Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
Happy birthday last Friday to Connie, who enthusiastically organised a memorable newt survey of our garden pond last summer.
The final count of smooth newts was 22, of which only 5 were female, so in this sample less than a quarter of the population is female. This is despite the fact that on the occasions that I’ve seen a newt caught by a blackbird at the pond I’ve often spotted the bright orange belly of the male.
Where was my mum, Gladys Joan Swift, one hundred years ago today on Monday 25th April 1921?
Thanks to the 1921 Census records now available on Find My Past, I’ve been able to track her down. She was just three years old at the time, living at 77 Nether Edge Road, Sheffield.
Her father Maurice describes himself as a Cabinet Manufacturer and Undertaker, the employer at his firm Swift and Goodison Ltd.
His signature seems to fit with what I know of his character, bold with a bit of a flourish.
But there was another Maurice Swift, Maurice T. Swift, cabinet maker at number 77. This was my uncle, then aged 16 who was employed as a Cabinet Case Apprentice at Maurice Senior’s workshop on Headford Street.
Giving your son your own Christian name and training him up in your business isn’t without its risks and after a falling out with his father, Maurice junior set up his own funeral business, resulting in confusion when people turned up to pay their bills. Maurice senior had to resort to placing a notice in the local paper pointing out there was no connection between the two businesses.
I checked out 79 Nether Edge Road because I knew that my great grandma, Maurice’s mum, Sarah Ann Swift (nee Truelove) was living there at the time of Sheffield Blitz but she hadn’t yet moved in a hundred years ago today.
A search of the census shows that, aged 70 and a widow, she was supporting herself as a boarding house keeper at 33 Cemetery Road.
Her boarders were a Singer Sewing Machine Salesman, James Pemberton, aged 50, and Mantle Shop Manager, John Robert Preston, aged 46.
She was born in 1851 so her signature is Victorian copperplate. I’m intrigued that she ran the Sarah and Ann together, signing herself as Sarahann Swift.
I’m reading Marcos Mateu-Mestre’s Framed Drawing Techniques and trying his suggestions for using tone. This cloth hat lying on my desk was drawn with an Apple Pencil on my iPad Pro in areas of tone only – no initial line drawing – using the Lasso Fill tool in Clip Studio Paint.
Previously, as in this drawing of chitted potatoes, I’ve gone for a linocut or silkscreen printing effect using areas of solid tone, set to 100% opacity.
But following Mateu-Mestre’s method in his chapter on The Gray Scale, these tone swatches are actually all based on pure black.
Tone number one really is black but it was applied with a Clip Studio brush set to 70% opacity. The resulting grey was then sampled with the eyedropper tool and painted as swatch 2 but again at 70% opacity, making it that bit lighter and so on, grading the tones almost to pure white.
We’re on a north-facing slope, so the blackthorn blossom appears late and is still hanging on.
There are clusters of cream flowers on the bay, we haven’t noticed them in previous years. Bay is a member of the Lauraceae, the laurel family.
Meteorologist Tomasz Schafernaker apologised for using the phrase ‘easterly breeze’ repeatedly through his forecast yesterday but that’s what’s dominated the weather today. My barometer is showing 29.6 in Hg, 1002 mB, so it’s fine but the breeze from across the North Sea is keeping it cool and keeping the cloud moving.
This opium (not Himalayan) poppy had seeded itself on one of the veg beds, so I’ve transferred it to my plants for pollinators bed and it seems to be settling in.
This foxglove rosette will be relocated too, when we put in the runner beans and dwarf French.
Last month I was interviewed in Vis News, the Visual Narratives Academy Newsletter, by David Haden, who writes:
This issue we interview a fine British comics maker and illustrator who clevely combines digital methods with traditional looks. It’s a long and informative interview.
Vis News, March 2022
You can download a PDF of the article below (and it looks good if you can view it as double-page spreads).
Alongside the chard I drew the other day there’s a row of beetroot, although I suspect by now they’ll be far too woody to use.
Happy birthday to John, who waited for five hours for the black-browed albatross to show up at Bempton but was then rewarded with a flypast at eye-level.
What’s left of the chard will be coming out soon when we start with the runner beans and dwarf French beans in this bed. This morning I put in 50 Setton onion sets, which we covered with netting, not just to prevent blackbirds and pigeons pulling them out but also to prevent foxes rolling about and digging on the veg bed as they did last year.
I forked a sprinkling of fish, blood and bone before planting the onion sets and it’s probably the smell of it that attracts the foxes. I’ve set up the trail cam to check on whether they turn up as expected.