Category: Drawing

A Thank you to the Hospice

Hospice staff card

From the Prince of Wales Hospice website, pwh.org.uk:

Local illustrator gives a bespoke new design to our thank you cards

new cards

Thursday, 22 June 2023

We first came across Richard Bell’s artistic talent when he sent in a hand drawn illustrated card, thanking staff for the care provided to his brother in law, John. The card was an illustration about some of the hospice team Richard and his wife, Barbara met when they visited John in our Hospice. The card also included a drawing about one of John’s great moments in the Hospice, when he was visited by two star players of Featherstone Rovers on the ward.

Hospice card
early rough
Early rough

Richard wrote: “Thank you for all that you did for John and all that you did to make us feel welcome – we’re so grateful.”

We were blown away by the level of detail Richard had used in his illustrations and we asked Richard if he wanted to design our new thank you cards. Fortunately, he kindly agreed to illustrate them for us and what a fantastic job he has done!

My rough for the staff card
Later rough

One of the new designs show a roundup of hospice staff, Richard explained: “I was aiming for a fairly generic version of the hospice staff but inevitably the individual characters keep asserting themselves.” The other thank you card design shows beautifully the Hospice building, gardens and surrounding area.
Emma Dunnill, Legacy and In Memory Fundraiser said: “Richard’s attention to detail is fantastic and we think our supporters will love the bespoke designs. We can’t wait to start sending out these well-deserved thank you cards.”

You can see more of Richard’s work on his website http://wildyorkshire.blog/ where he has also shared illustrations of the Hospice gardens from his visits.

article

Link

The Prince of Wales Hospice, Pontefract

John meets Featherstone Rovers: my original thank you card to the Hospice

Wood Pigeons

spurge and woodland sketches

These sketches from the hospital and the one of the wood were drawn with one of my regular fountain pens, the TWSBI Eco T.

pigeons sketches

But I’ve gone back to a fibre tip for these wood pigeons and sparrows in the back garden.

pigeons and art bag

These were drawn with a Mitsubishi uni pin 0.3 fine line, which has water and fade proof pigment ink.

pigeon, sparrow and foxglove

Cat’s-ear

Cat’s-ear, Hypochaeris radicata, flowering and going to seed on the front lawn, which I left untrimmed during ‘No Mow May’ but which is now due for strimming.

Longest Day

pigeons and plants

I find a quiet bench by St James’ Hospital’s historic workhouse chapel and settle down to draw the cherry tree but get distracted as two town pigeons bustle past me inspecting the turf.

stone, squirrel, birch and crow

A crow chases a scrawny-tailed squirrel across pedestrian crossing, up a couple of steps and behind a low wall towards birches.

On the artfully boulder-strewn roundabout a blackbird gathers beak-fulls of worms. After a long dry spell, yesterday’s persistent rain must have brought them to the surface again.

pigeon, crow and stone block

The grand Victorian architecture around the hospital attracts me but I prefer to draw something organic. There was a breeze blowing around the cherry tree leaves so, returning after a break, I draw its trunk and the sandstone block next to it.

crow and cat's ear

One of the crows finds an acorn-sized brown object, which immediately interests a second crow which follows it around until the item is either eaten or discarded.

Cat’s ear, self-heal, white clover and daisy grow on the lawn, although the much larger ox-eye daisy, or marguerite, that I drew was in a flower border, alongside berginia.

workhouse chapel

We have a brief shower in the afternoon, so I head for the church. The multi-coloured round-topped arch looks more byzantine than romanesque to me. There’s another similar arch above it with a balcony overlooking the chancel. As this was a workhouse chapel, I did wonder if anyone with an infectious disease would be put up there but it’s probably more likely that it was originally an organ loft.

Olympus OM-D E-M10 II

camera

I’ve had my Olympus E-M10 for seven years but I think this is the first time it’s been to Europe, unfortunately I didn’t go with it. Thank you to Miguel Teixeira in Portugal for repairing the viewfinder and flip-up display, as well as checking it over, cleaning it and updating the firmware (something that I tried repeatedly to do but which never worked for me).

I’m now making efforts to relearn what all those dials and function buttons are capable of and particularly to improve my macro photography by at last working out how to use the focus-bracketing function.

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Categorized as Drawing

Whelk Egg Cases

whelk egg cases

Whelks gather together for a mass spawning, so each of these egg cases was added by a different individual. Each case can contain 1,000 eggs but the first few to hatch will feed on the remaining eggs.

Procreate drawing

I photographed this egg mass on the beach at Druridge Bay and used a handy feature of Procreate, a reference image panel, when I drew it using Procreate’s ‘Technical Pen’.

Back Garden Kills

A song thrush has been catching garden snails in our garden and next door, using our patio and next door’s garden path as an anvil to smash the shell.

Down between the veg beds from a couple of days ago, wood pigeon feathers from a sparrowhawk kill. Three of the larger feathers that I found had a small scar around the quills where the sparrowhawk had twisted out the feather in its beak.

We saw a group of house sparrows gathered around and one flew off with a white downy feather as nesting material.

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Categorized as Drawing

Chairs

The view from the waiting room is of a blank pebble-dashed wall, so I get another chance to practice drawing chairs. The blue chair was drawn using my usual method, lifting my hand from the paper frequently to check proportion and having a couple of goes at a line where necessary. The red chairs were drawn (almost) without lifting my pen from the paper. The disadvantage of this method is that for most of the time most of the drawing is covered, but I do like the wayward wobbly line that this results in.

Pelargonium

Pelargonium

After a year, our zonal pelargonium is beginning to look a bit leggy.

Drawn in Procreate on the iPad using the Tinderbox virtual pen from the Inking section. Having got through all three of my PenTips 2 soft Apple Pencil tips, I’m now back to a plain Apple Pencil tip but the canvas texture of the PenTips Magnetic Matte Screenprotector is working well for me, an improvement on drawing on the iPad’s glass screen.