Another of my homemade cards that you just can’t buy in the shops . . . probably because the market for road tanker designers celebrating their 50th birthdays is pretty limited.
Tankformers
Month: June 2021
Return to Silkwood Farm
The Silkwood Farm, Junction 40, Ossett: Pigeons and a magpie fly over a square of grassy waste ground between the vehicle testing centre and the snack van. Over the past year as we’ve driven past, I’ve looked forward to being back here again with Barbara’s brother John, after a morning’s walk around Newmillerdam. It feels good to be able to do something normal again and with the tables set out with social distancing in mind there’s a relaxed, airy ambience.
Moorhen
As a change from drawing at Newmillerdam this morning, I took my camera – an Olympus E-M10 II with a 60mm 1:2.8 macro lens, which proved versatile as with the flick of a switch I could change from the close-ups of meadowsweet, red campion and marsh bedstraw to the coots, moorhen and mallard on the lake and I even managed a quick shot of a carrion crow perching the back of a rustic bench.
Puffins
It was too windy to safely draw on the cliff top on our day trip to Flamborough on Tuesday, so these are puffins from our last month’s visit. A few were sitting together on a steep grassy slope in an inlet overlooking North Landing. When we visited on Tuesday there was just one, sitting tightly on a rocky ledge nearby.
Song Thrush and Snail
A song thrush forages amongst the lush vegetation of the old railway embankment behind Books on the Lane, Walton, then flies down with a brown-lipped snail and thrashes it against the pebbles at the edge of the car park. Once it has extricated the mollusc it moves on to a fresh spot, whacks it again, eats a few morsels then flies off back up to the embankment, perhaps to feed its young.
People in Parkas
You wouldn’t guess that it was midsummer from the way people are dressed in waterproofs, parkas and high vis jackets this afternoon on the windswept precinct behind the town hall in Ossett.
Figures drawn as I waited in the hairdressers. Watercolour added later from memory, but for most of the people I could remember that as the colour seemed as if it was a part of the character, as much as the way they walked.
Trace and Paint
Two useful pieces of advice from Agathe Haevermans’ Drawing and Painting the Seashore:
- If you’re drawing a bivalve shell life size, start by drawing the outline around the shell
- Position yourself so that the light is coming from the top left, throwing a shadow to the right and below the shell
- The shape of the shadow helps explain the shape of the shell – whether it’s convex or concave
This mussel shell is encrusted with keel worm tubes. This is the left shell valve. The beak of the shell (top) is the anterior or front end from which the mussel’s foot emerges the its siphon emerges from the posterior end, at the bottom of my drawing.
Mussel and Barnacles
We did a bit of beachcombing along the strandline at Bridlington yesterday, between award-winning North Beach Fish & Chips and a champion roast latte at the local Costa.
Most of the mussel shells were small single valves, broken off at the wider end, but a few remained complete and still connected, including this one, partly encrusted by barnacles.
It’s a good time of year to go back to Agathe Haevermans Drawing and Painting The Seashore. It’s rare for me not to start a drawing in pen and ink, but, going back to Havermans’ examples, which are so evocative of summer strolls along the strandline, I thought that I’d try out her techniques.
Diana’s Sheds
Catching up with our friend Diana is hot work this morning, sitting in her conservatory overlooking the back garden, in contrast to midsummer’s day when there were a few patches of frost in the Dales and our thermostat switched on the central heating for the first time in months.
Green Alkanet
Growing by the entrance lodge near the war memorial at Newmillerdam Country Park, green alkanet, a native of south-west Europe, was grown in cottage gardens. The name alkanet comes from the Arabic name or henna as the plant, especially the roots, can be boiled to produce a cherry red dye, used by the Victorians in lip balm.