Category: Drawing

The Telephone Pen

John Heath’s Telephone Pen, manufactured in Birmingham about a century ago, has a turned up point which gives it a smoother action than the Perry nib that I was using the other day.

telephone pen boxAs I had filmed myself adding watercolour, this YouTube video ran to a couple of minutes so, as a commentary would have been superfluous and the sounds of the pen scratching and my Winsor & Newton Bijou watercolour box rattling off camera weren’t very inspiring, I searched a music track on YouTube.

Telephone Pen box sketchThe search terms ‘Pen & Paper’ brought up the perfect track; Pen & Paper by Evelution. I like the way the music builds as sketch takes shape and introduces some colourful chords as I start on the watercolour. After the intro it kicks off with a scratchy sound just at the moment when I put pen to paper.

telephone pen box verso

The Perry 88F Nib

As a simple way to get myself started on some short YouTube videos of my work, I tried filming myself drawing with this vintage pen nib.

Perry Nibs box.
Perry Nibs box.

These steel nibs were manufactured by Perry & C0. Limited, Old Bailey (Late Holborn Viaduct). I’m not sure what the connection was with the Scotsman on the lid of the box.

perry nib in pen holder

It’s revealing to study myself in action. I’ve got such tentative way of starting to make marks – I guess my motto is think twice and draw once, except I seem to go over each line two or three times as well. My shaky hands are much in evidence. In my defence, I found it cumbersome to work around the camera on the gorilla-pod on my desk.

It would be so useful to have someone else handling the camera while I focus on the drawing but at least for now I can explore the basic problems of putting together a little video before I enlist the help of my friend John Welding as my cameraman/director and stylist.

One of my shaky hands drawn with a fibre tip pen; a Uni-ball Signo Gel Grip. Stabile crayons.
One of my shaky hands drawn with a fibre tip pen; a Uni-ball Signo Gel Grip. Stabile crayons.

Kings Cross Concourse

passengers
2.30 pm, concourse, Kings Cross

At last I’ve found the best spot to sit and sketch at Kings Cross; one of the tables overlooking the concourse. The balcony has plate glass panels so you get an unrestricted view of the travellers below.

Despite the length of the concourse, I struggle to sketch people walking from one end to the other but soon little groups settle with their cases, giving me more of a chance. I like the way they arrange themselves, echoing each other in their poses, as well as in the way they dress.

The Olympics Effect

We’re so taken with how friendly and helpful people are in London. I’m sure it wasn’t like this in my student days! People go out of their way to help you, for instance the man on the information desk at St Pancras who walked with us the thirty yards to the machine to talk us through how to buy an Oyster card, which saves you 30 or 40 percent on tube travel.

Our friend Chris in Putney suggests that this is partly a result of the Olympics a couple of years ago, when residents got used to directing people around the city, acting as ambassadors.

London came in for a lot of criticism during the debate surrounding Scottish independence but, probably because the place did so much for me in my student days, I have enormous affection for its streets, parks, river and people. It’s good to have so many galleries, museums and historical sites – plus the zoo and Kew Gardens – concentrated into an easily accessed few square miles, rather than have them spread thinly across the country.

The city always gives me a buzz and inspiration, and a glow of nostalgia for my formative years but that’s not to say that it isn’t a relief when we get on the train, sink into our seats, buy a coffee and a packet of shortbread from the trolley and head back to the hills and small towns of Yorkshire!

New Year’s Eve

meadowA couple  of days ago our barometer reached 1040 millibars, as high as I ever remember seeing it. Another 25 millibars and it would have gone off the scale. High pressure gives us settled weather, in this case cold days and even colder nights, so the inch of snow we had late on Boxing Day has lingered.

This morning ground frost on a section of pavement that I’d cleared resembled a thin coating of snow.

applesBefore the frost we harvested the last of the Howgate Wonder cookers and used them in apple bakewell tarts and a mini apple pie.

Emley Moor

On Christmas Eve, a coffee stop at Create cafe in the Wakefield One building gave me a brief pause to sketch the skyline to the southwest towards the Emley Moor transmitter.

Squabbling Squirrels

squirrels

But we did manage one trip further afield before Christmas. On the 17th we made a delivery to our book suppliers before Christmas, zipping down the motorway to Orgreave but coming back via the Peak District.

siskinAt the Riverlife cafe at Bamford in the High Peak, siskin and nuthatch were among the birds coming to the feeders with a couple of squirrels fighting it out for control of the squirrel feeder below. While their fight escalated into a chase, a third squirrel sneaked in and fed in peace. C’est la guerre!

head-butting sheep

There’s more fighting over food as we walk along the lane at Castleton. Two sheep are head-butting each other over the last scraps left in the feed bucket.

lane at Castleton

Fan Palm

Fan palmThe fan palms weren’t looking bedraggled after recent heavy frosts. It wasn’t a promising morning for the crazy golf at Pirate Island, Outlet Village, Castleford, where these temperate climate palms have been planted. The attendants were checking out the course, using one of the log raft bridges across the water hazard to break the ice.

After two or three hours in Middle Earth watching the last instalment of The Hobbit, I did a quick sketch of these owls on display by the climbing wall at Xscape. £3 to hold a bird of prey, £2 for a reptiles.

Published
Categorized as Drawing

Just Visiting

trainerWe’re helping out with a short spell of visiting and I could spend a couple of hours reading or writing or drawing from a photograph but I’d rather not cut myself off entirely from what is going on around me so I do what I usually do; start drawing whatever I can find of interest around me.

