Month: August 2022

Summer

Summer eBook

The last day of meteorological summer and I’m gathering my sketchbook drawings from the last three months together for an eBook.

Summer cover

I’m experimenting with the eBook option in Adobe InDesign, going for an iPad format. This gives me a more control over the way words and images are presented than I get with my regular blog.

Lettering

Rather than use a regular typeface, I decided to use the carved lettering on one of the tombstones in Brodsworth Church as my starting point for a title logo.

Lettering: 'SUMMER'

In true Roman fashion the stone mason used the chiselled ‘V’ that you’d find on a Roman inscription to represent an upper case ‘U’, so I patched one together from the lower half of an ‘O’ and two different capital ‘I’s, keeping the slant he’d used one to fit it into the word ‘AETATIS’ (‘age’).

Colour lettering 'SUMMER'

I imported my title logo into Adobe Illustrator and converted it into three tones using Image Trace, then took that back into Photoshop and replaced the three tones with colours derived from my cover image.

Alder Bark

alder bark

As I sat drawing this alder at the lakeside at Newmillerdam I felt something drop on my back. An alder cone? No. My shirt needed to go in the wash. Not sure who was responsible but I’m guessing that the wood pigeon is the first one that I need to rule out of my enquiries.

Cutting Back

Back down a rather overgrown bark chip path to my ‘Rough Patch’ in our back garden. The birds have finished nesting and it’s time to cut back.

Garageband

This is my first attempt at composing a backing track in Garageband and also my first experiment with a dji Osmo gimbal mount for my iPhone.

Garageband score
I like that I can turn from the Piano Roll view, which I find easiest to edit, to an impressive looking Score view. Well it would be impressive if I hadn’t kept moving between keys, hence all those flats, sharps and naturals.

Whitebeam

whitebeam

Whitebeam growing by the canal at the Strands, downstream from Horbury Bridge.

Published
Categorized as Trees

Malham Magic

Watlowes
Watlowes, the dry valley above Malham Cove

I’m on to the final transfer of my local pocket guides from PC to InDesign on Mac and it looks as if I’ve stepped away from my local patch into Wainwright country with my pen and ink illustrations to Malham Magic, which I first published over twenty years ago.

limestone pavement
Limestone pavement

It’s also a bit of a follow up to my Yorkshire Rock, a journey through Time from a few years earlier because I follow the classic limestone trail around upper Malhamdale.

Clints and grykes

I also included the origins of place names, folklore, literature, ferns, wild flowers and even the movies, several of which were filmed on location in Malhamdale. I realised that I’d pushed the pocket book format of my first local books to its limit so in the new edition, which has a few minor revisions and updates, I’m almost doubling the size of the page. I’ll probably rescan the artwork which I had scaled down to fit the smaller format.

barn door

I’m hoping to print the new edition next month.

Link

Willow Island Editions, my imprint. Malham Magic is currently out of print, in fact I don’t have a copy of the first edition myself.

Yorkshire Rock

Yorkshire Rock, a journey through time, published by the British Geological Survey

Published
Categorized as Dales Tagged

Crayfish in Coxley Beck

crayfish

The man with the headphones and baseball cap is looking intently down at the stream as we enter Coxley Valley so he doesn’t see us, but his terrier does and gives a yap and a tug on his lead.

“Sorry! I’ve been looking at the crayfish,’ he explains, ‘I’ve seen 8 or 9 of them.’

I’m told that years ago there were crayfish, our native crayfish, the White-clawed, in the beck but with those conspicuous markings on the claws and the size of this one, about 6 inches long, I’m guessing that it’s the introduced American Signal Crayfish, Pacifastacus lenuisculus.

It’s the first we’ve seen, so our thanks to the observant dog walker for pointing it out to us. I’m wondering how the population of bullheads is doing in this stretch. I’ve heard reports of run off from a septic tank finding its way into the stream. Herons still fly down to one of the quieter bends in the stream.

After the dry spell we’ve had the stream was unusually low today.

In the late 1960s friend of mine perfected the art of tickling trout by lying on the bank and reaching down into the spots where they used to rest. I think it was the deeper undercut bank on the outside bend of the stream.

Published
Categorized as Drawing

Whitebeam

whitebeam

A whitebeam, berries starting to ripen, in a car park in Normanton.

Shopping for Clothes

shopping sketches
Jacket

Combining a shopping trip with a brief visit to Harlow Carr and a walk through the Pinewoods and Valley Gardens into Harrogate.

Lorus watch

Alder

alder sketch

They’re restoring the old water mill at Newmillerdam, re-using the flagstone roof tiles, a job that involves a lot of work with power tools so I’ve made my way along the lakeside to draw this multi-stemmed alder.

drawing the alder