A cold front came in from the north during the night and today it’s noticeably cooler but mostly sunny.
Armed with secateurs, long-handled loppers, a step-ladder and a pruning saw, I trim back the golden hornet crab apple to a more manageable shape. It’s mainly a case of cutting back the whip-like vertical shoots that have grown since I last cut it back a year ago but I put in a bit of extra effort and use a pruning saw on one branch that’s managed to get its twiggy offshoots beyond my reach during the past few years.
Yes, it was a favourite look-out post for the resident blackbird, but it will soon find another perch. As I work at in the crown of a the tree, a long-tailed tit flits past my head and perches on a branch three feet in front of me. I don’t think it quite knows what to make of me.
Common Earthball, Scleroderma citrinum, has ‘a characteristic smell of old rubber’ according to Wildlife of Britain, the Definitive Visual Guide or strong odour ‘of gas or acetylene’ (Encyclopedia of Fungi, Michael Jordan). As I’ve mentioned before, this didn’t stop me from slicing the young ones, with firm white flesh, and frying them in a bit of butter when I was trying to survive on a very slender travelling scholarship on a student field trip to Iceland. To me, they tasted of mushroom, but I don’t recommend that you try them, as they’re variously described as inedible or even poisonous.
These were growing by the path in deciduous woodland at the top end of the Pleasure Grounds at Nostell Priory Park.
Perspective can be a bit of a struggle but, according to Italian comic artist Pietro B. Zemelo in a recent Clip Studio Paint webinar, ‘you can’t go wrong’ with the perspective ruler. I have gone wrong actually as I didn’t plot my vanishing points in quite the right place when trying it out on my iPad, but it’s a lot of fun to use.
I wonder if I could draw a set of steps . . .
Links
Tips for Constructing Comic Pages with Clip Studio Paint webinar on YouTube. He also explains the mysteries of the ‘Lock transparent pixels’ button – something that I’ve never dared mess with – and explains the difference between the ‘Divide frame border’ and ‘Divide frame folder’ tools.
After so much practice drawing on the iPad, it’s a change to get back to pen and watercolour and to sit and draw this autumnal-looking Victorian hybrid lime tree in a garden in West Melton, Wath-upon-Dearne near Rotherham.
Hopefully the small degree of planning involved in the process of drawing on an iPad is prompting me to be more methodical in my approach to drawing in general while the experience of going back to a more tactile medium – back to pen on paper – might encourage me to be a bit more spontaneous in my iPad drawings.
The original drawings are 2½ inches, 6 cm, across.
I’ve been indulging in a bit of hand lettering, going through the opening Word Art chapter of a new free e-book from Apple Education, Everyone Can Create: Drawing, On iPad. They suggest using Tayasui Sketches School, a free version of the drawing program, which is what I’ve used here.
There’s nothing too daunting but if you were to take your time to follow each of the suggested projects you’d have covered a lot of ground and you’d have thought a lot about different approaches to drawing.
The Everyone Can Create series of e-books is aimed at 5 to 18 year olds but it’s equally useful as a refresher course if, like me, you’ve been drawing for decades and you’ve settled into what could be a rather too comfortably familiar way of working. It’s good to get back to basics.
If you can draw a smiley face, they suggest, you can make a start with drawing. I added a grey beard to my worried-looking emoticon.
Letterforms are a familiar way to get into drawing too, so they take you step by step through decorated characters, to 3D and inflated bubble lettering.
Patterns and Lines
As I’m so keen on observational drawing that I tend to forget that a simple line on its own can carry meaning, for instance horizontal lines can evoke calm and jagged lines action. There are a few simple exercises to get you thinking about line, pattern and shape.
I’m not sure whether this is the hoof fungus, Fomes fomentarius, or a Ganoderma bracket fungus. It was growing on a softwood deciduous tree, probably birch, at Dubbs Moss Cumbria Wildlife Trust nature reserve, southwest of Cockermouth.
Hoof fungus, also known as tinder fungus, was once considered to be mainly confined to the Scottish Highlands but it is spreading south.
The original drawing is an inch and a half, 4cm, across.