As I’ve drawn my hands a couple of times on similar occasions, I go for the only other organic subject that I can find; my feet.

The blurb on the box suggested that these trainers are urbane and understated enough to wear when you’re out for a coffee but with their rugged tread and Goretex lining they’re ready should you suddenly find yourself invited to join an adventurous trek across the moors.

trainerHow could I resist! That fits my demographic perfectly.

Art Journalling

sketchbooks
Sketchbooks that I’ve been working on this year. You can imagine the pile that has accumulated over the past half century of my work!

“What have you gotten out of a life time of journaling?” 

Writing my ‘Wild Yorkshire’ nature diary for the Yorkshire Dalesman has meant looking back over the past 16 years of my sketchbooks and blog. It’s been a chance to review my work and to think about where I’d like to take it next.

Since my first online post on 4 October 1998 here’s been a gradual evolution, starting with a simple, sketchy format based on a nature journal that I kept in the mid-1990s. This became more ambitious and when I met art journallers Danny Gregory and Dan Price, I felt that I wanted to go a step further and put a lot more effort into my drawing.

Under the influence of the two Dans I went drawing mad and some of my favourite pages date from that period unfortunately they don’t work for my Dalesman unless they also tell a story. However evocative the drawing, a mossy stump on its own isn’t enough for my Wild Yorkshire column; I need a stoat rummaging around in its nooks and crannies to bring the scene to life.

I’m now trying to combine more ambitious drawings with stories that might hook the reader in.

Problems with People

people in IkeaAlthough I describe myself as a wildlife illustrator, riffling through those old sketchbooks I found that I liked some of the drawings that made me smile were of people in everyday situations, for instance the shoppers queuing up at the cafe in Ikea. I would like to draw more people but as I post everything online I feel that there’s a privacy issue! I can say what I like about the aggressive mistle thrush that this week has been bullying the blackbirds so that it can have the crab apple tree to itself, but you can’t write stories like that about family and friends, fun though that might be!

“Can an artist have shaky hands?” 

I’ve been reflecting on my work today as Danny Gregory has been interviewing for a feature that he’s planning to run on the Sketchbook Skool. He wanted to examine the issues that I raised in a post a couple of months ago about dealing with shaky hands, not looking at that particular condition but considering how apparent limitations – such as a physical disability or living in a less than inspiring neighbourhood – can spur creative innovation.

I commented that I’d love to have perfect vision – colour, high definition etc – but we all have to learn to live with the hand we’ve been dealt.

My books in print
My current books in print.

In discussion I concluded that the shaky hands and my partial red/green colour blindness hadn’t done me a lot of harm as I’ve been able to do the kind of work I love doing throughout my career.

Link; Sketchbook Skool

Danny Gregory

Dan Price

Willow Island Editions, my publishing imprint.

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Categorized as Drawing

Be a Tree

crab apple4.55 pm; Blackbirds are alarming as the gloom of sunset fades out the remaining colour in our back garden. Not that we can see the sun setting; it’s remained cloudy with varying degrees of gloom all day.

In contrast to the twilight mood, the golden hornet crab apple by the pond is bubbling with pale yellow fruits, festooned with golden baubles.

In movement and dance, school children are asked to be a tree. What kind of tree would you be if you decided to be an autumnal golden hornet?

Although it is stretching to the skies in classic tree-mime fashion, those awkwardly bent limbs suggest that it might be attempting to support the firmament – like the Viking cosmic tree – rather than reaching for the sky in hopeful supplication.

A couple of broken paving slabs that I’ve leant against the raised bed give the impression in my sketch that the crab might have used those scraggly limbs to scrabble and scrooge up from an underground lair, like Mole in The Wind in the Willows.

Dripped in Ink

sketchbook and notebookDrawn, or rather dripped, in bamboo pen using Daler-Rowney Calli waterproof ink, the drawing is so blotty that it will take days to dry, so I’m photographing it rather than laying it on the scanner. And thank goodness I didn’t use my regular sketchbook and put that out of action.

As I got inky fingers opening the bottle, I thumbprinted the basic shape of the main stem on the blank page before I started the drawing. I decided that might take away the some of the scariness of the blank white sheet while working against the clock.

I started at at five to four and called it a day after fifteen minutes.

Drawn by Hand

hand

albumLooking back on the black and white album that I put together for a Facebook challenge, I’m surprised how much I managed to do over a 5 day period, just setting myself the achievable goal of posting five black and white photographs a day.

My thanks to John Welding for suggesting the challenge. It came just at the right time and got Barbara and I out and looking at things in a different way. The weather wasn’t sparkling but the couple of days since have been even more damp and dismal.

‘November seems ideal for black and white.’ says John, ‘Grey, misty. Tonal.’

Yes, I always think of warm autumn colours but colour is so seductive that I neglect the tonal values that could give an image some structure.

handI’d like to try a similar thing with short sessions focussed on taking shots of animals or making widescreen movies about a particular place. It’s made me dig out the manual for my FujiFilm FinePix S6800 bridge camera.

But it’s back to pen and ink and watercolours and writing now, including these two hands drawn in waiting rooms yesterday.

‘You’re passing the time by doodling!’ quipped a passing physio.

Doodling? Hmm!

 

Caphouse Nature Trail

  • Canker.

Photographed this morning on the nature trail at the National Coal Mining Museum for England, Caphouse Colliery, Overton, West Yorkshire.