Richard

Over the Weir

In December there was so much water coming over this weir by the Hepworth gallery that a large barge was almost swept over it. The chain of orange barrels that straddled the river above the weir was snapped from its moorings on the far bank and now it trails down in front of the Hepworth like a giant string of beads.

I drew the weir from a table in the cafe then, as we walked around the galleries, I paused to make a couple of sketches of the turbulence at the foot of the weir, crouching or standing to draw. It was only then that I spotted that folding stools are available, which makes drawing in the galleries a whole lot more comfortable.

Wet media aren’t allowed in the galleries so I’ve added the watercolour later from memory.

Barbara Hepworth’s Workbench

Hammer, mallet and the ‘Parkinsons’ Patd Perfect Vise’ (that’s the American spelling) on Dame Barbara’s workbench all look well used.

Barbara’s dad always referred to this kind of hammer heavy square-headed hammer as a lumping hammer.

Wrestlers

Picking up an activity sheet, I went in search of two wrestlers; Henri Gaudier-Brzeka had drawn wrestlers in a gym in Putney in November 1912 and he carved these two in herculite plaster the following year.

Sixty years later, in 1972, when I started as a student in London, I remember seeing the posters for Ken Russell’s film Savage Messiah. The poster features Brzeka drawing by chipping away at the tarmac with a pneumatic drill. The tagline is:

Every man has a dream that must be realized . .
a love that must come true . .
a life that must not stop.

What impressed me about Brzeka was that he’d head for the London Zoo on Sundays where he’d draw at lightning speed, working so quickly that the ink didn’t have time to dry before he turned the page of his sketchbook. In contrast, as a student, I tended to choose one of the more sedate animals to draw, like the Indian rhinoceros.

Link: The Hepworth

View across Cluntergate to New Street from the Caffe Capri

The Strands

‘It’s taking a long time to drain off.’ says a dog walker as I drawn the Strands, a field between the river and the canal, ‘I came down on Boxing Day and the path by the old railway was half underwater. It’s underwater again today.’

I thought that I’d heard a horse clip-clopping across the field but it was a mute swan taking off at the top end of the lagoon. I think the noise must have been its wing-tips clattering as they hit the water.

Weeds in a Square Metre

Using Roger Phillips’ Weeds, a photographic guide to identify garden and field weeds, I’ve identified a dozen species springing up on the raised veg bed at the end of the garden. Forget-me-not and bush vetch didn’t get included in my short YouTube video.

Look out for the guest appearance by a tiny slug, ready and waiting for us to plant some tender juicy seedlings.

Canal-side Willow

I like the extra fine nib Lamy pen filled with brown ink for detailed natural history drawings but this afternoon, as I set off in a wintry shower to draw this willow by the canal, I find the bold nib and black ink more useful. Shower over, the tree goes into high contrast, backlit by the sun, so it’s useful to be able to quickly build up tone in the shadow areas, following the pattern of the bark with quick pen lines.

As you can see from my photograph, the bold nib (in the yellow pen on the left) has a rounded end which moves easily in any direction over the cartridge paper of my sketchbook. Being larger, it is freer flowing, giving an satisfyingly inky line.

Mouse Ear of the Fields

Common or field forget-me-not has hairy leaves, hence its Latin name, Myosotis arvensis, which translates as ‘mouse ear of the fields’.

Hairy bittercress, Cardamine hirsuta, reminds me of a small version of lady’s smock, Cardamine pratense. It’s one of the earliest of weeds to flower and one plant can produce 50,000 seeds.

I always think of groundsel, Senecio vulgaris, as a user friendly weed. It doesn’t have a taproot or spreading rhizomes, so you can soon clear a bed of groundsel just by pulling it up. Although it will probably soon appear again as its seeds can germinate within a week.

Whitlow Grass

So far I’m struggling to identify this little weed. Possibly common whitlow grass, Erophila verna. As my drawing is is just an inch and a half across, I’ve scanned it at a higher res to show a bit more detail but I’m not drawing it with the aid of a hand lens so my slightly blurred macro photograph is better for showing details of the flowers and seed-pods.

Sow-thistle

We get several dandelion relatives in the garden. This is smooth sowthistle, Sonchus oleraceus. Note the slug that has already made itself at home in the rosette of leaves.

Sow-thistle stems ooze a milky sap when broken, so the slug must have a way of dealing with this latex.

Chard

The rainbow chard looks bedraggled but I thought that it would be worth leaving it in because, if the weather improves, it should start sprouting fresh leaves. I remove dead and nibbled leaves plus any that I don’t like the look of; the test is ‘if I saw this in a the supermarket, would I buy it?’ If the answer is no, it goes on the compost heap.

Definitely not going on the compost heap are the white rhizomes of couch grass. There are just a few blades showing so I need to dig down now before this invasive spreads any further. There are also a few rosettes of forget-me-not and opium poppy but they’re not a problem.

