Day: August 20, 2019

Little Westgate

Walkers
Original drawings in my pocket-sized A5 (landscape) sketchbook

It’s rare for me to sit and draw from life but I get the chance this morning as I wait for my appointment at Specsavers on Little Westgate, Wakefield. Perhaps because we’re still in the holiday season, there aren’t as many people in town as I’d expected. This is a good thing because instead of picking out a favourite character from a crowd I have to draw, at random, whoever happens to be walking past. Often there’s only one person in view.

After my course in web comics, I realise that every person embodies their own short story. Each person has a particular walk. The man with the striped trousers is the most determined and confident, while others are more diffident. The woman in the centre pauses at the threshold of a shop as if debating with herself whether she should enter.

Watercolour added later. I remember the colour of the carrier bag better than the colour of some of the footwear and trousers.

Published
Categorized as People

Goldfinch Recovery

Goldfinch

“A goldfinch has just flown into the window,” Barbara tells me, “It’s lying there on the patio, its little beak trembling.”

goldfinch

I go out, prepared for the worst. It’s a juvenile, lying on its back, wings trembling, a startled expression in its eyes and, like Barbara said, its beak opening and closing, as if it’s gasping for breath. Ringers will keep a bird calm by consigning it to the darkness of a soft drawstring cloth bag. I would usually put a stunned bird in a cardboard box to recover but I haven’t got one to hand, so I pick it up and cup it in my hands.

goldfinch

I can feel its heart thumping. It begins to perk up. I part my fingers and it does seem to be sitting up and taking notice. It has a tiny mark on its head but no other sign of injury.

I take it down to the lawn by the bird feeder and gradually open my hands. It moves onto the grass then, after a second or two, it flies off, up over the hedge . . .

. . . and right into next door’s bedroom window!

Luckily this time it doesn’t stun itself and it sits on the windowsill as it recovers.