Author: Richard

Small Sketchbook

sketchbook

Recent sketches from my pocket sketchbook, colour mostly added later. Sometimes I’ll take a photograph for colour reference but with these I’ve added the colour as I remember it.

tree and duck sketches
I checked out my memory of the colour of the ducks in a field guide.

Ducks and Doves

mallard sketches

A drake mallard stood resting by the duck pond in Thornes Park this morning. This was the only bird that didn’t move much during the whole time that I was there but I still found it difficult to draw get the correct proportion of head to body. With each drawing I started with the head but by the time I’d drawn the body I’d find myself coming back to redraw the head.

I couldn’t resist adding colour, which immediately made my sketches more mallard-like.

bird sketches

I drew birds in our back garden in the afternoon and, as with the mallard, added colour to each one as I went along.

stock dove

The stock dove was an unusual visitor, smaller than the wood pigeon but quite capable of chasing it off, reaching out as if threatening to peck it. By the time they’d got down to the edge of the pond the wood pigeon gave up and flew away, leaving the stock dove to return to foraging beneath the bird feeders.

Heuchera

A group of these plants were growing on the riverbank and on a rubbly bank at the side of the riverside path behind industrial units. It looks like a relative of water avens but doesn’t have the drooping flowerheads of that species. Most of the flowers were yellowish green but some plants had flowers midway down the stem with magenta petals. A garden escape?

Heuchera

Next day we spotted this plant amongst the ferns at Brodsworth Hall and Gardens. It’s a Heuchera, a member of the saxifrage family from North America, so definitely a garden escape.

Colour Sketches

sketches
sycamore

I drew the buildings from the Seed Room at Overton recently but added the colour later. I thought about taking a photograph as colour reference but decided it would be a better exercise for my memory and imagination to recreate my impression of the colour.

I added the colour later to the sycamore from Ossett (left) but had a few minutes to add a quick wash when I drew the sycamores bursting into leaf at Newmillerdam last week (below).

sycamore

Cats and Dogs

cats playing basketball cartoon

Perhaps this card for basketball player and cat lover Alex was inspired by seeing Benedict Cumberbatch in The Electric Life of Louis Wain last autumn.

pups

Also celebrating a birthday recently, and the arrival of a new puppy in the house, was Annabel.