Hawthorn

These hawthorn stems are at a good stage for laying, which involves cutting through most of a stem near ground level, bending it over at an angle and weaving it together with other stems and stakes driven into the ground to create a hedge with no gaps at the bottom. It won’t be very high of course but new branches will soon start sprouting upwards.

In the half hour that I spent drawing this, down in the corner of the garden beyond the greenhouse, a few wood pigeons flew over the wood and a robin hopped amongst the branches of the hawthorn.

I was concerned to see a blue tit with an injured wing, closely accompanied by another uninjured blue tit. Hope it recovers.

A Hole in the Hedge

‘the twisted gorse on the cliff edge, twigs, like snakes, lying on the path, the bare rock, worn and showing though the path, heath hits, gorse burnt and blackened, the high overhanging hedges by the steep roads, which pinch the setting sun, mantling clouds, and the thunder, the deep green valleys and the rounded hills – and the whole structure simple and complex.’

Graham Sutherland,
Notes by the Artist, Tate Gallery, March 1953

On a walk alongside the hedge banks near the Pembrokeshire coast, Graham Sutherland came across a gap in the hedge that particularly appealed to him.

‘I may have noticed a certain juxtaposition of forms at the side of a road, but on passing the same place next time, I might look for them in vain. It was only at the original moment of seeing that they had significance for me.’

‘If at first I attempted to make pictures here on the spot,’ he recalled, ‘I soon gave this up . . . I found that I could express what I felt only by paraphrasing what I saw.’

3.30 p.m., 7ºC, 45ºF; For my hole in the hedge, on a showery afternoon, I go to the trouble of setting up my pop-up tent at the end of the garden. A robin hops into the hedge seven feet away from my and eyes me suspiciously. Perhaps because I’m so used to watching birds through the double-glazing of the patio doors, its colour seems more vivid at close range.

Also eyeing me suspiciously is the cock pheasant who strolls through the meadow, pauses at the hole in the hedge and decides that he’ll give me a wide berth.

Link: Paintings and Drawings by Graham Sutherland, Tate Gallery. In his statement, I wonder what Sutherland meant by ‘heath hits’. Perhaps a typo. In the context, I assumed that ‘steep rods’ should have read ‘steep roads’.

The Dove Grey Sketchbook

A walk around Newmillerdam Country Park Lake, Christmas Eve, 2015

Two years ago, as the run up to Christmas started, I decided that, however busy I was, I should be capable of doing a drawing from nature every day. Arming myself with a new Holly Green sketchbook, on some days I might give myself thirty minutes in the garden to draw, at other times I’d resort to drawing from a photograph that I’d taken on my travels. This minor daily challenge generated plenty of material when I came to write my monthly nature diary for the Dalesman magazine.

A year later, at the beginning of December 2015, having just reached the end of a sketchbook, I decided to try the same thing again and I started a new A5 landscape format Pink Pig spiral bound sketchbook with a grey cover. This time it hasn’t been so much of a success.

We’ve been out walking a lot but drawing from photographs taken on our travels can be a slow process, so I soon ended up with gaps that I intended to fill in later. There’s no way that I can now go back and fill in all the blank pages that I left in so I’ve loaded the bits and pieces of drawings and notes that I did manage to do in a couple of galleries for December and for January (see links below).

Texel Ewe

‘I do not seem to be able to go into the country for a long enough time to do a sufficient amount of sketching . . . ‘

That might sound like me moaning but it was Beatrix Potter writing to her friend Mrs Carr on New Year’s Day 1911. I thought of Beatrix Potter when I was drawing the Texel sheep at Cannon Hall Farm Park on 21 January. The ewes had been gathered together in a shelter prior to lambing which was due to start two or three weeks later.

Beatrix used the royalties from the sales of her children’s books to buy Hill Top Farm at Near Sawrey in the Lake District. She became something of an expert in keeping Herdwick sheep and impressed the local shepherds with her drawings of them. She once asked her shepherd to save her the head of a still-born lamb and to skin it for her. The shepherd found her drawing it, with the head propped on a wall.

Sun Spurge

I’m reading Linda Lear’s Beatrix Potter, A Life in Nature, which I came to because I’ve been reading a lot about botany, botanical illustration and, in particular, the history of Kew Gardens. As in previous years, I’m hoping to be up to speed on botany when spring arrives. During this mild winter that hasn’t presented much of a problem. I found two species of spurge growing as weeds in the greenhouse. Common ragwort has stayed in flower throughout the winter.

I wouldn’t abandon my tried and tested brown ink plus watercolour which I started using on a field trip in my student days, which I think was partly due to seeing an exhibition of Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks in the Queen’s Gallery at Buckingham Palace. Sepia is dark enough to give definition without being as stark as a punchy black.

But I’m aware that I ought to keep varying my approach which is why there are pencil and watercolour drawings and, in a few cases, areas worked up in watercolour only, like the Texel sheep’s fleece.

I went for my Lamy Safari with the broad nib for these oak leaves and, although I originally intended to add colour to the olive branch, just for a change, I’ve left it as a line drawing.

M	T	W	T	F	S	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30	31

Author: Richard