Category: Art

Kelly, Banger, Mizzy and Guy

market sketch, fruit stalls and penny for the guy boys
Fruit and veg stalls and Penny-for-the-Guy boys, Monday, 26 October, 1981 (which I’m guessing must have been half-term week for local schools).

My 1981 Wakefield Market acrylic on canvas painting makes a rare appearance at Wednesday’s Wakefield ArtWalk at the Gissing House, Thompson’s Yard, at the top of Westgate, along with some of the sketches I made on location.

sketchbook

I’d taken a new A5 hardback sketchbook and was drawing in fountain pen so I hoped that no-one would notice me scribbling away as I sat on the low wall in front of the Old Queen Elizabeth Gallery and started on the first page sketching the backs of the fruit and veg stalls. No such luck.

“Penny for the Guy, Mister?”

Grudgingly I agreed to make a small contribution to their firework fund on condition that they’d keep still for a few minutes while I drew them. The whole point of my market sketches was to get practice drawing a variety of figures.

I’m sure that poor old Guy didn’t last long but I wonder what creative entrepreneurs Kelly, Banger and Mizzy are up to now. Would be great to meet up with them again at the ArtWalk.

I guess that they might be about 50 years old by now.

A Record of Wakefield’s Market

HMS Pinafore

Sydney Granville as Bill Bobstay, the Boatswain, cover star of this complete performance on 78 rpm records (or it would be complete if one of the 12-inch shellac resin records hadn’t got chipped), makes a guest appearance at my Wakefield Market show at the Gissing Centre, Thompson’s Yard, Westgate, at the next Wakefield Art Walk, on the evening Wednesday, 27 November.

Gissing House

I came across the records at the market on the stalls over towards Vicarage Street, which sold the kind of secondhand bric-a-brac that these days you’d look for at a car boot sale.

Wakefield Market acrylic on canvas with copies of my sketches made on location.

Hauxley Nature Reserve

Hauxley

The Lookout Cafe at the Northumberland Wildlife Trust Hauxley Nature Reserve is an ideal place to sketch.

Hauxley

At the opposite corner of the reserve, on the lagoon near the outlet to Druridge Bay, a female gadwall is dabbling amongst a raft of washed-up kelp.

Hauxley bird sketches

The spindle has fuchsia-red fruits which remind me of miniature pumpkins. It looks as if most of the orange berries of sea buckthorn have already been eaten, perhaps by redwings and fieldfares, but there are a few clumps left close to the path. We had a glimpse of what I thought was a flock of redwings going over, if so, these are the first that we’ve seen this year.

Portrait of a Sketcher, 1981

self portrait

I’ve been scanning my Wakefield Market sketchbook for a fanzine-style publication and came across these fountain pen self-portraits.

I was trying to improve drawing figures and I set out several times a week in late autumn 1981 to draw on markets, in cafes and even on the bus there and back.

man in jumper

In some of the sketches of Barbara from that time she’s busy knitting but I’m not sure if this Aran sweater is one of hers or one my sister knitted for me.

me drawing

Wakefield Market

I’m hoping that this acrylic on canvas, 5ft x 2ft painting of Wakefield Market might soon get a second showing as it was last exhibited in 1982.

market trader

I think this is my favourite corner of the painting. I can reveal that Barbara played the role of ‘old lady in striped coat’. I’d drawn a figure on location and took a Polaroid of Barbara in as near to the striped coat and dotted headscarf as I could find.

market stall

The painting is unfinished: that case should contain a random selection of 1970s/80s ladies’ shoes! I’d sketched a children’s tricycle on one of the stalls and was able to borrow a similar one from the Ebenezer Hall play group in Horbury to paint.

market

My ambition was to make it into a triptych, a wrap-around experience like the market itself, which was a bit of a maze in those days.

‘Cockney Mick’

fruit and veg stall

‘Cockney Mick’ Lawton had his fruit and veg stall at the entrance to the covered meat market. He spotted me drawing and liked the drawing, so I did a him a photocopy of it. In return he got one of his assistants to fill a small paper sack with every kind of fruit from the stall. He was going to send her around with another bag for a selection of veg too, but I told him it would take me a week to finish the fruit.

Meet the Guys

At that time the first row of stalls nearest the old Cathedral School were all fruit and veg. I sat on the wall in front of the school and thought I’d be able to work unseen. No such luck:

“Penny for the Guy, Mister?”

I made a deal, I’d give them a very small amount if they’d sit for me to draw them.

I’m guessing that Kelly, Banger and Mizzy are now successful entrepeneurs.

Golden Hornet

While pruning the Golden Hornet crab apple I became aware that someone was watching me. Directly overhead a buzzard was hanging in the air, about 100 feet above me.

At the top of the stepladder in the crown of the tree, I had a wood pigeon’s eye-view of our newly-built raised beds.

The Weeping Birch

sketchbook page

Stan Barstow Memorial Garden, Queen Street, Horbury, 2.30 pm, 65℉, 17℃: As soon as I sit on a bench beneath a weeping silver birch, aphids and plant bugs start trundling about on my knee and over my sketchbook page.

Maple, Ash and Sumac

ash

After recent wind, rain and the first overnight frost, next door’s maple is going down in a blaze of ochre yellow and one of the ash trees in the wood is now devoid of leaves.

blackbird

This morning two blackbirds were fighting it out over the ever-diminishing supply of sumac berries. When a song thrush flies in the spray of berries it lands on instantly detaches, plummeting to the ground and, for a moment, taking the startled thrush with it.

sparrowhawk

The small male sparrowhawk is back, again swooping down by the feeders and then pausing to perch on the hedge and again failing to catch any prey.

geese

This morning a distant chevron of geese headed down the Calder Valley but at the weekend a skein of twenty plus was heading in the opposite direction.

What the Right Hand is Doing

This weed – thale cress? – is the sole survivor from a late sowing of basil in a pot on the kitchen windowsill. When the weather starts to get cooler our basil seedlings give up the will to live.

I’ve been giving my right hand a bit of a break for more than six months now but it still hurts as I write – at the base of my right thumb – so I’m going to have to learn to live with it and get back to regular drawing.

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