Category: Drawing

Sutton-cum-Lound Gravel Pits, 1973

gravel lorry sketch

From my sketchbook (and diary) from 50 years ago today, Thursday, 23 August, 1973:

Mother and I visited Grandma (in excellent form). Such a fine afternoon that I took a walk out to the Gravel Pits that I haven’t visited since I was so high (well a little higher than that perhaps).

sketchbook page

A rich hedgerow was suffering from the dust of gravel lorries.

81 coots (mainly & a few tufted)
15 lapwing

sketchbook page

Common Persicaria, Pollygonum persicaria, is typical of disturbed and damp ground such as there was about the gravel workings. The leaves often have a dark blotch. Also known as Redshank.

One explanation of the dark patch is that the Devil once pinched the leaves and made them useless as they lack the fiery flavour of water-pepper.

Shetlanders used to extract a yellow dye from it.

Yes, this was a potato – the gravel pit seems to have been partly filled by rubbish.

In Search of a Lost Museum

Mother and I stopped off in Barnsley on our way to Grandma’s. According to The Naturalist’s Handbook there is a museum there.

comic strip search for the museum

“This building was the Harvey Institute, many years ago, and there was a museum here, which was in what is now the Junior Library.”

Thornhill 1973

sketchbook page

Fifty years ago today after lunch I was off on my bike on a research trip to Thornhill for my natural history of Wakefield sketchbook.

sketchbook page

I was going for a wide perspective. In the morning I’d made my first attempt at painting our galaxy – with Wakefield marked towards the end of one of the spiral arms.

grave stones Thornhill

For my theme about our place in the landscape, the ‘Very Celtic Decorations’ and runes on the early Christian grave stones appealed to me.

Church – 1495 window best viewed through 10×50 binoculars

My diary, 22 August 1973

This expedition was mainly as a break from work on the book. I didn’t intend doing much drawing but made these notes of the plants.

Typical wasteland plants on the track by Healey Mills Marshalling Yards; Rose Bay, Tansy.

But it wasn’t all work. Before I set out I’d watched the Oliver Postgate/Peter Firmin children’s programme Pogles Wood. I loved Firmin’s relaxed illustrations and the homemade feel of the stop action animation and I envied them their Smallfilms studio, a converted barn in the Kent countryside.

Notes from a Nervous Student

still life

A few more sketches from 1973. I’d been hand lettering my Sketchbook of the Natural History of the Country Round Wakefield and I was worried about my shaky hands:

Fell boot

. . . `I didn’t get very much work done on the book. It’s the energy flow chart I’m doing. But my hands are so shaky when I try to do letter forms. I have to practice quite a bit to get it right, but it’s so maddening; a real curse. Depending on how this book goes I think that I shall have to give up hand lettering for good; or have the operation for Parkinson’s Disease . . . or try a different pen or pen nib.

When I’ve calmed down and don’t worry too much about each letter and curve I can produce readable lettering . . . it’s like walking – if you start thinking about each step you soon trip up

My diary for Wednesday, 15th August, 1973
haversack

Fifty years later I’m still hand lettering and still worrying about my shaky hands, although it’s nothing to do with Parkinson’s Disease, it’s just the regular Essential or Familial Tremor (which can be controlled by drinking red wine!)

It wasn’t all agonising about artwork though: I recorded ‘!! SEVEN REDSHANK !!’ on the Wyke and 3 sandpipers on the river.

Garden Snail

garden snail

As I weeded the path behind the raised bed, one of the garden snail shells I spotted this morning was smashed, probably by a thrush; another was occupied, so I popped it into a crevice and a third was empty, a good subject to try out some Procreate illustration techniques on as I get back into my course.

Fire Feet

Fire Feet

From my www.wildyorkshire.co.uk blog, 30th May 2004:

A family gathering means that I meet up with George, aged 7, my great nephew. At a previous family party he and I collaborated on a story, Firefeet. George improvised the story – and for once I was careful not to prompt him, or discuss the plot with him, it was entirely from his own imagination – and I drew the illustrations as the story progressed. George kept the original copy, which was just on a piece of folded scrap paper but I was so haunted by the tale that I wrote it out again from memory, redrew the illustrations, coloured it in Photoshop and printed out a few copies on my colour printer.

George aged 6.
swatches
Swatches used when I coloured my scanned pen drawings for ‘Fire Feet’ (mainly using the paint bucket tool).

Bag and Trainers

bag and trainers drawing

Going back to dip pen and ink – in this case De Atramentis – and watercolour for this drawing of my Lowe Alpine haversack and Merrell trainers.

