Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
After thinking it over for several years, I’ve finally got around to adding a Paperlike screen protector to my iPad Pro.
As you can see from my before and after photographs, the matt finish film hasn’t made my Clip Studio Paint app any less clear but I find the surface more sympathetic for drawing with my Apple Pencil on than the glass screen of the iPad.
Here’s my first Procreate sketch, drawn with one of Paperlike’s free brushes for Procreate from a collection designed by Filip Zywica.
Card for Henry, who just before Christmas got to meet Santa in Lapland and, equally exciting, got to see a superb display of the Northern Lights.
'When you walk in the snow,
And it's over your feet
You can never know
Who you're likely to meet.
It might be a hare
Or a lemming or goose
Or perhaps the Great Bear!
- or BIG-FOOT on the loose!
But now all of the Snow Folk
Have gathered to say:
'Happy Birthday to Henry -
Have a great day!'
I’ve been wanting to write one of my Dalesman Wild Yorkshire nature diaries about Bilberry Wood for a while. I’ve taken plenty of photographs of the trees, mosses, ferns and wild flowers and read up about the history of woodland in the Dales but I’ve struggled not to make my regular style of article sound like a botanical survey. Which it is, I guess.
As an experiment, I’m trying a comic format, putting myself into the picture instead to get over a sense of how much fun it is to yomp through a sometimes rather boggy Dales wood, instead of going for the detached all seeing, all knowing narrator that I’d normally aim to pass myself off as in a magazine article.
After drawing so many cartoons, I wanted to draw from life for a change, so I picked up a few dry leaves which had blown into the corner by the front door.
Using Clip Studio Paint for frames, cartoons and text (which I then traced with the ‘textured pen’ that I used for the cartoons).
My first attempt at animation using Adobe Fresco. The man’s walk consists of 8 individual frames and his progress across the screen follows a path added to the man’s layer in the animation.
When this year’s live performance children’s Nativity play at the local church proved impractical, my sister Linda devised a cast of fourteen wooden spoon puppet characters: angels, shepherds, Mary & Joseph, the Three Wise Men and, rather stealing the show, two officious Roman soldiers with punkish plumes.
Despite the on-stage shenanigans, the Romans, angels and shepherds proved to be the best of friends at the after show party.
In fact the entire cast is getting together again for a scaled down private performance at a family Christmas party.
As Ralph has his birthday on the run-up to Christmas, I’ve gone for a combined advent/birthday card this year.
Surprises include, in box no. 4, my copy of a Beano-inspired portrait of Ralph’s mum, Abby, drawn by his sister Ivy.
The traditional Selfridges hamper was a Christmas box from work for Ralph’s dad, James. Since the family moved a year ago, Ralph has developed a habit of trying out boxes for size, a human jack-in-a-box.
As we walked across the deer park at Wentworth Castle, two fallow bucks looked up then decided we were harmless and went on grazing as we passed them. The does and fawns were more wary. One made a show by ‘stotting’: prancing off stiff-legged, alternately putting the two front legs, then the two back legs down. This behaviour is thought to be a signal to predators that the deer is so fit, with its fancy footwork, that it won’t be worth the trouble of attempting to catch it.
Archer Hill Gate (all three arches of it: I’ve framed it with the tree to show only one of them) stands half way up the slope between Wentworth Castle, a Georgian mansion, and the ruins of Stainborough Castle.
These characters are the Vladimir and Estragon of nursery rhyme mice, so a dim and glowering background suits the piece, and fits in with the ‘lost in the Scottish Borders’ setting.