It’s the last day, meteorologically speaking, of winter but at times it has seemed more like spring today. It’s a good time to go through my pocket sketchbook, to upload the drawings that didn’t made it into my posts.
The View from Brontë Tower
For so much of the winter, we’ve been preoccupied by medical matters, especially in Barbara’s brother John’s gradual recovery from a stroke at the beginning of December. He’s now back home and doing well.
The stroke unit at Dewsbury Hospital is on the fifth floor of the Brontë Tower, with views, on a clear day, of the tops of the Pennines. They were at their most striking one clear sunny morning, after a snow shower over the moor tops.
Back to the future: welcome to my school for the space age, as envisaged in my art homework in 1965. I was ahead of my time: that airy auditorium reminds me of the Scottish Parliament, which didn’t get built until forty years later. No wonder I felt so relaxed and at home, when we visited Holyrood last summer.
The Writing on the Wall
My high-tec teaching aids are now commonplace in the classroom: projectors, televisions and my analogue version of today’s computer-controlled whiteboards.
Each desk has its own reel-to-reel tape recorder but, typical of school, the pupils have to share: one between two.
This weekend my old brass alarm clock appears in Harrison’s Garden at Nostell Priory, an installation by artist Luke Jerram to celebrate the 300th anniversary of one of John Harrison’s early longcase clocks, created in 1717 (see link below).
My alarm clock, made by Peter of Germany, dates from the late 1970s, when I needed something more robust to get me out of bed in the morning than the little travel alarm that my Uncle Fred bought me for my 21st birthday.
In a drawing from 1977 (or 1978?), I included the alarm clock hanging from a metal shelf unit in a cluttered corner of my room.
Whatever I bought for my room, I tried to select something that I might use as reference for an illustration, so I went for a brass alarm clock that seemed to me to be the essence of what an alarm clock should look like.
Brushwork
Still life studies that I painted as a sample for my folio.
When I chose a brush to sweep the ashes from the hearth, I went for a traditional design: one that I’d be able to draw if I ever needed a brush as a prop in a children’s story. I chose well with that because, earlier this week, I used the same red brush, now with its bristles much worn down, to sweep up in the greenhouse.
These still life studies were mainly pencil and watercolour but I sometimes finished off with just a spot or two of gouache: the highlights on the handle of the brush are stipples of white gouache and the light tips of the bristles are streaks of yellow ochre. I remember being particularly pleased with how those bristles turned out.
The Mantlepiece
One of my favourite paintings at the time – and it’s still one of my favourites – was Vuillard’sLa Cheminee in the National Gallery in London, so I guess that was the inspiration for this sketch of my own mantlepiece. I’ve still got a couple of those golden syrup tins on the end of the bookshelves right next to me as I type this. Today they’re mainly filled with pens and pencils.
I’ve still got the blue Thermos flask too; it’s on a shelf at the back of the garage, rusted through at the base but still usable. We’ve got better flasks now, but I can’t bring myself to throw it out, as it’s been on so many adventures with me. It once rolled part way down a cliff top slope on Skokholm Island, West Wales, and it appears in my Richard Bell’s Britain sketchbook, published in 1981 by Collins.
Self Portrait
Self portrait, August 1978.
As a natural history illustrator, I found that when I visited a publisher and showed them my portfolio and some of my sketchbooks of animals, plants and landscapes, the editor would ask me, ‘Do you ever draw people?’, so at that time, in the late 1970s, I made a special effort to improve my figure drawing: sketching at local markets, enrolling in a life class and reading up on anatomy.
I drew a series of self portraits in pencil, looking for features such as my:
depressor anguli oris (a muscle used in frowning)
levator anguli oris (a muscle used in smiling)
zygomatic arch (the bony arch of my cheek)
I set up two mirrors so that I could draw myself the right way round, as others would see me. Curiously since I drew this thirty-nine years ago, I’ve hardly changed, apart from looking thirty-nine years older.
My current pocket sketchbook isn’t designed to take watercolour but it makes a change to use crayons.
I always feel that using a ‘flesh-coloured’ crayon is cheating but, having started with that as the basic colour, I can add various browns and a touch of crimson red to represent the actual colours of my skin.
This morning we finished the village scene for this year’s pantomime, Cinderella, and this afternoon we’ve blocked in the forest, on the reverse side of the backdrop. I had no fewer than seven helpers – members of the cast and their mums – filling in the outlines for me.
The flat, rounded shapes remind me of Clarice Cliff designs, but we’ll add a bit of shading and outline tomorrow morning.
Dress rehearsal is tomorrow at two, but I’m sure we’ll be finished by then.
On the lane between Notton and Woolley, a kestrel sits, hunched and huddled, in a roadside tree.
At Woolley Edge, there’s a flash of colour as a jay gets up from a roadside verge. Oak trees grow along the sandstone ridge here, so perhaps it was burying, or retrieving, an acorn.