More Osprey Sketches

osprey and scots pine

From my Osprey Camp sketchbook, July-August, 1973: I would have done some sketching on the summit of Cairngorm on Wednesday but the cloud never rose and my hands were numb. I was counting people who got to the top (4,084 feet). It was like working in a small cold but well frequented moon . . . The ride on the ski lift was great fun.

Note: In the Cairngorm Visitor Survey, during the period 19-25 July inclusive, 2,677 people were recored at the summit with a maximum of 900 (exactly!) on 23 July and a minimum of 65 on 20 July.
I was there on the final day.

pine stump

On Wednesday evening David [a surveyor from Edinburgh] and I took the night watch. l started, then realized that I’d already read ‘The Assailants’ by Stan Barstow so I read another short story from Argosy 1970.

The ospreys stretched their wings the wren sang round the hide. It began getting light at two thirty to three and got lighter and lighter. The chaffinches came for biscuits and a squirrel. But the ♂ didn’t bring a fish – they seemed to be finishing off the monster fish he staggered home with last night.

forward hide

On Friday afternoon we walked up to Einich. Eight miles along a track built to transport pipes to the loch. We didn’t have time to climb the steep sides. No eagles. But two Ring Ousels. A good walk though.

bike shed

In the evening with Jean and Peter walked along the firebreak; kestrel, capercaillie, mistle throstles, small brittle skinned brown puff ball type fungus; along past Malachi until it was possible to cut across the moor and back to camp where I had another go at Chris’s mini. It looks as if it’s breathing this time; keep trying.

fungus
Rough-stemmed boletus

Torr Hill

lorry, Torr Hill

Thursday 9th August 1973, from my Osprey Camp, Loch Garten, sketchbook: What a wind; swaying the forest pines, bending over the birches on the moor, breaking up the bank of cloud coming up the valley. There was white water on the gullery and grey breakers on Garten when I got round. I walked on shore getting sprayed.

‘They’ll moulder away and be like other loam.’ said Edwin Muir in his poem ‘The Horses’. This lorry was mouldering away on Torr Hill.

Operation Osprey, 1973

Osprey sketchbook

Fifty years ago today I was halfway through a 3-week stint as a volunteer warden for the RSPB’s Operation Osprey at Loch Garten.

osprey sketchbook page

A squirrel came down from the shutters into the hide and ran off with an entire Rich Abernethy biscuit.

The female osprey seemed considering an extension to the nest . . .

  1. Because the young are growing and knock her out of the nest every time they exercize
  2. the nest slipped over the other day.
sketchbook

WEDNESDAY 1st of AUGUST

Up Cairngorm with Linda & Bill . . . by chairlift to the middle station: the top section was closed because of high winds. Just beyond the Ptarmigan Restaurant a noise like a motor starting or one of the snow fences creaking in a the wind . . . a ptarmigan, no 3, no 10 . . . we walked towards them when they started moving we counted thirty but when they were still their plumage looked like granite only the white wings showed. Cairngorm had his head in the clouds. We turned back down.

Filtered Sunlight

woodland walk

At Newmillerdam this morning I’m experimenting with Art Filters on my Olympus DSLR, keeping it set to High Key, which seems appropriate for the first bright day that we’ve had for a while.

mallards on fallen birch trunk

We’re on the regular lakeside circuit and, as it’s summer holidays, it’s good to see so many children taking an interest in nature (which isn’t to say that I don’t enjoy it just as much when they’re back in the classroom and we have the walk to ourselves!)

willow

The High Key emphasises pattern in bark and rippling water but it leaves images looking pale and contrasty – I suppose that’s the whole idea – with highlights burnt out, so I’ve taken the images into Adobe Lightroom and looked through the suggested filters for something nearer to what I had in mind when I took the photograph.

Lawns Dike sign

I find myself looking at the familiar trail from an alternative point of view as ‘high key’ makes me think of the brighter side of nostalgic subjects. The texture in the sidelit Lawns Dike Trail sign with the mossy stonework and weatherworn wooden sign is just what I had in mind. It reminds me of vintage colour postcards.

ducklings

As I’m fiddling with every image in Lightroom I might as well have taken normally exposed photographs and decided for each which filter – or no filter at all – might have been appropriate.

tree roots

But I did try one more filter: the mallards in eclipse plumage dabbling around the Boathouse Cafe got the Vintage Filter, but again with a bit of tweaking in Lightroom afterwards.

mallards

The vintage effect works for me as it reminds me of colour plates in Edwardian natural history books.

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