Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
With Storm Eunice lashing the studio windows, this seemed like a good time to prepare for getting out and sketching when the spring weather comes, checking the contents of my main art bag. This was drawn in the 8×8 inch Pink Pig Ameleie sketchbook, using the Lamy pens and the Winsor & Newton professional watercolours that I keep in there.
All ready to go out sketching now , , , when the weather improves.
These are the last couple of pages – and the back inside cover – in my pocket-sized sketchbook.
The multi-stemmed sycamore grows behind the Halifax, last remaining bank in Ossett.
A rainswept night by the pond proved too much for my trusty trail cam, the Browning Strike Force Pro XD.
Despite the rugged rubber armour the damp appears to have got into it.
Let’s hope that Browning can help me get it into action again.
For a lean rescue dog, Pepper the Lurcher seemed remarkably calm but her owner tells me that he’s noticed that if he gets out any kind of pole, like a garden rake, she’ll go straight back in the house, so she might have had a troubled history. She reacted to bangs from the kitchen in the Coffee Stop at the Junction where I was drawing her and looked at me with soulful eyes when I tackled a slice of cheesecake. Needless to say she didn’t get any (but the dog-friendly cafe provides a healthy option canine treat).
Drawing indoors and in a rainswept car park: this morning’s rain meant that we didn’t get off to Newmillerdam. I was looking down on the cars at the same angle as I was looking down on the piles of books and CDs on the shelf under my brother-in-law’s coffee table, so they look like a couple of models.
The Main Street end of Church Street, Haworth, from a photograph I took in 2013, that’s the church on the right and, according to Google, we’re looking at the back of what is now Haworth Wholefoods.
The gallery of sketchbook pages that I posted the other day reminded me of a comic strip. Haven’t worked out the story yet but the chair reminds me of a Sherlock Holmes story . . .
The Tattie & Neeps Mysteries and it looks as if our hard-boiled inspector and his rookie sidekick D.C. Neeps might have made a breakthrough in tracking down ‘Mr Big’.
Also known as ‘The Haggis’.
Yes, it’s birthday time again, and this is for Rob, a vegetarian ex-detective living on a Scottish Island. I think that I’ve discovered a demographic that even Moonpig and The Card Factory haven’t latched onto yet.
“Was D.I. Tattie one of the original ‘Peelers’?” asks Rob.
I feel that I know my home patch pretty well but when I drew this parish map for Sitlington I realised that there were one or two paths that I’d never set foot on.
I drew this in 1995, working with Wakefield Council’s footpath department and the Parish Council.
Recent sketches from my Hahnemühle D&S (Draft & Sketch) 125x90mm pocket sketchbook.