
Another homemade brush for my Procreate course.
Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998

Another homemade brush for my Procreate course.

We’re onto feathers in Naturalist Animal Illustration with Procreate, an online course from Domestika. Following Román García Mora’s instructions I’ve made this brush to help build feathery textures.

Horbury High Street drawn from Auckland Opticians this morning.

Back to my animal illustration course and today we’re making our own Procreate brushes to represent animal hair. It’s the equivalent of using a fan brush or an old splayed brush in traditional watercolours.














At last, it’s time to go back to my Domestika courses including Román García Mora’s Naturalist Animal Illustration with Procreate.
Unfortunately my courses have disappeared (apart from Mattias Adolfsson’s cartooning course) and the Domestika chat-bot can’t help me locate them.
Does anyone know how I can contact Domestika? There’s no contact form on my version of their website on Safari.
Hurrah! I’ve found them again. As the chat-bot suggested, for some reason I must have created a second Domestika account, using my Apple ID instead of my regular e-mail. I must take those chat-bots more seriously in future.
RSPB St Aidans, 12.30 pm, Tuesday: A kestrel lands on the track ahead of us, apparently for a brief bathe in a puddle although by the time I get my binoculars on it, it’s dust-bathing then going through its preening routine for a few minutes.

It seems very relaxed about us standing just twenty yards from it. We chat with a bird watcher as we get back to the centre:
“Was it streaky?” he asks “It’d be a juvenile, they’re more trusting of people, and like all juveniles, they’ll sometimes do silly things.”

A male gatekeeper flutters past us, heads for the long grasses alongside the track and immediately gets stuck in, to us, invisible strands of a spider’s web. I feel that I ought to give it a second chance, so I gently extricate it. Free of any strands of silk, I can’t understand why it doesn’t fly off, then I notice that, hidden beneath its left wing, a spider has it firmly in its grasp.

I replace the pair amongst the grasses, leaving the spider to finish its lunch undisturbed.




A RSPB St Aidan’s this morning: volunteer wardens Tom and Evelyn, rivers MEET cafe crafter Miss B, moorhen footprints and a six-spot burnet on knapweed.
We also saw a drake common scoter, spoonbill, bittern, a juvenile kestrel dustbathing and preening and a gatekeeper blundering into a web amongst the grasses and being instantly caught by a spider.

Barbara’s mum and her friend used to go into town on the access bus on a Friday morning and she’d often come back with a brush. This bannister brush from Wilko’s was a bit of a bargain at £1.49.

I drew the brush and my camera bag in Procreate on the iPad, using Procreate’s Technical Pen.

Portraits, landscapes, nature, still life, movement and street photography . . . I feel that I’m got to know my Olympus DSLR and its 14-42mm kit lens a whole lot better in the past week.

Coming home from Leeds on the 116. Colour added later.