Category: Animals

White Shorthorn

White Shorthorn bull

As happens to me with so many farm animals, as soon as I tried to photograph him in a relaxed, natural pose, this White Shorthorn bull immediately stopped what he was doing – grazing – and looked straight at the camera with a suspicious ‘what are you doing?’ expression.

White Shorthorns are a rare breed, well adapted to being out in all weathers and here at Nethergill Farm in Langstrothdale they’re free to roam, either in the fields around the farm or on the open hillside beyond Oughtershaw Beck. They tend to have a daily routine, making their way down from their preferred overnight quarters towards the beck during the morning.

White Shorthorn Bull

Along with some light grazing by a limited number of sheep, the White Shorthorns act as landscape managers here, rather like the Longhorns on the Knepp Wildland Project in West Sussex.

Wildlife projects at Nethergill include managing the meadows to encourage wild flowers, the woodland to encourage red squirrels and the beck for fish, insects, birds and the occasional visit by an otter.

Trump

Chris & Fiona Clark run the award-winning Eco-Farm at Nethergill but the bull belongs to a farmer friend of theirs in Cumbria – Gordon
“Gordon takes our calves when old enough,” Fiona tells me, “and we use his mature bulls to cosy up with our girls. 
‘Trump’ is the new kid on the block, 2 years old. Probably weighs 700kg approx. 
The ladies rule at Nethergill he sidles up to each female over several weeks. 
His technique obviously worked as all bar 1 are in calf due this Summer.” 

Links

Nethergill Eco-Farm and Self Catering Accommodation in the Yorkshire Dales

Knepp Wildlife Project

Drawing Harvey

Drawing a border terrier

Harvey is our joiner Simon’s border terrier, so I got another chance to draw him today as work on our new bathroom continued.

Harvey likes two things: to watch the world go by and to find a warm spot to settle down in, so our patio windows are a favourite for him; sometimes snoozing with head hidden behind the curtains for bit of extra seclusion.

Border Terrier

border terrier

HarveyAfter spending time drawing from photographs, it’s refreshing to get back to drawing from life again. Frustrating too of course, because Harvey the border terrier wouldn’t settle for long, however I think that attempting to piece together several poses gives more of an impression of the character of the real, live animal than a carefully studied photograph can.

Border terrier sketches

Black Cat Sketches

We haven’t caught up with our friend Diana for a while, which gives me more time than I usually allow myself to sit and draw and, for once, PC the black cat is in a cooperative mood and doesn’t decide that the sitting is over after ten or twenty minutes as he usually does.

Black cat

The A6 sketchbook that I’ve just finished was so handy for slipping into a pocket or into my smallest art bag but the A5 format that I’ve just switched to gives me the opportunity to keep starting again when PC moves, building up a page of different poses.

Black catIn this larger art bag I’ve got room for crayons as well as my usual watercolours, so I’ve used them for a change. Obviously black is the colour that I’ve used most but I could see that PC was picking up a bit of reflected light on his glossy coat from the carpet, although this looked orangey to me rather than the pinkish red of the carpet.

Black cat

cloudsLater PC’s friend, a long-haired Siamese, strode in through the conservatory. He didn’t pause to return PC’s greeting but carried straight on to the food bowl in the corner of the kitchen. He knows his way around.

Ring-tailed Lemurs

lemur sketch

Ponderosa Rural Therapeutic Centre, Heckmondwike, 11.15 a.m.: One of the ring-tailed lemurs is keeping an eye on the silver fox in the next enclosure. It backs up to a post and scent-marks with its anal gland, rubbing against the timber, then turns around to check, pressing its nose close to the spot.

It relaxes with a little grooming and pauses to watch a bit of thistledown drift up in front of it.

A male settles down to take a look out of the far corner of the enclosure. Soon the female comes over and displaces him and he climbs out of her way instantly, without any dispute. Lemur society is matriarchal.

One of the females does a handstand to leave her scent mark on a post but I get the impression that it’s mainly the males who act as look-outs for the group. They’re the ones getting up on their hind legs at the back of the enclosure staring at me as if they’re thinking ‘What’s he up to?’

There are four or five lemurs in the Ponderosa group.

The males appear to have scent glands on the inside of their wrists. Often when a male sits looking out of the enclosure at me or the other visitors, he’ll rub the end of his tail between his wrists. I don’t think that I saw a female do this; females seem more likely to use their anal glands for scent-marking.

