Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
Rather than re-draw the Canada goose from my sketchbook, today I went to Procreate’s ‘Action’ menu and chose ‘Take a photo’ and used the rear camera of the iPad. I scaled up the photo to get the drawing I was after to fill the canvas.
Now that I’m more familiar with the process of putting together a drawing, following Román García Mora’s suggestions for an ‘illuminated drawing’, the next stage is to get more of the natural variation of watercolour washes into the illustration.
Wet weather even for the ducks and geese this morning so I’m trying the process of drawing an animal in Procreate on an iPad Pro as suggested by Román García Mora in his Naturalist Animal Illustration with Procreate course on Domēstika.
His favourite style is what he calls ‘illuminated drawing’ in the tradition of 18th and 19th century natural history illustration where a line drawing of the animal was printed and the colour added by hand in watercolour, so you get the definition of an ink drawing and the luminosity of watercolour.
10.05 a.m.: I’m counting about 85 Canada geese this morning but a passing dog walker tells me that for two days last week he thought that they’d deserted, there were none on the lake.
Two passers by comment on the single drake mandarin that is looking immaculate but sadly hasn’t yet attracted a mate. I’m here for the geese but if he swims over towards me I won’t be able to resist drawing him.
We’re going on a bear hunt . . .
On a moonlit night on Thursday 7th November 1867, sixty villagers from Newmillerdam joined a hue and cry to track down a bear that had gone missing from its den after a small travelling menagerie, which had set up on the banks of the lake, closed down for the day.
Tracking it with the aid of a naphtha lamp, the hunters gave chase as the bear made its way across the road and reached the mill race. It backtracked across the road and followed the muddy shore of the lake which was low at the time.
It appeared to consider plunging in but surprised its hunters by changing its mind and suddenly turning back towards them. In the rush to escape it most of the hunting party ended up falling into the mud and, according to the report in the Leeds Mercury, ‘got well soused’.
Back across the road again the bear found the archway leading to the waterfall at the outlet from the lake and again turned the tables on its pursuers by suddenly turning back towards them.
It was almost cornered in a pear tree in the garden of a Mr Woodhouse but made its way out across open country.
Finally, back in Mr Woodhouse’s garden his pursuers got the chance to ‘push him down and catch him in a tub’ and return him to his den.
I wanted to share my colourised Victorian photographs with my cousins in Sheffield so I’ve put together a ‘story-so-far’ booklet based on my recent blog posts.
Reading through the text again I’ve spotted one misnamed character, so it’s been worth doing it from that point of view but also seeing it in print helps me in considering the story that I’m hoping to tell.
In booklet form information isn’t just floating about in blog posts or stuffed into files, envelopes and albums distributed around my studio and the attic.
Meet my Great Aunt Eliza, one of the Blaco Hill Bell family from Mattersey, Nottinghamshire, my grandad Robert Bell’s elder sister.
She married William Henry Mitchell, a local postman, on Sunday 23 April 1899 at Sutton-cum-Lound Church.
She was 31 years old and he was 36
Witnesses were her eldest brother, George William Bell, aged 36, and Hannah Bell, who had flowing copperplate handwriting, which I rather envy, but who I’ve yet to add to my latest dip into family history.
In the register William Henry’s father George Mitchell is listed as a ‘Labourer’ and Eliza’s father, my Great Great Grandfather John Bell, then 57 years old, was working as a ‘Groom’.
Seven years earlier, as recorded in the 1891 census Eliza was working alongside William Henry at the house of Sarah E Hunt, a lady ‘living on own means’. William Henry, then 29, was the butler while Eliza, 23, was one of three female domestic servants at the house, number ’53, Sutton’.
Moving forward, by the time of the 1911 census the couple are living in Bardney, Lincoln. Henry is still working for the Post Office. They have a son George William aged 8, and born in Bardney.
I wonder if little George William added this decoration to the census form?
Or was it John Bell, also aged 8, his nephew who was staying with them and who had been born in Mexborough, Yorkshire.
The wedding photograph is stamped ‘Caleb C. Smith’.
Caleb’s photographic studio was at Norman Place, Lincoln.
11 am: All the geese leave the pond and a flock of about 50 graze on the grassy slope.
After two hours I’d almost finished this spread in my sketchbook but the last Canada goose was drawn back home from a photograph on the big screen of the iMac. I’m pleased that it looks equally as messy – let me rephrase that ‘equally as spontaneous’ – as the sketches done on location, sitting by the outlet of the Thornes Park Fish Pond, sometimes under an umbrella as fine rain fell.
When I was drawing them in action from a distance yesterday the female pheasants seemed fairly plain – light tan with streaks – but drawing in close up from a photograph I took yesterday with a telephoto lens there’s lots of complexity in the pattern of the plumage.
Five female pheasants alternated from pecking around the feeders for spilt sunflower hearts and crumbs from the fat balls to drinking at the pond (and one unwisely tried to run across the surface of the water!) then going down to the veg beds to rest for a while.
One pheasant, feeding on its own at that time, suddenly burst into a ‘mad half hour’ routine, as my mum used to describe similar behaviour in a cat; darting around and flouncing its feathers as if it was being threatened by some invisible enemy. This lasted less than a minute, not a full half hour.
Canada geese at Newmillerdam this morning.
