Trowel and Fork

trowel and fork

It’s too hot to do much work in the back garden but, as it’s in the shade until lunchtime, the front stays cool. I finish weeding the narrow bed below the lounge window. Welsh poppies would happily take over here but, much as I like them, we’ve got other plans.

Inevitably, as I go, I keep digging up spring bulbs. I replant all the smaller ones. The tête-à-têtes are doing well but I pick out the larger daffodil bulbs because, in this shady bed, they grow too leggy and keel over. I’ll replant them at the end of the back garden. I’ll need more than a hand fork and trowel to get to grips with the chicory and bindweed down there.

The drawing process

I drew these on my iPad using Procreate. I wanted the entire process to be visible in the finished drawing: the false starts, the construction lines and the multiple attempts to get a shape in proportion. I limited my use of the eraser. There was a detail on the trowel that I’d painted too dark, which I took back a bit with a soft, semi-transparent eraser.

As with yesterday’s view of the back garden, I used only one layer. Because of this I had to paint over my line work, so I needed to go over it again with the ‘Gesinski ink’ pen.

Published
Categorized as Drawing

Harvest Mouse

harvest mouse
The virtual ‘dry brush’ is useful for painting fur in Procreate on an iPad, and you don’t have to mistreat your prized sable watercolour brush to get the desired effect!

One of the Rodley Nature Reserve harvest mice, drawn from one of the photographs that I took there earlier this month. Hopefully this will make it into print next year in one of my Dalesman nature diaries.

Cutting Back

shed
Drawn in ProCreate on my iPad Pro
snail

Stripy brown-lipped snails hunker down on ivy leaves in our hedges. I find them even when I’m up the steps, cutting back the top branches.

We’re continuing to harvest plenty of produce from the veg beds – courgettes, potatoes, spinach, rhubarb and autumn raspberries – but we’re taking a break from beans: the french and broad beans are over but the runners, which have masses of scarlet flowers, are taking their time to burst into full flow.

One or two holly blues have been visiting the ivy, which, along with the holly, is one of the food plants of the caterpillar.

shed

Drawing on one layer in Procreate

My drawing was made in the Procreate drawing program on my iPad Pro. For a change, I’ve drawn it all on one layer. I usually keep pencil roughs, ink and colour on separate layers, which keeps the line work unblemished but that means that I’m missing out on all the efforts that the Procreate designers have put into making digital drawing feel like its real world equivalent. In this case, I don’t mind if the pen and ink gets slightly blurred as I add the colour.