Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
I return to finish my drawing of the old ash stump. It is growing on a south-facing bank that is supported by a drystone wall. The small rabbit is back, same time, same place: on the grassy slope next to the tree.
Yesterday I also made a note of magpie, wood pigeon and of two long-tailed tits investigating the branches of the adjacent hawthorn and sycamore. A robin was flitting about and perching on a parking sign.
2.25 p.m., 43ºF, 8ºC, still and sunny: I spotted this ash stump growing on an old stone embankment wall when we visited the Go Outdoors store, Middlestown, yesterday. I’d gone looking for grippy gloves because the welt on the fingerless mittens that I’ve been using gets uncomfortable if you’re drawing for a while. My knuckles have been getting red and raw, drawing when it’s close to freezing.
I found the various gloves with gripper pads a bit cumbersome but we spotted some in pure silk which aren’t the warmest available as they’re mainly intended as lining gloves but they’re better than having exposed fingers. It’s easy to grip pen, water-brush and paintbox.
I found myself rushing to complete my drawing of Caphouse Beck yesterday so, today, when I sketch the rabbit which suddenly runs up the grassy bank and check my watch to record the time, I decide that I should allow myself more time so I’ll return tomorrow to finish off and add colour.
|
Mitten (acrylic) |
Trekmates silk glove |
Links
2 p.m., 40ºF, 5ºC: Caphouse beck is coloured by ochre which I suspect might come from old mine workings.
A grey squirrel climbs into the trees to cross the stream where the branches of the willows meet.
I find that I’m rushing to complete my watercolour in the time that I’ve allowed myself and it doesn’t help that on my three-legged stool I keep feeling rather unstable as I perch on the the steep bank by the beck! I withdraw to a more level vantage point halfway up the slope when it comes to adding the watercolour.
43ºF, 8ºC, 10.15 a.m.: In the back garden a robin is singing; a pair of magpies call raucously; a blackbird splutters in alarm and house sparrows chirp continuously from the hedges.
A fragment of shrivelled crab apple drops on my sketchbook, then another. There’s a male blackbird seven feet above my head in the branches of the golden hornet. Blackbirds and thrushes prefer the fruit after the first frosts of winter, when it has started turning brown.
It’s warm enough for me to spot a bluebottle investigating the snowdrops which are now in flower in foamy strands along by the hedge in the meadow area and here by the raised bed behind the pond.
I’ve been reading up on botany recently: the petals and sepals of the snowdrop appear identical so, as in other monocots, they are called tepals. The leaves don’t appear to grow from a stem but there is a short squat stem which lies hidden in the bulb.
2.30 p.m., 13ºC, 55ºF, blustery winds and continuous showers from the west: Forty or fifty black-headed gulls flock down when children scatter breadcrumbs by the semi-permanent puddle alongside the duck pond at Thornes Park. I spot only one gull with the full chocolate brown mask of its summer plumage; some have just a dark dot behind the eye, others are at a halfway stage.
I draw a gull in flight which has a black band at the end of its tail but when I look up again every gull has a pure white tail. I’m start to think that I must have been mistaken but I must have seen a juvenile which – so my field guide tells me – does have a black band at the end of its tail. The colour of the feet and of the bill also vary between adults and juveniles.
It’s such a dull rainy afternoon and I’m sheltering in the car putting the wipers on a occasionally so I’m not seeing the birds in glowing colour. I have to admit that the green of the drake mallard’s head is really informed guesswork. In this light, to me it just looks dark.
I wind down the window to get a better view of the moorhens which are poddling around the muddy margins of the puddle, picking up scraps.
10.30 a.m., 44ºF, 6ºC: Robin and song thrush are singing in the wood; other than that the soundtrack as I’m drawing is the wind in the willows, the patter of rain on my umbrella and the rippling of water over a gravelly bend of Coxley beck. The shower passes so that I’m able to discard the umbrella when it comes to adding the watercolour. That makes the process a whole lot easier.
I call this bend in the beck Willow Island but it’s only after heavy rain that this overgrown side channel fills with water. Wellies are essential when I’m drawing here as I have to wade along a 20 yard stretch of the beck. I proceed with caution as on one constricted bend the stream has scoured out a channel that looks more than wellie deep.
1.50 p.m., looking east, cold wind from southwest, 40ºF, 5ºC: From medieval times, villagers had the right to graze their animals on Stocksmoor Common but, since grazing ceased there, silver birch and other trees have spread. In order to preserve the now rare habitat of unploughed, unimproved acid grassland, the Yorkshire Naturalists’ Trust has in recent years started grazing sheep and cattle on the reserve.
As I finish my drawing, two of the White Park cattle come down to drink at the pond.
Link: Stocksmoor Common Yorkshire Wildlife Trust nature reserve.
4 p.m., 43ºF, 8ºC: Two herons touch down at the far side of the flood lagoon on the Strands. There’s an indignant ‘kirrack!’ from one of them. A cormorant flies high over the river. Cormorants prefer the river or the canal for fishing; perhaps the lagoon is too shallow for them to dive in. Three coots forage together on this side channel.
The low afternoon sun gives a warm glow to dry grasses and bare willows. When it drops behind a cloud, the glowing grasses instantly switch to dark silhouette and of course the reflections in the water change instantly too.
After forty minutes drawing I start striding back home along the towpath, timing myself as I go; just fifteen minutes from wilderness and wet to our front door.
A song thrush sings strikingly from the canal-side trees. Strikingly, but you couldn’t describe his varied, thrice-repeated improvisations as melodious.
These lush weeds grow in a corner of the cold frame. As I draw, there’s a confrontation between two pairs of magpies with a lot of irate clacking. They meet on our chimney and two of the rivals lock feet together and roll down the roof tiles. The dispute moves on to the next door neighbour’s roof and, as I pack in, 
I can see them in the top of one of the ash trees in the wood, joined by at least two more magpies and a carrion crow who seems to be just an onlooker.
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.
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 
heavy square-headed hammer as a lumping hammer.
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
