Author: Richard

Wayside Flowers

flowers

As today would have been the first of our Wakefield Naturalists’ Society outdoor meetings, Richard and I decided we would spend our one hour walk to Smithy Brook recording the species we saw.
After all the glorious sunny weather over the last six weeks, today was disappointingly overcast, breezy and quite cool, however it actually made it easier to stop and identify the plants as no-one else seemed inclined to be out and about.
We counted 59 plant species but only eight birds, as the cooler weather seemed to have dampened their spirits: we usually get skylark, sparrows and various finches and tits along the lane but today we heard chiff-chaff and yellow hammer and watched a buzzard soaring over the fields.
Because of the cooler weather we didn’t see a single butterfly. We would normally see speckled wood along the sunken lane, then peacock, small tortoiseshell and orange tips along the more open stretch.

valley
Smithy Brook Valley.

When we looked closer at the wild flowers, we spotted common vetch alongside the more conspicuous bush vetch and we almost missed a patch of ground ivy, nestling among the grass and herbage on the sunken lane. Over the last few weeks we have watched the countryside changing as the hawthorn hedges turn from fresh green leaf to frothy white blossom, giving off that wonderful musky sweet smell of spring.
Bluebells, white and red campion and Herb Robert were just a few of the species along the lane with wild garlic, white comfrey and yellow flag alongside Smithy Brook. A field dotted with meadow buttercups and the bright yellow of a patch of birdsfoot trefoil add a little brightness to the morning.

Thank you to Barbara for writing this today.

Published
Categorized as Flowers

Drawing Pens

Pens

As well as the fantasy pens, I’ve been adding to this A3 sheet of pen studies over the last week. The red fountain pen, the Osmiroid B2, is one that I probably haven’t used for decades but I found that I still had a cartridge that fitted it, so I cleaned it out and drew the Osmiroid ‘tipped medium soft’ with it to finish off the sheet.

And here’s the final sketchbook spread of my fantasy pens. I had a space bottom left to fill so I finished off with a Metamorphosis Pen (apologies for my spelling) and Big-Fish-Eat-Little-Fish Food Chain Pen.

I’m looking forward to Lesson 2 of my online illustration course. Luckily there’s no time limit on completing assignments.

Remembering VE Day

Bill Ellis
Barbara’s dad, William Ellis in 1940.

On this day, 7th May, in 1995, we invited my mum, Gladys Joan Bell, and Barbara’s mum and dad, Bill and Betty Ellis, to reminisce about VE Day for the 50th anniversary. My mum was a primary school teacher in Sheffield who, in the early stages of the war, took evacuees to stay in rural Derbyshire to escape the bombing. In the Sheffield Blitz my grandad’s house was bombed but my mum, grandma and grandad were safe in the Anderson Shelter in the back garden. My great grandma next door wasn’t so lucky. She didn’t like the shelter, so she hunkered down in the cellar but the Luftwaffe scored a direct hit and demolished her house. Luckily great grandma and her pet bird in a cage were rescued via the coal shoot.

What the three of them reminisced about 25 years ago, I can’t tell you as we no longer have a cassette player in the house. My mum celebrated in Sheffield, Barbara’s mum was in Horbury but I’ve forgotten now whether Bill and my dad, Douglas, were on leave at the time.

When the lockdown is over, I’ll get the cassette transferred to digital.

My mum, Gladys Joan Swift, as she was before her marriage at the end of the war, somewhere in the Peak District, c.1946.

Pogo Pen

When travel restrictions are eased, if tourists ever get to travel the 7,000 light years to IC 4703, The Eagle Nebula, they’re going to want to take home a souvenir of its bucket-list highlight The Pillars of Creation. So how about this pen, pencil and eraser set?

Frankenstein Pen
pogo pen

The Pogo Pen was inspired by a great niece and nephew’s ongoing attempt to pogo jump the height of Everest, in 9cm increments. I realise that this would be more like a rubber stamp than a pen.

But my favourite pen out of this batch is the Frankenstein Pen, modelled on Boris Karloff’s neck bolt. Like the Apple Pencil, it’s rechargeable . . . if you happen to be on the top of a mountain in Transylvania during a thunderstorm.

Inks

inks
Actual drawing 2.25 x 4 inches, 6 x 10.5 cm.

My pen project continues but I thought that the inks ought to make an appearance today. The ’20 ounce’ bottle of Super Quink red ink was redundant stock that my dad brought back from the office c.1970. It still works fine. The Chinese ink in the attractive blue-and-white bottle was something that I tried when I worked on my monochrome sketchbook published as High Peak Drifter. I made four dilutions at different strengths which I took on my travels to simplify adding the tone.

