb’s Whisky on the Rocks and I’d also made a start on an educational publication, What is Coal? for the National Museum of Coal Mining but I was starting to get further afield as I set about planning and testing out the routes my first walks book, Village Walks in West Yorkshire.

First e-mail

A couple of weeks later, I sold my first computer, an Amstrad 386, to friends and upgraded to what then seemed like a suitably powerful PC but my self-publishing business, Willow Island Editions, didn’t get going until after I’d invested in my first scanner, a Umax Astra 1200-S. I remember that it cost hundreds of pounds, £350 I think, but included in the package was a full version of Adobe Photoshop 4.0, so it proved to be brilliant value.

It’s strange to look back and read a note that I received my first e-mail, from a birdwatcher friend in Plymouth, on the second of April, 1997. However did we manage before that?!

Published
Categorized as Drawing

The Wood in Winter

Coxley Wood

The day started with a frost but by lunchtime that had melted away as a warm front came through, although it didn’t turn mild enough to melt the ice on the pond.

As a change from the iPad, I’ve gone back to a real sketchbook, a Pink Pig with their own brand of 270 gsm watercolour paper, Ameleie. Also as a change, I’ve gone for a fibre tip, a 0.1 Pilot Drawing Pen in brown, and my larger studio set of Winsor & Newton Professional Watercolours.

There’s been a good variety of birds coming to the feeders this afternoon including long-tailed tits, nuthatch and two pairs of blue tits which seem ready to start falling out over the nestbox. We recently replaced the old blue tit nesting box with a sparrow nestbox, which is designed for three pairs to nest in. I can’t see the blue tits ever settling down in adjacent nestboxes, so my guess is that eventually the house sparrows will take an interest and move in.

January Sketches

Birstall
Looking towards the M62 motorway junction from the Showcase Cinema, Birstall.

Here are a few quick sketches from my A6-size pocket sketchbook. Barbara was asking me which I preferred, drawing on an iPad or drawing in pen and watercolour. For pleasure, pen and watercolour are what I feel most at home with, but I always like learning something new. I think of iPad drawing as being something akin to printmaking, it’s undeniably drawing but with technical considerations which might be considered limitations but which can also contribute to the character of the artwork.

Old scouring mill

chair

The original of this sketch of the old scouring mill at Horbury Bridge is just two inches, five centimetres across. Seen in close-up, the unpredictable effects of real ink and real watercolour on the slightly textured surface cartridge paper are, I feel, more convincingly organic than anything that I could have concocted on the iPad.

All these sketches were drawn as we paused for a coffee. When no view was available, when we sat in the corner at the Filmore & Union in the Redbrick Mill, Batley, last week, I attempted to draw a chair.

Beams at Blacker Hall
birch
Silver birch, the Red Kite, Calder Park, Wakefield.

Inspired by a video I’d been watching of a virtuoso South Korean comic artist, I attempted to increase my speed when I drew the timber framework of the barn at Blacker Hall Cafe this morning. I’d normally try to keep my trembling hands under close control but it’s good to try and let myself go occasionally.

Dog Lichen

Dog Lichen

Dog Lichen, Peltigera sp., grows in damp, badly drained habitats such as mossy logs and rocks but it can also get established on garden lawns. Its leafy lobes have white dog-tooth-shaped root-like rhizines on their undersurface, loosely connecting them to the substrate.

There are several similar species, so I’ve posted my original photograph on iSpot Nature, ispotnature.org, to get a second opinion on the specie: perhaps it’s P. membranacea, rather than P. canina itself? It was taken last April in the marshy woodland beyond Friar’s Crag, Derwent Water.

With those dog-like ‘teeth’ it was once used in an attempt to treat rabies.

Cuckoo’s Nest Halt

Blacker Wood

Last April, after a winter that had lingered on and on, we were keen to get out as soon as the spring blossom started to appear. A friend, Philippa Coultish, was taking us around her local patch: the valley of Park Gate Dike, northeast of Skelmanthorpe. Because of the ‘Beast from the East’ snowstorms, we were a bit early for the flowers we’d planned to see in Blacker Wood.

Denby Dale Walks

On our way back towards the town, we walked parallel with the Kirklees Light Railway and watched one of the narrow gauge steam trains make a stop up at Cuckoo’s Nest Halt. I’ve yet to take a trip on the railway but hope we can return to walk from station to station alongside the line, then get the train back.

There’s an excellent pack of leaflets, Walking in and around Denby Dale with fourteen walks, centred on Denby Dale, Skelmanthorpe, Clayton West and Emley.

Link

Denby Dale Walkers are Welcome leaflets, available as PDFs.

Alderfly

alderfly
Drawn from a photograph taken by the Middle Lake, Nostell Priory, April 2018

If Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen was asked to design an aquatic insect, this is what he might come up with. The smoke-tinted wings of the alderfly are folded like a roof and supported by a tracery of veins, in the style of a Tiffany lamp. Despite these stylish wings they don’t venture far from the water’s edge.

The alderfly larva is a predator, using powerful pincer-like jaws to to prey on aquatic insects such as caddis and mayfly larvae.

Evernia Lichen

This tuft of Evernia prunastri, a common grey-green foliose (leaf-like) lichen was growing on a twig at the edge of the copse alongside the Balk at Netherton. Its branching pattern, always dividing into two, reminds me of fronds of seaweed. Evernia means ‘branched’.

The fronds (the branches of thallus, or body of the lichen) are strap-shaped (not cylindrical, as in a similar-looking lichen, Ramalina), usually paler underneath. You’re probably thinking that if this is a lichen where are the spore-producing bodies? They’re rarely seen and reproduction is often via those granules – the soredia – dotted all over the surface, which can eventually break off to form new lichens.

From Twig to Wig

In Lichens, an Illustrated Guide, Frank S Dobson lists the numerous uses that this lichen has been put to: as wadding for shotguns and as powder for wigs; as a flavouring in bread in the Middle East; as a fixative for perfume; and as an antibiotic, although Dobson adds that it has been known to trigger an allergy in woodcutters. Long-tailed tits use it to camouflage their nests.

It is distributed throughout Britain and is very common on twigs, rocks, fences and even on consolidated sand dunes and it can cope with a moderate amount of pollution.

Published
Categorized as Drawing