Month: July 2020

A Harrowing Experience

Disk harrow

The latest in my Art of Sketching course and Mattias has asked us to draw a favourite toy from childhood. This dates from when we lived at Wrenthorpe, so I guess that I would have been about 4 or 5 years old.

A disk harrow might seem an obscure object of desire but for children at that time agricultural implements were probably the equivalent of diggers today. We lived on Ruskin Avenue, a suburban road of then newish houses, but there was a field between our back garden and the railway embankment, so an assortment of agricultural machinery used to trundle down our road towards the field entrance a few doors on.

And talking of agricultural machinery, I remember being mystified by this snippet of conversation from my first year at the Infants school at Wrenthorpe:

The Bottle-top Tractor

Bottle-top tractor

I’m guessing that there must have been a foil-recycling charity appeal, to raise funds to buy tractors for some war-hit country but I remember puzzling over an image of my friend assembling a tractor using the milk bottle tops he’d collected.

Wrenthorpe
Mrs Clegg’s class, Wrenthorpe Infants, 1955

I drew these before reaching for the photograph album and I’m pleased to see that I wasn’t too far out with fashion trends. Tank tops are due for a comeback. I think that it was the confident-looking boy in braces, top left, standing right behind me, who told us about the tractor scheme. He’s evidently got so much confidence that you could believe him if he said that’s what he was doing.

Mrs Clegg’s classroom, the old school building, Wrenthorpe Infants, 1955.

From the indoor informal portraits, I can see that the photographer had guessed that I’d grow up to be the sort of guy who spends a lot of time in coffee shops. I like the way the focus is on the anxious-looking girl waiting in the Wendy house. Glad that I dressed for the occasion: a tie and a tank top.

The Squire & the Nondescript

Charles Waterton

I’ve been thinking about how to bring this odd couple – traveller and conservationist Charles Waterton and his apeman creation, The Nondescript – to life for a short animation. I’d like to make people smile but also to be able feel that there is something that they can do about the state of the planet, even if it’s not on the scale of exploring the upper reaches of the Essequibo and establishing a full scale nature reserve, as Waterton did.

The lockdown and the restriction of a one hour a day exercise walk, starting from home, that we were all limited to (with certain notorious exceptions!) made Barbara and I realise how much we miss on our local patch in most years by dashing off to the coast or the hills at every opportunity. There was so much to see as spring unfolded during a spell of almost uninterrupted good weather on our regular walk to the upper reaches of Smithy Brook. And the garden – including our pocket-sized nature reserve – has never received so much love and attention.

With all that’s being going on, can a Georgian Squire have any message that is relevant to us? Well, yes, loads actually:

Black Lives Matter

‘Slavery can never be defended: he whose heart is not of iron can never wish to be able to defend it . . . he wishes in his soul that the traffic had been stifled at birth’

Charles Waterton, 1825

Charles Waterton married a woman of mixed race (Anne’s maternal grandma was Arawak) and he travelled with freed slaves on his ‘wanderings’. Waterton trained a freed slave, almost certainly John Edmonstone, in the art of taxidermy. In turn Edmonstone, then based at 37, Lothian Street, Edinburgh, taught young medical student Charles Darwin and, we believe, through telling him stories of his travels with Waterton, inspired Darwin to visit the rain forests himself.

So we might not have had Darwin’s theory of evolution if it hadn’t been for Waterton’s ability to educate and inspire. I believe that he can still inspire us today.

Covid-19

Waterton was part of the first team to successfully carry out a tracheotomy under anaesthetic, not only that, but he supplied the anaesthetic, curare, which he’d collected himself in Guyana. So you could argue that he played a small part in preparing the way for a treatment that during the current epidemic has saved thousands of lives.

My animation won’t go into any of the above connections but I think that it’s important to see Waterton as more than an amiable eccentric – even though that’s the character that I’m basically sticking to in the animation!

I hope that I can suggest that there’s a backstory to my character that is worth dipping into.