I’ve drawn the old scouring mill at Horbury Bridge several times this year, not because I’m particularly interested in the old buildings but because of the attraction of overlooking the mill, scribbling in my sketchbook as we wait for coffee and croissants at Di Bosco, just across the road.
Overlooking and scribbling . . . (with apologies for that terrible link) . . .
‘Scribbling Overlooker’
Arthur Pearson, a scribbling overlooker, worked in one of the woollen mills at Horbury Bridge until shortly before the start of World War I, when he started working for a large woollen cloth manufacturer in Freiburg, Bohemia. After getting into an argument about the Emperor and the Kaiser in the local barber’s, he was interned from March 1915 until December 1918, when he made his way back to Yorkshire.
Speaking to a reporter from the Leeds Mercury, he said that in Vienna ‘food and clothing were only purchasable by the very rich people; in fact, money at times could not buy food, and he had seen gold watches given in exchange for a loaf of black bread.’
Tea was selling at £2 per lb, salmon 30 shillings a tin, jam 25 shillings per jar and rice £2 per lb. A suit of clothes sold for anything from £80 to £120, but, Mr Pearson noticed, ‘the cloth was of very poor quality’.
Scribbling was the initial process of combing the wool prior to spinning it into yarn.
Casualty Lists
War Office Casualty lists for 8 October 1918, a little over a month before the end of hostilities, listed Private B Clark, 46532, of Horbury, who was serving in the Durham Light Infantry. In the previous month Private J Heald, 40981, of Horbury Bridge was listed as a casualty on the 10th.
In June two soldiers from Horbury Bridge had been listed as casualties, Private W H Osterfield, 48495, of the West Yorkshire Regiment and Private D Hall, 242319, of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry.
My first drawing using a vector pen in Clip Studio Paint.Leeds Mercury, 7 June 1913, copyright Johnstone Press, image created courtesy of the British Library Board.
J Armitage was a dramatist, whose plays ‘received the compliments of many distinguished people’ according to a photo feature in the Leeds Mercury, dated Saturday, 7 June, 1913.
A Jesse Armitage appears in the 1911 census for Horbury; then aged 24, he was employed as a railway clerk. He lived in the family home, at 4 Mortimer Row, Westfield Road with his parents Sarah, aged 50, and John, aged 55, a railway platelayer. Also still at home, his younger brother Harry, aged 20, worked as a house painter and decorator.
Ten years earlier, in 1901, Jesse, then aged 14, was working as a railway telegraph boy. When Jesse started at school, aged 4, the family had lived on Queen Street, Horbury. In 1913 he married Amy Bower, aged 25 or 26, a dressmaker from nearby Tithe Barn Street.
There’s a record of the death of a Jesse Armitage, aged 40, in the Wakefield area, registered in the first quarter of 1927.
And that’s about all I’ve been able to find out about our local dramatist so far. I’d love to know whether he wrote dramas or comedies.
Leeds Mercury, Saturday, 7 June, 1913, copyright Johnstone Press, image created courtesy of the British Library Board.
Harvey is our joiner Simon’s border terrier, so I got another chance to draw him today as work on our new bathroom continued.
Harvey likes two things: to watch the world go by and to find a warm spot to settle down in, so our patio windows are a favourite for him; sometimes snoozing with head hidden behind the curtains for bit of extra seclusion.
After spending time drawing from photographs, it’s refreshing to get back to drawing from life again. Frustrating too of course, because Harvey the border terrier wouldn’t settle for long, however I think that attempting to piece together several poses gives more of an impression of the character of the real, live animal than a carefully studied photograph can.
Armed with secateurs, long-handled loppers, a step-ladder and a pruning saw, I trim back the golden hornet crab apple to a more manageable shape. It’s mainly a case of cutting back the whip-like vertical shoots that have grown since I last cut it back a year ago but I put in a bit of extra effort and use a pruning saw on one branch that’s managed to get its twiggy offshoots beyond my reach during the past few years.
Yes, it was a favourite look-out post for the resident blackbird, but it will soon find another perch. As I work at in the crown of a the tree, a long-tailed tit flits past my head and perches on a branch three feet in front of me. I don’t think it quite knows what to make of me.