Daler’s FW Acrylic Artists Ink goes back to my Yorkshire Rock days. I remember buying two shades of blue when I drew an underwater spread of ‘Life on the Reef’ for the Carboniferous Limestone section of the book. This bottle was Sepia, my go-to colour for most of the line work.

The Special Red is Pelikan Drawing Ink, from the 1970s. The one with the blue cap is Winsor and Newton Calligraphy Ink, the Burnt Sienna behind it is Rotring Drawing Ink. Bringing up the rear on the right, are plastic bottles of Stephen’s and Horse stamp pad inks.

The Crime Writer’s Pen

fantasy pens

My latest fantasy pens include a gardener’s pen, complete with dibber and garden twine, a crime writer’s pen which will keep CSI busy for days and a walking pole pen which includes compass, pedometer and even and emergency supply of Kendal Mint Cake.

Pots of Pens

pens

Our first assignment on Mattias Adolfsson’s the online illustration course The Art of Sketching: Transform Your Doodles into Art (see link below) that I’ve just started is to get our pens together. These are a small selection . . .

more pens

Next is to produce a sheet of observational drawings of some of those pens, trying out different techniques as we go. I’m still only halfway down my A3 page but the good news is that, with all those pots of pens, I won’t run out of subject matter.

satirical pens

I’ve already made a start on the next stage of the assignment, which is to take things one stage further and draw a sheet of fantasy pens. It doesn’t matter how silly the idea is.

Link

The Art of Sketching: Transform Your Doodles into Art
A course by Mattias Adolfsson, Illustrator

Published
Categorized as Drawing Tagged

Bee Hotel

bee hotel cartoon

The card shops and National Trust gift shops have yet to reopen so I’m still producing homemade birthday cards, this one celebrating a birthday and a very successful bee hotel. The day our friend John Gardner finished constructing it and put it in place, several solitary bees moved in.

cat cards

Meanwhile the numerous cats who wonder through our back garden provide material for cards, including these two characters. When it came to a showdown, ‘Bear’ through bluster and body language had no trouble seeing off the smaller ‘Wildcat’ tabby.

Cuckoo Flower

sketching flowers

I’ve started a new sketchbook for an online illustration course (more of that later). We’re asked to sign our name on the first page and write the date . . .

flowers

The difficult ones first! I knew it was the 2nd.

I had an idea of how I’d like to draw the unfurling croziers of the male fern, growing by the pond. It didn’t work out the way I’d hoped, probably because I wasn’t close enough to take in the detail I’d intended to add.

But that’s an advantage of a sketchbook, as opposed to a commission, I can relax and move on to the next drawing. Really enjoyed drawing these.

Basil

basil

We should be self-sufficient in pesto this year because our basil seedlings have got off to a good start. We discovered that the ones we’d potted on did better on the kitchen windowsill than in the greenhouse, probably because we had some cool nights.

Published
Categorized as Garden Tagged

Lino Cutting

lino cutting

These lino cutting tools include a Linocraft Pen-tools set which probably dates from my mum’s time at Ripon Teacher Training College, c. 1937-39. I have used these tools occasionally cto produce Christmas cards.

Linocraft Pen-tools
lino cutters

The Linocraft set was ‘Déposée en Suisse’, registered in Switzerland, but manufactured by Perry & Co. Ltd., London and Birmingham. Also from Birmingham are the set of Lino Cutters, presented to me by a fellow student at Leeds, who felt that I’d be more likely to use them.

lino pen-tool
Lino pen-tool, Perry & Co. Ltd.

Gladys Joan Swift at Ripon

Gladys Joan Swift at Ripon, 1938

Here’s my mum, Gladys Joan Bell, nee Swift, (1918-2015) at Ripon Teacher Training College. c.1938. She’s armed with ruler pencil and a stack of sheets of what could be card, leather or textiles, so obviously up to something crafty.

Oakleaves
Evolution of England

She won a prize for designing a Coronation Pageant in 1937, a project which fortunately I spotted in the kitchen waste bin at my mum’s one Sunday morning when we made our regular call on her for a coffee. She was able to choose her prize so she went for a serious Oxford University Press history book, The Evolution of England by J. A. Williamson.

‘I don’t know why I chose that,’ she said to me, ‘I expect it was because I thought it was the sort of thing that I should choose.’

Appropriate choice, but it does look like tough going. My mum loved history but, as her designs for the Oakleaves Pageant suggest, she preferred a more colourful subject, such as Richard III or mysteries of the Holbein portrait of Thomas More and his family.

A quote from The Pace Quickens, the final section of Williamson’s book, written in 1931:

“There are more violent deaths on the road in a week-end than on the railways in a year, and they are generally set down to accident, as if it was impossible to prevent them. . . Public hospitals are filled with the victims, and it is even worth while for a private speculator to open a nursing-establishment near a busy road under the sign: ‘Motor casualties taken in.'”

Mum's prize, 1937