Month: November 2024

Kelly, Banger, Mizzy and Guy

market sketch, fruit stalls and penny for the guy boys
Fruit and veg stalls and Penny-for-the-Guy boys, Monday, 26 October, 1981 (which I’m guessing must have been half-term week for local schools).

My 1981 Wakefield Market acrylic on canvas painting makes a rare appearance at Wednesday’s Wakefield ArtWalk at the Gissing House, Thompson’s Yard, at the top of Westgate, along with some of the sketches I made on location.

sketchbook

I’d taken a new A5 hardback sketchbook and was drawing in fountain pen so I hoped that no-one would notice me scribbling away as I sat on the low wall in front of the Old Queen Elizabeth Gallery and started on the first page sketching the backs of the fruit and veg stalls. No such luck.

“Penny for the Guy, Mister?”

Grudgingly I agreed to make a small contribution to their firework fund on condition that they’d keep still for a few minutes while I drew them. The whole point of my market sketches was to get practice drawing a variety of figures.

I’m sure that poor old Guy didn’t last long but I wonder what creative entrepreneurs Kelly, Banger and Mizzy are up to now. Would be great to meet up with them again at the ArtWalk.

I guess that they might be about 50 years old by now.

Lingering Snow

Yesterday’s snow lingering on at the lower end of Coxley Valley.

Published
Categorized as Meadow Tagged

School Exercises

exercise book

Another of my finds from old Wakefield Market. The original isn’t in colour but I thought that the ‘Ripping Yarns’ scenes from Edwardian school life deserved a spot of colourisation in Photoshop.

The Noonday Fly

Drawn from an iPhone photograph: colour version to follow.

A couple of these striking-looking flies – black with sunburst spots on the wing bases – were basking around the ivy flowers in the south-facing shelter of the walled garden at RSPB Saltholme.

The female Noon Fly, or Noonday Fly, Mesembrina meridiana, lays a single egg on horse or cow dung. The larva is a predator, feeding on other fly larvae in the dung.

A Record of Wakefield’s Market

HMS Pinafore

Sydney Granville as Bill Bobstay, the Boatswain, cover star of this complete performance on 78 rpm records (or it would be complete if one of the 12-inch shellac resin records hadn’t got chipped), makes a guest appearance at my Wakefield Market show at the Gissing Centre, Thompson’s Yard, Westgate, at the next Wakefield Art Walk, on the evening Wednesday, 27 November.

Gissing House

I came across the records at the market on the stalls over towards Vicarage Street, which sold the kind of secondhand bric-a-brac that these days you’d look for at a car boot sale.

Wakefield Market acrylic on canvas with copies of my sketches made on location.

Common Darter

common darter
common darterr

Still around at the beginning of November, two male common darter dragonflies, Sympetrum striolatum, were resting on a fence by the play area at RSPB Saltholme.

The Whin Sill

Whin Sill

This promontory of the Whin Sill in the bay below Dunstanburgh Castle looks like a twisted stretch of road jutting out to sea. As the name suggests gorse – also known as whin – grows on the outcrop and there was still plenty of it in flower today.

golden retriever

Our coffee break was at Eleanor’s Byre. Eleanor was the sister of Henry III and lived here, a mile or two from Dunstanburgh. In her will she set up a lepers’ hospital a few traces of which – cobbles used to surface a yard and a gate pillar – were found when the buildings were renovated.

The golden retrievers, a pair of them, were taking a lunch break in the Jolly Sailor at Caster.

Hauxley Nature Reserve

Hauxley

The Lookout Cafe at the Northumberland Wildlife Trust Hauxley Nature Reserve is an ideal place to sketch.

Hauxley

At the opposite corner of the reserve, on the lagoon near the outlet to Druridge Bay, a female gadwall is dabbling amongst a raft of washed-up kelp.

Hauxley bird sketches

The spindle has fuchsia-red fruits which remind me of miniature pumpkins. It looks as if most of the orange berries of sea buckthorn have already been eaten, perhaps by redwings and fieldfares, but there are a few clumps left close to the path. We had a glimpse of what I thought was a flock of redwings going over, if so, these are the first that we’ve seen this year.

Woodhorn

Woodhorn

The view of the Queen Elizabeth II Country Park, from our first-floor room in the Premier Inn, Woodhorn, near Ashington, Northumberland.

Inspired by a book that I’m reading on drawing ‘Five-minute Landscapes’, I’m trying to speed things up in my sketchbook – although I’m unlikely to manage the five-minute ideal.

I’m also still rehabilitating my right thumb, which is still hurting after eight months. This Uniball Eye pen, a fibre tip with waterproof in, seems to be a gentler, more free-flowing option than my regular fountain pen.