Author: Richard

The Bold Poachers

Hawker
My rough and detail from George Walker’s illustration, 1814, the dog handler holding back the hounds in  a hunt in open country with hawks.

moor guide 1814Sometimes I come across the perfect source of reference. In this first frame of my comic strip version of the fight between Waterton and the poachers in Walton Park I drew the astonished poacher realising that he’d been tricked by Waterton into firing at a wooden decoy pheasant. Googling for images of Yorkshire workers and countrymen in the early Victorian period, I came across George Walker’s Costume of Yorkshire, a book that I’ve used in my research on several previous occasions.

It’s hard to believe, seeing the two of them together (above), but I drew the rough before I stumbled across the Walker illustration. It’s so similar, with the exception of those lapels, that I have to wonder whether the image was lingering in my mind from when I last browsed through the book. Probably not, but this is the archetypal image that I have of an early Victorian countryman.

My scene takes place in 1835 and Walker published his book in 1814, but I think that country workers and their poacher rivals would be fairly conservative in their dress at that time.

For the other poacher, in my rough I’d gone for a powerful looking man with mutton chop whiskers and therefore too similar to the villain from the soap works scene, Edward Thornhill Simpson.

Again, George Walker comes to the rescue. His moor guide (left) will be my model for the other poacher.

Walker’s drawings were kept for many years at Walton Hall in the collection of Edward Hailstone. In the introduction to a new edition of Costume of Yorkshire, written at Walton Hall in the Easter 1885, Hailstone writes;

‘like his intimate friend Mr. Waterton of Walton Hall, [Walker]would constantly be out at early dawn in the summer months, to watch the habits of the feathered race.’

One further link; Hailstone rented Walton Hall on a long term lease from the soap manufacturing Simpson family, who had bought the property from Waterton’s son Edmund.

Link; George Walker’s Costume of Yorkshire on Calderdale Council’s From Weaver to Web online visual archive of Calderdale history.

It was 40 years ago today

ric 040775

Forty years ago today was my last day at college. Here I am with the painting of birds in the Royal College of Art greenhouse, that I’d started three years earlier and which I thought might be a six week job . . .

Pencil Roughs

pencil roughspoacher v. WatertonI find pencil roughs the quickest way to develop my ideas. I’ve got a wonderful program, Manga Studio, which can easily handle this process but pencil, eraser and the occasional spot of Tipp-Ex correction fluid makes for a more hands on, tactile way of working.

Referring back to the script, I’m going through the basic outline of my first storyboard-style roughs, trying to add drama, clarity and a more interesting layout.

Stubble

stubbleWe’ve had a little round of appointments to catch up with over the last couple of days, not just the dentist’s and doctor’s, where I made the two sketches in the waiting rooms, but also the opticians where I had a fitting for my new glasses (same frames but with new high tech varifocal 100% UV proof lenses) so we deserved a lunch break at the Seed Room, where I drew the view looking north over Smithy Brook Valley and Thornhill Edge.dentists and doctors

The Obsequious Mr Simpson

Waterton confronts SimpsonI keep imagining that I’m producing a stage play. Mr Simpson is really getting into his character as the villain of the piece, all sneers and sarcasm, but, as an illustrator I’m responsible for the bit part players too; fo their costume, make-up, even their back story, as far as it goes.

I can imagine the extra playing the labourer saying to me ‘What’s my motivation in this scene?’

‘Er . . . could you lean on your shovel and smirk, as if you’re thinking “this should be fun”?’

Waterton comic page 9I’ve learnt a lot about the strategy of producing a comic strip while working on this page. For instance, for those first two panels (which were the last to be completed) I drew them both first and then coloured them together, to save mixing the colours twice.

I realise that a decisive style is going to work best, rather than the soft tentative approach that I use for natural history subjects. Plenty of structure and drama is what’s needed in a comic strip.

Whatever my misgivings about this page, I’m now leaving it until I’ve finished the other eleven pages, then I can come back to it and review it. Hopefully I will feel that it still works in the context of the story.

How do I stop WordPress Compressing my Files?

Setting compression to 100% in the Media settings in WordPress. But it still compresses to 90%!
Setting compression to 100% in the Media settings in WordPress. But it still compresses to 90%!
blurred
So how come this image is so sharp? It’s a PNG and WordPress doesn’t ‘help’ you save bandwidth by compressing them.

Having gone to so much trouble, I’m keen that my work comes over as crisply as possible in this blog, allowing for the inevitable loss of sharpness that you’re always going to get between the paper version and the onscreen image. I’ve added a plugin to stop my web page program WordPress compressing my JPGs (which it does in order to save bandwidth) as this is what makes them lose sharpness.

Yes, I know that it’s a marginal loss of sharpness, but I’m an illustrator. We worry about such things!

Unfortunately the plugin that I’m using, WP Resized Image Quality, hasn’t been tested on the latest version of WordPress and, would you believe it, my JPGs, which I’ve already tweaked to perfection in Photoshop, are still getting compressed.

Any tips would be welcome!

