Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
Jenny, natural history illustrator, drawing by our pond. She recently completed a commission to illustrate an information board about the wildlife at a pond on a nature reserve in West Sussex.
She started on John Norris Wood’s natural history illustration course at the Royal College of Art a year after I left, in 1976 and graduated in 1979, focussing on the Chelsea Physic Garden, it’s history and plants.
My Letts School-Boys Diary, Friday, 16th July 1965:
Trip. Wore jeans and pullover. Set off 9.10 got to Richmond at 10.45. Had lunch over looking Swale. Went round castle. Guide (1/-) got postcard of Richard III. Trip in Dales made 3 miles longer (?) because of road blockage. Developed film
Perhaps after such a long day I should have left developing the film until later but despite the botched job, I’m pleased 58 years later, to have rescued some images from the negatives.
I haven’t visited the castle since, so I think that it’s time to re-read the guidebook and take another look.
My friend Stefaniw appears, slightly solarised, in one of the photographs. We were in the third form and my diary records that the previous day our O-level subjects were decided:
Am taking Art and Physics with Chemistry. I did seascape in art. Read Beowulf. Gave in Maths and Eng. books.
Stef persuaded Mr Axford to let him take all three sciences.
Did Triffids.
Watched Matterhorn Anniversary Climb, M. from U.N.C.L.E
Thursday 15th July 1965
From the Prince of Wales Hospice website, pwh.org.uk:
Thursday, 22 June 2023
We first came across Richard Bell’s artistic talent when he sent in a hand drawn illustrated card, thanking staff for the care provided to his brother in law, John. The card was an illustration about some of the hospice team Richard and his wife, Barbara met when they visited John in our Hospice. The card also included a drawing about one of John’s great moments in the Hospice, when he was visited by two star players of Featherstone Rovers on the ward.
Richard wrote: “Thank you for all that you did for John and all that you did to make us feel welcome – we’re so grateful.”
We were blown away by the level of detail Richard had used in his illustrations and we asked Richard if he wanted to design our new thank you cards. Fortunately, he kindly agreed to illustrate them for us and what a fantastic job he has done!
One of the new designs show a roundup of hospice staff, Richard explained: “I was aiming for a fairly generic version of the hospice staff but inevitably the individual characters keep asserting themselves.” The other thank you card design shows beautifully the Hospice building, gardens and surrounding area.
Emma Dunnill, Legacy and In Memory Fundraiser said: “Richard’s attention to detail is fantastic and we think our supporters will love the bespoke designs. We can’t wait to start sending out these well-deserved thank you cards.”
You can see more of Richard’s work on his website http://wildyorkshire.blog/ where he has also shared illustrations of the Hospice gardens from his visits.
The Prince of Wales Hospice, Pontefract
John meets Featherstone Rovers: my original thank you card to the Hospice
Seedheads from the garden: Opium Poppy, Eastern Mediterranean; Sicilian Honey Lily, Mediterranean, Turkey and Black Sea; Chives, Temperate Europe, Asia and North America and Perennial Cornflower from the subalpine meadows and open woods of Europe.
These sketches from the hospital and the one of the wood were drawn with one of my regular fountain pens, the TWSBI Eco T.
But I’ve gone back to a fibre tip for these wood pigeons and sparrows in the back garden.
These were drawn with a Mitsubishi uni pin 0.3 fine line, which has water and fade proof pigment ink.
Cat’s-ear, Hypochaeris radicata, flowering and going to seed on the front lawn, which I left untrimmed during ‘No Mow May’ but which is now due for strimming.
I find a quiet bench by St James’ Hospital’s historic workhouse chapel and settle down to draw the cherry tree but get distracted as two town pigeons bustle past me inspecting the turf.
A crow chases a scrawny-tailed squirrel across pedestrian crossing, up a couple of steps and behind a low wall towards birches.
On the artfully boulder-strewn roundabout a blackbird gathers beak-fulls of worms. After a long dry spell, yesterday’s persistent rain must have brought them to the surface again.
The grand Victorian architecture around the hospital attracts me but I prefer to draw something organic. There was a breeze blowing around the cherry tree leaves so, returning after a break, I draw its trunk and the sandstone block next to it.
One of the crows finds an acorn-sized brown object, which immediately interests a second crow which follows it around until the item is either eaten or discarded.
Cat’s ear, self-heal, white clover and daisy grow on the lawn, although the much larger ox-eye daisy, or marguerite, that I drew was in a flower border, alongside berginia.
We have a brief shower in the afternoon, so I head for the church. The multi-coloured round-topped arch looks more byzantine than romanesque to me. There’s another similar arch above it with a balcony overlooking the chancel. As this was a workhouse chapel, I did wonder if anyone with an infectious disease would be put up there but it’s probably more likely that it was originally an organ loft.
I’ve had my Olympus E-M10 for seven years but I think this is the first time it’s been to Europe, unfortunately I didn’t go with it. Thank you to Miguel Teixeira in Portugal for repairing the viewfinder and flip-up display, as well as checking it over, cleaning it and updating the firmware (something that I tried repeatedly to do but which never worked for me).
I’m now making efforts to relearn what all those dials and function buttons are capable of and particularly to improve my macro photography by at last working out how to use the focus-bracketing function.
Whelks gather together for a mass spawning, so each of these egg cases was added by a different individual. Each case can contain 1,000 eggs but the first few to hatch will feed on the remaining eggs.
I photographed this egg mass on the beach at Druridge Bay and used a handy feature of Procreate, a reference image panel, when I drew it using Procreate’s ‘Technical Pen’.
A song thrush has been catching garden snails in our garden and next door, using our patio and next door’s garden path as an anvil to smash the shell.
Down between the veg beds from a couple of days ago, wood pigeon feathers from a sparrowhawk kill. Three of the larger feathers that I found had a small scar around the quills where the sparrowhawk had twisted out the feather in its beak.
We saw a group of house sparrows gathered around and one flew off with a white downy feather as nesting material.