High Street

High Street

Horbury High Street drawn from Auckland Opticians this morning.

Fur Balls

Back to my animal illustration course and today we’re making our own Procreate brushes to represent animal hair. It’s the equivalent of using a fan brush or an old splayed brush in traditional watercolours.

In Search of Lost Courses

At last, it’s time to go back to my Domestika courses including Román García Mora’s Naturalist Animal Illustration with Procreate.

Unfortunately my courses have disappeared (apart from Mattias Adolfsson’s cartooning course) and the Domestika chat-bot can’t help me locate them.

Does anyone know how I can contact Domestika? There’s no contact form on my version of their website on Safari.

Found!

Hurrah! I’ve found them again. As the chat-bot suggested, for some reason I must have created a second Domestika account, using my Apple ID instead of my regular e-mail. I must take those chat-bots more seriously in future.

Kestrel Preening

RSPB St Aidans, 12.30 pm, Tuesday: A kestrel lands on the track ahead of us, apparently for a brief bathe in a puddle although by the time I get my binoculars on it, it’s dust-bathing then going through its preening routine for a few minutes.

It seems very relaxed about us standing just twenty yards from it. We chat with a bird watcher as we get back to the centre:

“Was it streaky?” he asks “It’d be a juvenile, they’re more trusting of people, and like all juveniles, they’ll sometimes do silly things.”

Gatekeeper

A male gatekeeper flutters past us, heads for the long grasses alongside the track and immediately gets stuck in, to us, invisible strands of a spider’s web. I feel that I ought to give it a second chance, so I gently extricate it. Free of any strands of silk, I can’t understand why it doesn’t fly off, then I notice that, hidden beneath its left wing, a spider has it firmly in its grasp.

I replace the pair amongst the grasses, leaving the spider to finish its lunch undisturbed.

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Categorized as Drawing

Six-spot Burnet

A RSPB St Aidan’s this morning: volunteer wardens Tom and Evelyn, rivers MEET cafe crafter Miss B, moorhen footprints and a six-spot burnet on knapweed.

We also saw a drake common scoter, spoonbill, bittern, a juvenile kestrel dustbathing and preening and a gatekeeper blundering into a web amongst the grasses and being instantly caught by a spider.

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Categorized as Drawing

Bag and Brush

brush

Barbara’s mum and her friend used to go into town on the access bus on a Friday morning and she’d often come back with a brush. This bannister brush from Wilko’s was a bit of a bargain at £1.49.

camera bag

I drew the brush and my camera bag in Procreate on the iPad, using Procreate’s Technical Pen.

Camera and Kit Lens

camera

Portraits, landscapes, nature, still life, movement and street photography . . . I feel that I’m got to know my Olympus DSLR and its 14-42mm kit lens a whole lot better in the past week.

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Categorized as Drawing