Links; WP Resized Image Quality 

By the way, I checked with Christine Rondeau who designed Mon Cahier, the theme that I use for my WordPress posts, and she tells me the compression definitely isn’t happening there.

Red-tailed Bumblebees Cooling their Nest

Red-tailed bees at nest holeWe’ve had record temperatures today and the red-tailed bumblebees in the nestbox near the back door have been making efforts to cool their nest. The bee on the right with its rear end to the nest hole was fanning its wings.

This bee was fanning its wings but so fast that they were barely visible.
This bee was fanning its wings but so fast that they were visible only as a blur.

Every time that I looked out there was a bee on duty, acting as a fan. The first time I noticed them doing this, at 11 o’clock this morning, there were two vibrating their wings right next to the hole but the colony was so busy that bees returning or emerging kept pushing them out of the way. After that there was only ever one on duty and there would be breaks when three bees emerged at once.

red-tailed beesHoney bees have been observed taking water into the hive to help with cooling but I couldn’t tell if the red-tails were doing this.

In the spring we saw blue tits and house sparrows taking an interest in the box. Last year the sparrows ousted a pair of blue tits that had started nesting but the red-tailed bees are definitely in charge this year. Barbara watched them chase off a wasp which was trying to get into the nest.

Pall of Smoke

colouringI can see the influence of decades of scenery painting in these frames for the showdown in my Waterton comic strip. The perspective in the Soap Works in the background is similar to some of the village scenes that I’ve painted over years, except you can’t imagine the principles and chorus breaking into a rendition of On a Wonderful Day like Today with that pall of smoke hanging over the village of Walton.

But, dominating the stage, dressed in black with that stove pipe hat, ‘Soapy’ Simpson makes a very hissable villain. I can picture it now;

SIMPSON: Yes, boys and girls, I’m going to poison every tree in Walton. Ha! ha! Ha!

WATERTON: Oh no you won’t!

SIMPSON: OH  YES  I  WILL!

It’s been a rather mechanical activity producing three almost identical versions of the background but useful practice  for me to get myself into the habit of being consistent with colour, line and characters. I look forward to finishing this off tomorrow and dropping the scanned illustrations into the blank frames that I’ve created for the page in Manga Studio.

Feet

feet2footIt’s so hot today that I’ve gone into shorts for the first time so this is a good opportunity to switch from drawing hands to feet.

My feet aren’t as weather-beaten as my hands but when it comes to watercolour I still go mainly for yellow ochre and dashes of permanent rose with neutral tint, burnt sienna and raw umber in the shadows.

The drawing with my foot resting on the arm of the sofa gives more descriptive lighting than the one down on our grey sofa because there’s a secondary light from the patio windows filling in the shadow down the right side of my foot.

I’ll try and use secondary lighting to add a touch of drama to some of the frames in my Waterton comic strip. Waterton went barefoot when he climbing trees, so I’m going to have to include feet at some stage.

Hope Valley

Mam Tor
Mam Tor from the Hope to Losehill footpath. The distant log glimpsed through the cavity looks like a reclining figure.
Female chaffinch and great tit, Riverlife Cafe, Bamford.
Female chaffinch and great tit, Riverlife Cafe, Bamford.

After a weekend working on the Waterton comic we head off for the Hope Valley in the Peak District. After a coffee break at the Riverlife Cafe we walk from Hope to Castleton through sheep pastures. The lambs are less playful than they were earlier in the spring. They’re looking quite solid now and are either resting with mum or they’ve got their heads down grazing.

A green woodpecker flies to a treetop causing indignation amongst the jackdaws. A buzzard circles over the slopes of Losehill.

Elder flowers
Elder blossom and lichens.

In the gardens of the Rose Cottage Tearooms in Castleton, I draw Bella, a rescue dog from Croatia. Even her owners aren’t sure what breed she is but to me there seems to be a bit of spaniel and border collie in her.

Bella.
Bella.

chimneyAs we wait for lunch I draw the chimney of the adjoining cottage.

jackdawA jackdaw sidesteps along the wires and takes a good look around at the tables below. Amongst the trees and shrubs around the garden, a chiffchaff is singing almost continually, if you can call those monotonous ‘chif-chaf, chif-chaf, chaf’ phrases singing.

It’s a perfect summer’s day. I can get back to my desk tomorrow when the temperature rises and perhaps makes it less attractive to set off walking.

Soap Bubbles

Simpson v. WatertonI’ve been looking forward to seeing this drawing in colour. It looks rather stagey but it tells the story clearly, so I’ll stick with this version.

Simpson v. WatertonThis is the first time that I’ve added a curved tail to a speech balloon. In Manga Studio EX5 this kind of tail is known as a spline. Mathematically, a spline curve is one that moves through a given series of points. Because of lack of headroom in this frame, a straight tail would have to emerge from the side of the balloon, which would look rather awkward.

No wonder Simpson looks so pleased with himself, he’s the first character to get a spline bubble in this comic strip. I don’t blame Waterton for storming off indignantly.

Soap worksI’ve left the background muted because I can easily add more colour if it’s needed but, as it’s transparent watercolour, I can’t remove it if I overdo it.