As we reach the open higher ground at Bretton roundabout, we pass a buzzard sitting on a fence-post at the edge of the road.
As we get nearer to Flockton, we see a second kestrel, hovering over the field by the road.
Notton in the 1800s
Notton from the original Ordnance Survey map, 3D view created in Memory Map.
Looking at our route on the original Ordnance Survey map from the 1800s, I’m surprised to see what a busy landscape this was, with its sandstone quarries,gravel pits and a brick kiln where George Lane meets the Wakefield to Barnsley road.
Just north of the gravel pit there are kennels and, more exotically, three-quarters of a mile to the northeast, there’s a Menagerie, which was part of the Chevet Hall estate.
An osier bed, near the top right corner of my map, would have produced the flexible whips of willow needed for basketmaking.
The armchair, at Barbara’s brother John’s, makes a laid-back still life subject with its generous proportions and its rumpled cushions.
His Sony stereo, with its antenna, eye-like twin knobs and gaping mouth, looks like the head of a robot from an animated movie.
Peace Lily
John’s living room even gives me a chance to sketch some botanical details; there’s a Peace Lily, Spathiphyllum, on the table by the window.
The cluster of small conical flowers, arranged spirally around the spadix appear to be all female.
The Peace Lily, also known as the Sail Plant, is a member of the Araceae family, the Arums, members of which are mainly tropical. There are only two British species: Cuckoo-pint and Sweet-flag.
Sitting in the dentist’s waiting room, looking up Queen Street, I’m attempting to draw the spire of St Peter and St Leonard’s Church, Horbury.
The proportions are so subtle; the tower’s structure reminds me of a four-stage Saturn rocket, about to soar skywards but it might so easily, with the addition of an extra foot or so of girth, start to appear crushingly earthbound or, conversely, if too slender, become too spindly and emaciated to inspire confidence.
It’s the same with the individual pillars: there’s such a slim ‘Goldilocks zone’ between undernourished and elephantine. I think that he got it just right.
The architect, John Carr, (1723-1807), started his career working the stone in local quarries. As far as I know, he never had any formal training in architecture, nor did he ever make the Grand Tour, to absorb the classical influence of Italy but as bridge surveyor to the West Riding of Yorkshire, he had an eye for structure.
I walked past the church every day when I attended St Peter’s Junior School, which in those days stood close to where the dentist’s stands today. As I looked up at that wedding cake of a spire, so unlike anything else in Horbury, I’d imagine the kind of character that might be living in there, in the pilastered penthouse apartment above the rusticated clock section. Shutters and a the mini-balcony made me think of Spain or Mexico, so a mantillared señorita or a caballero.
The rotunda of columns could be a home for a minor Greek deity.
‘Sometimes working in a different medium can add that all-important spark of excitement’, writes Paul Talbot-Greaves in Collins 30 minute Landscapes in Watercolour. As a new year refresher, I’m trying out one of his half-hour demos.
I’m stepping out of my comfort zone because my habitual way of working is to start with a pen and ink drawing, then add a wash of colour but here, after a minimal pencil outline, it’s blocks of colour first and any suggestion of detail, such as the pattern of stones, is left until you add the final touches.
I’ve noticed recently that my brushes are looking the worse for wear, so before starting I bought two sable brushes.
Daler Rowney Aquafine Sable Round, 10 and 6.
Ready Mades
I’m interested in Talbot-Greaves’ choice of colours; I try and keep things simple by sticking to a couple of versions of each of the primaries in the pocket-sized watercolour box that I use on my travels but he suggests some useful shortcuts:
“There are a number of ready-mixed colour, such as Raw Sienna, Sap Green and French Ultramarine, which have been developed to make colour selection easier for the artist. Each one is like a shortcut to a popular colour that is found in the landscape – for example, Sap Green can be used to paint grass, Cobalt Blue is a good match for sky blue, and Cadmium Red is ideal for suggesting the warm glow of a sunset.”
The colours in my version of the demo aren’t as subtle as they are in the book and I think that could be due to having a brighter, yellower version of Sap Green in my range of watercolours and having to use Lemon Yellow and Indian Red as substitutes for two of his recommended colours: Naples Yellow and Light Red.
For the purpose of the exercise, all the colours are mixed on the paper, blended into each other, as you paint, not mixed in the palette beforehand. I need more practice at this; the wash-backs in the sky and on the road are caused by adding a bit too much water to my wash as I blended it with a still damp colour on the page.
I’ve learned a lot from trying another approach and look forward to trying another of the 30 minute demos in the book.
For so much of the winter, we’ve been preoccupied by medical matters, especially in Barbara’s brother John’s gradual recovery from a stroke at the beginning of December. He’s now back home and doing well.
The stroke unit at Dewsbury Hospital is on the fifth floor of the Brontë Tower, with views, on a clear day, of the tops of the Pennines. They were at their most striking one clear sunny morning, after a snow shower over the moor tops.
