A guest illustrator in my nature diary in the July ‘Dalesman’: Jenny Hawksley, who joined us for a lightning tour of the North Yorks Moors and coast last summer drew the garland of wild flowers.
Guest Artist
Category: Drawing
Lighthouse
Experimenting with Procreate and loosely based on Coquet Island lighthouse but minus the puffins, sandwich and roseate terns this is my take on the first project in the ‘Beginner’s Guide to Digital Painting in Procreate’. My thanks to freelance director and artist Izzy Burton for her step-by-step tutorial.
Foxgloves
‘Versatile, bee-friendly, drop-dead gorgeous,’ foxgloves are the cover star of this month’s RHS ‘Garden’ magazine.
They self seed around the garden and we’ve got more than usual this year as we haven’t cleared them from the veg beds, which we’re revamping this year.
Pebbles at Spurn
Ice Age glaciers and longshore drift have contributed a variety of pebbles to the beach at the northern, landward, end of the spit at Spurn which stretches almost three miles out across the mouth of the Humber Estuary.
Despite previous attempts to protect the spit, high tides now wash over it in places.
Marram grass, Ammophila arenia, stabalises the shifting sands of the dunes.
I was surprised to see a single patch of bluebells, Hyacinthoides non-scripta, growing amongst the marram to the west of the track not far from the area known at The Warren.
Washed up on the beach, a velvet swimming crab, Necora puber, with blue markings on its pincers, legs and shell.
Hornwrack, Flustra foliacea, not a seaweed but a colonial animal. Individual ‘sea moss’ filter-feeding animals called zooids lived in tiny cells that you can see as the stippled surface texture of the fronds.
Maris Peer
Still a bit too early to put these in as we’re still having the occasional overnight frost.
Maris Bard
My right thumb is doing well – I’d sprained it with a marathon session of snipping back the ivy and hawthorn – but I’m still keen to practice drawing with my non-dominant left hand. These chitted Maris Bard first early seed potatoes are ideal subjects for my wobbly pen.
Morels and Scurvygrass
This month’s spread from the Dalesman. The morel growing from the foot of a wall just down the road was a new species for me.
Left-handed Sketchbook
My attempts at drawing – and, even more tricky, writing – with my non-dominant hand. Guest artist: my great niece Florence, who drew the snowman with the psychedelic mandalas.
After several over-enthusiastic sessions trimming back the rowan and crab apple with secateurs, the doctor has suggested that I take a break from anything too strenuous with my right hand for a couple of weeks, so no more big pruning sessions, but I will be doing some gentle exercises with a squeezy soft ball.
Joe Earnshaw
You wouldn’t want to meet Joe Earnshaw on a dark night, but if you’d been prowling around the mill yard at Arkwright’s in Baring-Gould’s novel Through Flood and Flame, you’d find it hard to avoid him as he’s the resident night watchman.
Hugh Arkwright, ‘Through Flood . . .’
Meet our hero, Hugh Arkwright of Arkwright’s Mill in Sabine Baring-Gould’s thinly disguised version of Horbury in his semi-autobiographical novel of 1868, Through Flood and Flame. I’ve gone for him encountering peril number one, the flood.
I based the action-hero pose on an Indiana Jones movie poster but as Indy is holding his trademark bullwhip and our hero Hugh was negotiating the flood walking along a garden wall clinging onto a clothes line to keep his balance, I’ve shown him in a later scene which involves a rescue by boat (although in that case Hugh is catching the lifeline rather than throwing it).
Hat, frock coat and necktie, along with the character himself, based on Timothée Chalamet’s version of Willy Wonka.