It’s surprising how long they are when they stand on their hind legs or when they jump up onto the the mesh at the front of the cage, apparently to challenge me.

When one of the lemurs yawns, the shape of its jaw reminds me of that of a dog. In the brief glimpse that I get of its teeth, I think that I can see a pair of small canines at the front of the jaw.

Their feet look rather like hands. They bound around balletically with backs alternately arched then stretched.

I made a couple of quick colour notes then added the watercolour as we waited for our lunch. It was surprising how ochre, grey and black, plus a spot of dull amber for the eyes, brought the drawings to life.

As you can see, with these visual notes; I was observing behaviour rather than trying to complete a portrait of a particular animal.

Link

Ponderosa Centre

The origins of place names in the Huddersfield area, including Heckmondwike

Black Swans Preening

The Calder Valley beyond Mirfield is disappearing into the haze this morning.

In the waterfowl pen at Charlotte’s Ice Cream Parlour, black swans are preening.

This disconsolate-looking West Highland terrier was sitting by a table at the the Caffe Capri.

These are the first scans from my sketchbook made using Affinity Photo. Aspects of the process are still slightly unfamiliar but there are plenty of short tutorial videos on specific subjects, like setting levels, so I’m not finding it too difficult to get into the program.

I do still miss the the preview that you get in Adobe Photoshop, which takes the guesswork out of exporting an image for the web. In practice, as I stick to pretty much the same settings every time, it’s unlikely that I’m going to be surprised by the end results.

The sketch of black swans preening looked very similar when I saved the same image in Photoshop.

Weaners

At Charlotte’s Ice Cream Parlour, the piglets are getting to the stage where they’d be better being separated from the sow. She’s getting increasingly irritated by the continual rough-and-tumble of her nine little porkers.

Rough-and-tumble except for the numerous occasions when they’re taking a break.

Rhea

Rhea eggs laid in the paddock in May.

Two of the rhea eggs in the incubator at Charlotte’s have hatched, although we haven’t yet had the chance to see the chicks as they have to stay in there for a while. Rhea eggs are large but, even so it’s surprising how large the chicks are – about a foot tall apparently – so, they must have been well folded up in there.

Quails

In the lovebird aviary, a female quail is being pursued by an insistent male. He keeps grabbing her by the feathers of her nape so she’s starting to look a little the worse for wear.

The View from the Café

On Sunday morning when I drew the old scouring mill at Horbury Bridge from the Di Bosco Café, the temperature was climbing to 81°F, 27°C, so it was good to have the shade of their well-ventilated conservatory to draw in.

Yesterday, Monday, afternoon, I drew a buddleia-dotted development site through the open doors of Create Café, Wakefield One. The hoarding advertises the adjacent Merchant Gate development of flats, steak house and offices as ‘diverse & striking’. They seem to have given up on the ‘vibrant hub’ slogan.

Cushions in an armchair at Barbara’s brother’s.

Nine Little Piggies

Four weeks old now, and the piglets at Charlotte’s Ice Cream Parlour are larger and leaner.

I choose a couple to draw that seem to be settled but soon another piglet nuzzles in to sleep beside them, then another squeezes in between them.

The piglet’s concave snout fits comfortably into the concave contours of its sleeping partner.

Another sign that the piglets are maturing: today, when the sow finishes feeding and disappears into the shelter, the piglets are grunting, rather than squeaking, as they did when they were younger.

Petra

Petra is a working cocker spaniel (although she doesn’t actually work), from Berkshire but I drew her recently in the Lake District, where she was taking a break with friends, as her owners were moving house. She’s a dog who doesn’t like being on her own but she’ll happily set off in the company of other people.

We were at Sykes Farm Tearooms, Buttermere, where the resident border collie was keeping watchful eye on comings and goings, sitting on the grassy knoll opposite the farm gate, checking out a passing 4×4 with gimlet gaze.

Frank as a puppy.

In the interests of balance, I should explain that other spaniels are available, including my brother’s English springer, Frank.

The Menagerie Lion

This stone lion, reclining on the lawn, always takes me by surprise as we walk past a large evergreen oak and it springs into view. Surprisingly, a real lion was once kept here in the Menagerie at Nostell Priory, just yards from the Doncaster to Wakefield turnpike road, behind a high stone wall in an old quarry. There’s a story that it once escaped and roamed around the area.

Once again it’s an iPad drawing, which has the advantage that, even after I’ve added the colour, I can hide the paint layer and turn it back into a line drawing with one tap of my Apple Pencil.