Author: Richard

Tapir

IT’S A WINDY, RAINY day so we’re delighted to find that the South American Tapir, Tapirus terrestris, here at the Ponderosa Rare Breeds Farm, Heckmondwike, has ventured out of his shelter. He immediately ambles over to snuffle at us when we arrive. On a summer visit 18 months ago, he stayed in the shade of his shelter all afternoon and I didn’t get chance to draw him so I make a few quick sketches in the drizzle adding the colour later from a Googled photograph, and from memory, as the photograph didn’t quite coincide with the browny grey or ‘dull chestnut’ that I’d made a mental note of.

There’s also time to draw one of the busy band of Meerkats, Suricata suricata, which are chattering and burbling in their enclosure.

I get the opportunity in the Reptile House to hold a North American Corn Snake, also known as the Red Ratsnake, Pantherophis guttatus, (from its grey-brown colour, I guess that this was the Midwestern subspecies Elaphe guttata emoryi). Its scales are softer than I expected, despite being cold-blooded its warmer than the ambient temperature (it has probably been in a warm spot in its vivarium) and it feels stoutly muscular when it pushes itself into my armpit. It gives the impression of being completely relaxed and confident as I support it; it’s used to being handled. I also briefly have a female Australian Bearded Lizard, a.k.a. Central Bearded Dragon, Pogona vitticeps, resting on my shoulder. She appears briefly in a marker pen sketch on my page on the Animated Yorkshire workshop that I took part in here in 2010.

We’ll be back at the Ponderosa in May for the wedding reception of one of our god-daughters, otherwise we might never have thought of heading out here for our coffee/extended to lunch break.

We’ll certainly be coming back, hopefully on a drier when we’ve got a bit more time but even on a day like today, it’s a change from the coffee shops and restaurants in shopping centres, garden centres and farm shops that we so often find ourselves at on our errands and book deliveries.

You wouldn’t expect to meet a Meerkat in the White Rose Centre or a Reindeer at the Redbrick Mill.

Link; Ponderosa Rural Therapeutic Centre, Animated Yorkshire

Broccoli

IT’S SURVIVED frost and snow, it’s been pecked to tatters by Pheasants but I’m afraid what finally did for one of our purple-flowering broccoli plants was the bonfire we lit yesterday afternoon near the the compost bins, just beyond the cabbage beds.  I hope that two or three of the plants will recover sufficiently to give us a small supply of broccoli florets in a month or two.

We’ve found that you can’t be in a hurry when it comes to purple-flowering broccoli. We had no florets in the autumn when you might have expected a first crop. Ours always does better in the spring, which is good time to have it as there’s a bit of a lull in the supply of garden veg at that time. We did harvest kale and cabbage – both red and winter varieties – from this little cabbage patch in the autumn.

Veg beds as they were in 2009, which, as that's 3 years ago, is the way they will be again this year.

This spring, because of the rotation system we’re using, the cabbages and the potatoes that we grow alongside them will move onto the next bed in a clockwise direction, ousting the beans which will in turn move on to the bed where we grew root crops (and had a rare success with carrots last year) which in turn will move on to the bed where we grew the beans.

PC and Friend

AS WE ARRIVE at Diana’s, a large fluffy Siamese walks ahead of us. We shut it out as we go in through the back garden gate but PC, Diana’s black cat, has noticed that his fluffy friend has arrived and they indulge in a bit of playful sparring, pawing at each other through the gap beneath the gate.

The Siamese can’t climb over the larch lap fence; it had already been declawed when Diana’s neighbour adopted it.

But PC is soon up and over the fence, returning five minutes later to sit out at the front on the windowsill. When he comes in, he jumps up on the windowsill (he recently dislodged a vase which broke into four pieces). He’s chosen the warmest corner of the room above the radiator. From here he can keep an eye and an ear on everything that’s going on but he’s soon stretching and snoozing.

Cats are so good at relaxing but however much they appear to be dozing those ears will swivel around to pick up any stray sound.

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Categorized as Animals Tagged

Perfectly Frank

TRYING TO think of a birthday gift that combined my brother’s creative side in the kitchen with a reference to his accident-prone Springer Spaniel Frank (who survived snowdrifts and thin ice in France last week), I spotted these two bottles in the supermarket; Marston’s Pedigree Classic English Pale Ale and Frank’s Original Red Hot Cayenne Pepper Sauce.

All they needed to personalise them was a little logo of the Original Pedigree Welsh Springer Spaniel Frank himself. Perfect!

Sketch Pad

THIS KIND of Sketch Pad is unfamiliar to me; it’s the virtual Corel Painter version, Sketch Pad 4, which was available as a free download when I registered my Intuos 4 wireless pen tablet. Having worked out how to pair the tablet with my computer via a Bluetooth connection, this is my first attempt to draw with it wirelessly.

Thanks to Bluetooth, I can now rest the tablet on my knees but relating the angle of my pen strokes to the angle that will appear on the screen is going to take a bit of practice.

Some users report being able to work as far as 50 feet from the computer, so I could take the tablet down the garden. It would be interesting to see whether the resulting drawing bore any resemblance to reality. It would be like the blind drawing exercise in Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain.

This sketch of Netherton Hall, a little to the right of the pylon in my view across Coxley Valley was made using the tablet in Autobook Sketchbook Express. It shows how far I have to go until the techniques become second nature. Choosing colours from the various on-screen palettes and slider controls is an awkward process compared with mixing watercolours from the pocket box of Winsor and Newton’s that I use daily.

