Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
Though a critic of the concept of an elected mayor for West Yorkshire, describing it as ‘an elected dictatorship, and not a proper democratic body’, Andrew Cooper, from Huddersfield, is representing the Green Party in next month’s election.
In 1977, during my lunchbreak, when I taught illustration at Leeds, I walked into Austicks’ Headrow Bookshop and was surprised to see Peter Ustinov at the back of the shop with the manager. The ideal opportunity to get a signed copy of this autobiography, Dear Me, for my Mum’s birthday.
“Who should I sign it to?” he asked.
“That’s a problem, she hates her name, Gladys.”
“That’s just like the Gladyses that I know.”
It wouldn’t look very friendly signed ‘To Mrs Bell’, so we went for:
‘Happy Birthday
to Richard’s Mum’
My Mum finally found a way around this. When she found herself far from home in the West Country, having broken her leg during a holiday she gave the nurse her middle name Joan, as she didn’t want ‘Gladys’ on the notice above her bed, so when she’d recovered enough to be transported by ambulance back to our local hospital, Pinderfields, in Wakefield, she stuck with her new name. From then on her friends called her Joan.
I’ve drawn this, as with previous sketches, from the Radio Times. This week the 1964 comedy heist movie Topkapi gets a showing. Ustinov won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for his role as Arthur Simon Simpson, a small-time crook who finds himself out of his depth.
A man carrying a box: it says something for Jonah Hill’s talents that he can conjure up a character – in fact a little short story – in one expressive pose. In Rupert Goold’s True Story he plays real-life New York Times journalist Michael Finkel acting ‘on well-intentioned-schlub setting’, as Radio Times film critic Andrew Collins puts it in his review (schlub is North American derogatory slang for a ‘talentless, unattractive or boorish person’, so definitely not like Jonah Hill).
Katherine Waterston’s character Daniels, has all the kit she needs to terraform a lush alien planet. What could possibly go wrong?
Good to see Michael Rosen smiling again in last week’s Radio Times. This time last year, he was in an induced coma with a 50-50 chance of surviving Covid-19. In his latest book, Many Different Kinds of Love A story of life, death and the NHS, he recounts his near-death experience, illustrated by Chris Riddell.
this is a beautiful book about love, life and the NHS that celebrates the power of community and the indomitable spirits of the people who keep us well.
Waterstones’ website
Martin Luther King features in a couple of television documentaries this week, giving me an opportunity to draw him from two small black and white photographs. That rather unusual angle, looking up at his face, might explain why I struggled with proportions in my first attempt.
“Tonight in The Den: Will a pen-pushing portraitist punter draw a Dragon and persuade ‘his nibs’ Peter Jones to close a deal? Or will he blot his copybook with Deborah Meaden? Will Tej Lalvani ask to see the paperwork or will Touker testily talk about a touch of Tippex? And will TV-marketing guru Sara Davies have an inkling that the portraits would look much better on the radio?”
Katherine Parkinson’s character Mary sits for her portrait in Lights Up: Sitting on BBC4 this evening. Writing the play and acting the single character who appears – we never glimpse the artist – she’s caught the awkwardness of most life class poses in the photograph in this week’s Radio Times.
After six or seven years I gave up on the weekly life class at Wakefield College because, looking back on my drawings, I preferred some of the early ones to my later efforts. The five-minute poses that the tutor used to start off the class livened things up a bit but for a pose that the model had to hold for an hour the possibilities were somewhat limited.
These days I prefer draw people on location, preferably while I’m sitting outside a coffee shop, which could be a possibility starting next week.
With animation, it’s so important to understand the motivation and emotional state of your character. Obviously an aerial predator is swooping low over the coop and the little red hen is raising the alarm.
Either that or it’s trying to lay an extra large egg.
Animation drawn in Clip Studio Paint using an Apple Pencil on an iPad Pro.
I enjoyed John Malkovich’s older Hercule Poirot solving The ABC Murders a few years ago, introducing a rather darker version of the detective and convincingly evoking what I imagine a 1930s atmosphere should be. I loved that he had an apartment in the mansions near the Royal Albert Hall, as that was such a familiar spot in my student days as I walked to and from the Kensington Gore building of the Royal College of Art.
I’m studying Quentin Blake’s approach to illustration at the moment which is why I’ve tried to free up my drawing here. Blake’s hands are rarely observed with anatomical precision but they’re so confidently drawn and so expressive of the individual character that they look completely convincing.
But I feel uncomfortable deliberately drawing hands so rapidly, without attempting to observe every individual joint. Folds in material I’m happier with, as they’re fluid and semi-abstract anyway.