Month: September 2025

Black Kale

black kale

For me black Tuscany kale, Cavolo Nero, is about as drawing-friendly as I could wish for. Every line has a built-in wobble to match my default rather shaky pen. It’s got clear structure so I don’t have any problems simplifying a complex mass of foliage.

I think of the colour of black kale as being tinted with purple but I find that a cool green with just a spot of crimson is a reasonable match, with regular yellowish green where the light shines through it. The stems are cream or ivory: a very pale coolish yellow with a hint of green.

Raised Bed no.3

Raised bed no. 3: carrot, kale, lettuce and foxgloves (in the top right corner), outnumbered by spurge (petty spurge, I think). But we’ll soon weed that out . . .

A month ago in raised bed no. 3, we put in lettuce, carrots and black kale, plants from the garden centre.

Some of the lettuces are starting to bolt but the carrots haven’t done much. Carrots aren’t always successful when replanted because of the risk of damage to those delicate tap roots.

pigeon

The Cavolo Nero was beginning to outgrow the mesh tunnel cloche we’d covered it with to protect it from egg-laying cabbage whites and our ever-hungry wood pigeons.

In my opinion, our pitifully small carrots tasted more wholesome than the shop-bought variety. The freshly-picked leaves of Cavolo Nero were excellent: ‘rich, mellow and autumnal’ would be my attempt to describe the flavour.

The Amethyst Sketchbook

bananass
The Amethyst cover of the sketchbook includes strands of banana fibre.
sketchbook

This A6 Pink Pig is my current sketchbook for when we’re off on day to day errands, so it starts, on the basis that you’ve got to start somewhere, with a very quick sketch of a block of flats in Wakefield (below, left).

A6 is a perfect size for when you haven’t got the time to do anything more ambitious.

I had a little more time for panorama from the Shelley Garden Centre.

If I haven’t got a wider view I’ll draw a close up of a plant . . .

Chinese Taro

Chinese Taro (right).

I drew Chinese Taro at another garden centre, Carr Gate. Also known as Chinese ape, Buddha’s hand and hooded dwarf elephant ear, Alocasia cuccullata, I’m surprised to learn in Wikipedia that it’s a member of the Arum family. I would have guessed at a Ficus, a relative of the rubber plant.

If nothing else is available, I’ll draw a chair. I’ve drawn them hundreds of times but I still struggle with them.

I always find myself looking for the negative shapes between the legs as a way of checking proportions. This goes right back to my grammar school art teacher Reginald Preston, who in one of his art lessons challenged us to draw a teetering pile of school chairs.

On any appointment in Horbury I can usually find an interesting architectural detail if I’m looking out on the High Street or Queen Street. It will usually be a Victorian chimney pot but this buttress above the Spice Kitchen takeaway could be much older. Some buildings in Horbury date from medieval times but the original timber is usually hidden behind later stone or brick facing.

My hand: a go-to subject when nothing else is available.

This final page, so far, includes a weeping willow in the back garden of the Quaker Meeting House on Thornhill Street, Wakefield, drawn at last week’s Naturalists’ Society meeting.

I didn’t attempt to identify the succulent in the little pot on the table at Sainsbury’s. It’s plastic.

Elon Musk

The man of the moment: I was delighted to get the chance to interview him for an article in this month’s Dalesman.

Dalesman article

No, not Elon Musk, who addressed the Unite the Kingdom rally in Trafalgar Square via a video link yesterday, but Wakefield comic artist and New York Times bestselling author Darryl Cunningham, who has just launched his latest book Elon Musk, American Oligarch, described by Alan Moore as “an exceptional piece of work, right when we need it most.”

September’s Dalesman also includes my regular Wild Yorkshire nature diary which focuses on Addingford Cutting, a surprisingly well hidden local landmark.

Sketchboard

sketchboard

I like to rest my hand on my sketchbook as I’m drawing, which I find awkward as I get near the edge of the page so, inspired by the Sketchboard Pro, which has a rebate that precisely fits my iPad Pro, I’ve made myself a board to snugly fit my A5 Pink Pig sketchbook, with a 4 inch surround, that I can use in either landscape or portrait format.

making the board

It’s built up from a corrugated cardboard, so it was useful having a guillotine to cut out the matching pieces. I left a rebate at either end of the slot to accommodate the spiral binding of the sketchbook. It’s not shown in this photo because I hadn’t realised until I tried it for size that I’d need one on the outer edge. I draw on both sides of the page, so I need to flip the sketchbook over to draw on the right-hand page.

