Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
I have to admit that I’ve cheated, these iPad drawings are both of my left hand but I flipped the hand holding the pen horizontally in Photoshop.
Drawn with an Apple Pencil in Clip Studio Paint using the ‘Textured pen’ and ‘Watery ink’ brush. I had the iPad fixed on my Sketchboard Pro drawing board.
Kittiwakes nesting and a juvenile herring gull at Bridlington Harbour; a quiet corner of Bondville Model Village; harebells at North Landing, Flamborough and ring-tailed lemur and Humboldt’s penguins at Sewerby Hall.
A couple of weeks ago I got to return to Pickering Castle for the first time since a school trip there in the 1960s. It hasn’t changed much but an improvement is that the grass on the steep slopes of the motte is now cut only once every three years its now a steeply sloping meadow with marjoram, lady’s bedstraw, knapweed and dog daisy.
Enchanter’s nightshade grows by the ‘secret’ emergency exit from the castle, the postern gate. This was built on the verbal instructions of Edward II when he visited the castle (which were later confirmed in writing). Edward had seized the castle from rebel leader Thomas Earl of Lancaster after the Battle of Boroughbridge.
“Do you draw people?” the editor asked me as she looked through my sketchbooks.
If I could draw gorillas surely it would be obvious that I’d be able to draw people too? But I decided to make a special effort.
I enrolled on a weekly life drawing evening, which I kept up for years and I set off to the local market and, over the period of several weeks, filled it with drawings of people. Wakefield had a large open market and a market hall and you got a full range of different people shopping or just browsing there.
It’s forecast to be the warmest day of the week but sitting in the shade at the foot of a woodland slope at Newmillerdam it’s like having air conditioning as I draw the hogweed.
Amongst the ripening sloes on the blackthorn are a few pocket plum galls. Pocket plum, also known as bladder plum gall, Taphrina pruni, is caused by a fungus.
There were plenty of ringlet butterflies weaving about at grass-top height in this meadow between Cawthorne and Cannon Hall Park. We thought that we spotted a single meadow brown and a skipper too.
Settling more often than the ringlets were a few fresh-looking commas. I say fresh-looking but they look like a ragged-edge dead leaf when the wings are folded shut.
Sitting outside at a table at Hillary’s cafe in Cawthorne village, I couldn’t resist drawing this chimney on a cottage across the road. It includes chimney pots of various vintages, stone, cement, brick and lead with some textured rendering on the stack plus on a tuft or two of grass and a television aerial as a final touch.
Monday morning and I’m back drawing by the tangle of hogweed, hemlock, nettle, dock and cleavers at Newmillerdam car park.
Happy birthday to Andrew (in the former Charles Roberts wagon works, where he started his career the Coffee Stop has opened in the room adjacent to the old drawing office).
Recent sketches from my pocket-sized A6 landscape sketchbook.
Photographs from our weekend tour of Kirklees Park where all that remains of the Priory are lintels and stone recycled for use in the buildings of Home Farm and the Gatehouse where, according to tradition, Robin Hood died (see my earlier post). The barn would have been in use at the time Cistercian nuns occupied the Priory.
There’s only a fragment of the original tombstone left as over the century so many visitors have chipped off fragments – Robin Hood’s stone was reputed to cure toothache. As Dr Borlik pointed out, the plant debris (larch needles?) scattered on the surface of the stone seem to have picked out a faint impression of the shaft of the cross that early drawings show carved on the stone.