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
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.
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.