Yorkies on Walkies

AS IT’S HALF TERM, there were children, grandparents and assorted dogs at Newmillerdam this morning. One woman was gyrating in a slow motion ballroom twirl, holding one arm up and passing it over the other as two little Yorkshire Terriers kept circling around her, sometimes in opposing directions, as if she was a maypole.

Later it was a little Jack Russell on a long lead that made a complete circuit of an unsuspecting black Labrador. Perhaps there was some rivalry as to who would be the first off the mark if their owner, wearing a T-shirt with the slogan ‘Ask the Boss’, should produce a doggy treat.

It’s good to see the lake full of liquid water again and Mallard, Canada Goose and Tufted Ducks going about their normal business instead of waddling over the ice.

I drew the Yorkies with my pen tablet using Corel Painter Sketch Pad, which I think feels a bit more natural to use than Autodesk SketchBook Express but these trees in Sainsbury’s car park were drawn in my usual pen and wash.

Beauty and the Beast

WAS MY scenery, painted as flat colours with outlines picked out in black, too cartoony?

It’s good to come to a performance to remind myself what all that effort was actually for. The cast, which includes a number of younger new faces backed up by some of our regulars, give their all and there are some confident performers and singers amongst them. The humour is what you’d expect from a pantomime so the cartoon backdrops work fine.

When we first enter the Beast’s Castle, via a clever scene change that involves tab curtains being opened as old cobwebby gates fly open, I think for a moment should I have gone for something more distressed and gothick but the scene soon moves to melodrama, humour and children dancing so the suggestion of a baronial hall is about right.

Coming to a performance gives me an opportunity to draw, even if it is in the dark on the back row, other than that all I had time to draw today was my left foot.

Pen Tablet

Whatever brush tool I select in SketchBook Express my lettering turns out wobbly when I'm using the pen tablet.

AFTER ALL that work putting up shelves, assembling my new desk and designing a new plan chest/worktop, I can now put the finishing touches to my studio. My old graphics pad, a Wacom Volito, won’t work with my new computer so I’ve gone for the Intuos 4 wireless pen tablet.

What better way to test it out than trying it out in Sketchbook Express, which has been described as a Mac equivalent to Microsoft Paint, available as a free download. I used  pencil, fibre tip, chisel tip pen and brush tools in this drawing.

It’s a strange experience to be drawing on the pad on my desk but reacting to the marks appearing on the monitor in front of me. It’s easy to draw a line at slightly the wrong angle.

One advantage is that for a change I don’t have to show my left hand holding a sketchbook.

Like the Volito, the main use for this Intuos tablet is likely to be for preparing scans of my drawings for print. It’s difficult to draw with a mouse and it can be a bit fiddly even to select shapes or erase with it. The Intuos is about as near as I’m going to get to being able to draw on screen without going to the enormous expense of a touch screen.

I’m happy to revert to ArtPen and watercolours as we drink our coffee after a meal at the Bar Biccari.

White-cap

THERE’S A NEW Pheasant, a cock Pheasant distinctively marked with white flashes above the eyes, in the garden this afternoon and, at least when I happen to look out and see him, he’s not being challenged by our regular bird, who’s down amongst the snowdrops near the hedge with a female ambling along beside him. The newcomer has also brought a partner. The two of them stroll up to the bird feeders.

The Treecreeper that works it’s way up the north side of the Golden Hornet crab apple tree – the side covered with powdery green algae – is an infrequent visitor to the garden. It makes its way up to the top of one of the main branches then flies off towards the large oak in a back garden three doors up the road.

Saint Valentine’s is traditionally the day that birds pair up and there’s a definite buzz of spring about. I’ve been up in attic and shortly afterwards I’m aware of a hum next to me; a queen wasp that was probably hibernating in the attic has a emerged and is sitting at the bottom of the window whirring its wings. I let it out but I’m afraid that it’s still a little too early for her to start a new colony.

Raspberry Canes

WE CUT the autumn-fruiting raspberry canes down to about a foot a few weeks ago, although we should have done this a bit earlier when they became dormant in the autumn. Soon they will be springing into new growth, so it’s now time to cut them down to the ground. However hit-and-miss we are with pruning, we always get a decent crop from this variety, Joan Jay. The canes need tying back when they’re in leaf and producing fruit but at this time of year you can appreciate what small footprint they take up in the raised bed – about 3 feet by 1 foot.

We’ve still got jars of jam that we made with them in late summer and early autumn.

It’s a good idea to thin them out and stop them spreading too much so we dig out five plants to give to friends who want to start growing them.

This little Toad had a narrow escape; Paul the gardener and I were clearing the old fence panels behind the greenhouse and it was only when I was sweeping the path that I uncovered it, crouching in a hollow under a sheet of plastic – an old potting compost bag – that I’d put down some time ago to suppress weeds. I’d been working right next to it but luckily it had survived unscathed. I released it out of harm’s way behind the compost bins.

Crouched next to the Toad in his lair was a small round slug. Perhaps this slug was a commensal companion; destined to become lunch!

A Robin flits about us as we work. It’s evidently noticed that, as we cut back matted ivy and prickly cotoneaster to remove the tumbled and twisted old larch-lap fence panels, we are disturbing woodlice and spiders.