Category: Drawing

Horbury, 1964

Horbury Church, 1964

I took this photograph of Horbury St Peter’s Church in 1964. That’s Ingham’s upholstery workshop and hardware store on the left. The advertisement was for Royal hardboard. I’ve colourised this photograph and the yellow and blue are as I remember them (but possibly not as they actually were).

I was using an Ilford Sprite 127mm camera and developing my own film at the time. This proved to be such a disaster that it’s only now, sixty years later, that, using my scanner and Adobe Photoshop, I can salvage images from the scratched, uneven home-developing disaster.

original photograph

Dipping into the envelope of negatives is like opening a time capsule. Some of the locations I’m having difficulty recognising.

town hall

Not this one though which is Horbury Town Hall, which still looks very much like this today.

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Trip to Leeds

sycamore

Sycamores, bus passengers, limestone pavement and a glacial overflow channel at Newtondale, all drawn on a trip to Leeds (but two were from photographic murals in hospital waiting rooms, a change from drawing chairs for me).

Newtondale

Newtondale

limestone

Limestone pavement

bus folk

Bus folk

Click Beetle

Testing out my new field guide, Britain’s Insects by Paul D. Brock. I got a good look at the click beetle, which was flying slowly past me, wing cases outspread. I caught it in the palm of my hand and after a few seconds lying on its back it performed its click, springing up from my hand and landing, right side up this time on the ground.

For the small hoverfly I’m going to have to refer to the companion field guide to Britain’s Hoverflies.

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Abbeydale Road

We’ve been trying to meet up with Kathleen, my now 93 year-old cousin, since before the pandemic but at last we got to see her today at Bragazzi’s, on Abbeydale Road, a part of Sheffield where my mum grew up. Her local cinema, the 1,560-seater Abbeydale ‘Picture Palace’, built in 1920, is currently being restored.

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Deadnettle

Ground ivy, growing at on the grassy verge of a path near the river.

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A Lighter Touch

hand sketch
spire

I’ve been reading a list of ‘Five Essential Tips for Beginners’ in digital art and number one is: ‘Use a light touch when drawing on your tablet of device. This will help prevent unwanted pressure marks and smudging’.

That’s good advice. Having got through two PenTips 2 soft tips for my Apple Pencil in just a couple of weeks, I’m pleased that I’ve done better with the last remaining one.

I’m hoping that the lighter touch that I’m learning to use will transfer to my regular drawing with a pen on paper.

Another problem that I had with my way of drawing was that I was inadvertently changing the colour of my brush by resting a finger on the screen and invoking the eye-dropper tool. I’ve changed that in preferences so I can access the eye-dropper with a different shortcut.

jugs

Sketching by the Pond

Dalesman spread

I’m working on my July issue of my Wild Yorkshire nature diary for The Dalesman using Adobe InDesign and Photoshop to fit everything in.

Dalesman spread

Being pressed for space I’ve tried to fit the swarming bees into the margin and, to add to the drama, instead of my usual smiling mugshot, I’ve tried a cartoon of Barbara and I on bee alert, blocking holes with steel wool and masking tape. This might not make it into the final cut, but I like to experiment.

Bee alert
bee sketches

Garden Painting Workshop

Hilary Cooper

I did consider taking acrylics and a canvas to today’s painting workshop at RHS Harlow Carr run by their current artist in residence, Hilary Burnett Cooper, but I stuck with my regular pen and watercolour and it was a chance to try my larger watercolour box on location. I recently updated it so that there are fewer strident greenish blues and earthy browns, replacing those with colours that would be more useful for flower painting.

Bergenia

Link

Hilary Burnett Cooper Landscape, scenic and figurative artist

PenTips PenPad

PenTips accessories
Procreate drawing

More PenTips goodies: glove, grip and, my favourite, the PenPad Shortcut Panel for Procreate on the iPad. I’ve used Procreate a lot and gone through dozens of tutorials but there are some shortcuts, such as ‘Cut’, that I have a mental block about. There they all are on the pad, so I don’t have to break my workflow by searching through sub-menus.

I’m still searching for my favourite virtual pen in Procreate. In Clip Studio Paint my go-to pen is usually the ‘Real G-Pen’ but in Procreate with dozens of virtual pens to choose from, I’m still undecided.

Perhaps drawing my chitted potatoes with a selection of pens from the Procreate ‘Inking’ section will help me narrow it down.

Pentips 2 Soft

Procreate drawing

I like the extra control that I get with the PenTips 2 ‘Soft’ rubber-like replacement tip for the Apple Pencil but I’ve now damaged two of the three that come in the pack.

Although most of the time when I’m drawing my touch is reasonably light, when it comes to adding colour or erasing it’s a different story. I find that it’s necessary to press on extra hard to squeeze a pool of virtual watercolour from a brush. If I’m using one of the subtler forms of the eraser I can find myself pressing hard to remove a stubborn line.

3 PenTips should potentially last 2 years but I’m getting through one a week! Perhaps I should have gone for their new tougher version designed for wiring.

The PenTip can then stick to the glass and split at the end, revealing the metal core.

Real G-Pen, Clip Studio, ‘Between the Covers’, BBC2.