North Beach, Bridlington

North Beach sketch map

This marginal illustration for one of my Dalesman diaries isn’t meant to be a trail map but you couldn’t go far wrong in finding your way to Danes Dyke Nature Reserve than starting at the harbour and keeping the sea on your right. Look forward to walking it again some time. And, when they come out of lockdown, there’s always the option of catching the Land Train at Sewerby Hall to get back to the harbour in time for fish and chips.

No Room at the Inn, 1948

No Room at the Inn

It’s one of those dimly remembered but vivid movie scenes. Sometime back around 1958, so perhaps when I was seven years old, I caught the last few minutes of a film on our black and white Bush 24-inch 405 line television. It must have made quite an impression on me but how accurate are my memories from 60 years ago.

I never knew the name of the film but scanning today’s listing for the Talking Pictures channel I’m sure that No Room at the Inn, 1948, about evacuees billeted with the ‘savagely nasty’ Mrs Voray. That’s got to be the one.

I’ve drawn my memories of the scene so that I can compare them with the actual film.

Desert Opera

Still on the ‘just keep drawing’ prompt from Mattias Adolfsson’s The Art of Sketching course, I was beginning to run out of abstract shapes as a starting point for my drawings. The abstract curves that I started off with suggested a roof or a tent and by the time I drew in the stone steps and circular base I found myself thinking about a stage set; one with a revolving stage.

For the characters that might inhabit this desert base, I was thinking of an opera, perhaps a Philip Glass production, but inevitably in setting it in the 1930s or 40s I’ve ended up with Indiana Jones stereotypes. Although the zookeeper with the camel, if drawn in Hergé’s ligne claire style, could have a walk-on role in a Tintin adventure.

An Elephant Seal of Torquay

Limerick
An Elephant Seal of Torquay,
was desperate to swim in the sea :
But he couldn't reach,
the far end of the beach,
'cos the crowds had invaded Torquay.

Edward Lear seems to be contagious. A friend of mine composed three limericks for the parish magazine and now she finds she can’t help slipping into limerick mode.

My elephant seal offering was inspired by a page of Edward Lear-style punning cartoons posted by ‘have_pen_will_draw’, who like me is tackling Mattias Adolfsson’s The Art of Sketching course. His other punning creations included ‘tiger shark’, ‘bull frog’ and ‘horse fly’.

I’m lucky enough to have a copy of Edward Lear’s Book of Nonsense, which helpfully has every verso page left blank, so that I could slot in my cartoon in Photoshop. I’m particularly pleased that I was able to almost match Lear’s choice of typeface by using the typeface Didot.

If only I could match the inky spontaneity of Lear’s drawings!

The Lost Hammerstone of Doggerland

cartoon

If you’d been standing on Flamborough Head 8,000 years ago, as early man began to move back into Britain, you’d be looking out over Doggerland, a landscape of woodland, marsh, rivers and lakes.

In the nature diary that I’m writing for September’s The Dalesman, I’m delving into prehistory but thought that I’d pop in one of my cartoons to lighten the mix a bit. But so as not to leave you in suspense, you’ll be pleased to hear that 8,000 years later we’ve found that missing hammerstone.

Star Books

Another ‘start with a shape’ drawing: this time it was a star. It suggests that after 100 days of lockdown I’m missing browsing, drinking lattes and visiting historic towns. Wakefield had its own Shambles and a cluster of half-timbered buildings which survived wartime bombing but which were swept away in the 1960s to provides space for new modern concrete and brick shops.

Apologies that there’s too much zooming in and out in this little iMovie clip. I thought that the best thing to do was to dive in and do something but having re-familiarised myself with the set-up, I can now try something more calm and considered.

Star Books

Al Ca-Pen’s Projection Racket

Al Ca-Pen

Another homemade birthday card, this time in honour of our nephew Andrew’s profession – no he’s not a professional gangster, but he trained as an engineer so in the distant pre-CAD days he must have experienced the perils of preparing a technical drawing.