I discovered that it was best to glue every layer, rather than rely on masking tape to hold it all together.

foamboard top layer

I had an offcut of foamboard that I used for the top layer.

Finally I covered the whole thing with the tail end of a roll of hessian wallpaper that I’d used back in the 1970s when making a noticeboard (later rejigged as a couple of hinged pairs of display boards for craft fairs).

Everything I used was recycled apart from a 250ml bottle of ArtStudio Matte Glue, £1.29 from The Range.

Now I need to get out and actually use it.

The Country Round

We’ve got an Ordnance Survey map centred on your house and I’ve always wanted to try creating a series of circular walks, so that if I drew them on the map they’d look like a bunch of balloons with our home base in the centre.

Wheat near Bullcliff North Wood.

We’re lucky in being able to set off in any direction and find walks, alongside the river or canal, through woods and across farmland.

Hollinhurst, Netherton

As part of my go-down-one-waist-size challenge I’ve been setting out on 7-mile circular walks on Thursday mornings when Barbara goes to a sewing group. I even managed ten miles on one morning but that was on exceptionally good paths alongside the canal and following a cycle path along a former railway.

Bullcliff Wood North, on a footpath that gets overgrown with bracken and brambles in summer.

When I’m walking with Barbara we manage a little over 2½ miles an hour, when I’m on my own, on decent paths, I can get to a little over 3 miles per hour, if I’m making the effort to get to a brisk walking pace (still able to talk in short sentences but not sing, no not even a short burst of I go to the Hills, from The Sound of Music).

But on some overgrown paths this summer I had to slow down as I negotiated brambles and nettles.

Published
Categorized as Walking

Classic Fit

jeans

The good news is that my new Rohan jeans which arrived today fit me perfectly . . . which wasn’t the case two months ago when I tried some on in the Rohan Harrogate shop and discovered that the next size up felt much more comfortable.

Forty years ago, when I was 34 years old, I remember I had a 34 inch waist and a 34 inch inside leg and I’ve been that ever since, so I decided that it was time for a bit of a challenge.

Goat Gap sketch of hills
The view from the Goat Gap cafe, Newby, this morning, our coffee stop on our return home from our short break in the Lake District.

The No-Scone Diet

I set out on a series of slightly more energetic walks than my usual pace – more of that in a later post – but also cut out on anything extra between meals so no:

  • cream scones or flapjack with our morning coffee
  • the odd handful of crisps
  • and no red wine at the weekend 😮

No one said that this would be easy!

However, it’s worked as I’m pleased to be back to my regular waist size and I’ve lost half a stone, that’s 7 pounds, around 3 kilograms.

Maybe I can now allow myself the occasional scone . . .

Green Matcha Scones at the Cafe Vie

scones and coffee

Green scones are a new one for me: scone of the day at Cafe Vie this morning was matcha and white chocolate.

Lamy pen

I’ve just started working through the ‘100 prompts for inspired sketching on the go’ in John Gillard’s Coffee Break Sketching. In prompt number 2, I find that I can’t work fast enough to complete onr quick observational sketch between each sip of coffee in a single break, so this morning I’m continuing where I left off from a few shaky sketches I made at the Hepworth last week.

My new favourite pen for everyday drawing is an old Lamy Nexx with a broad nib. The broad nib flows more freely than my fine and extra fine Lamys, which might explain why, unlike them, it hasn’t clogged up. The broader nib gives a bolder, varied line, perfect for a coffee break sketch.

It’s loaded with DeAtramentis Document Ink which is waterproof as soon as it dries, which is a good idea as several of my sketches were partly washed out after one of my sketchbooks got soaked around the edges in my haversack during a Lake District downpour on Tuesday.

I’ve occasionally picked up a sketchbook when my hands are wet, blotting any drawing I happen to touch.

Link

John Gillard on Instagram

Cafe Vie, Thompson’s Yard, Ossett, on Instagram

My wildyorkshire Instagram account