Category: Drawing

Purple Loosestrife

purple loosestrifeThe purple loosestrife is now at its best at the RSPB Old Moor reserve.

Two photographers in search of dragonflies apologise for trawling across my field of view, requesting that I don’t include them in the picture.

A shame, they would have added some scale. The loosestrife is shoulder high.

jointed rushJointed Rush

I think of rushes as being like the hard rush and soft rush; spiky and cylindrical, like a clump of green porcupine quills, but this is a rush too; jointed rush, Juncus articulatus, gets its name because the hollow stem is divided by internal ‘joints’.

It has clusters of star-shaped brown flowers which develop into egg-shaped fruits.

 

seedheadYellow Rattle

This dry seedhead was growing on a grassy path edge. It reminds me of bluebell but we’re not in woodland – or old hedgerows – here and when I check it out in the book I’m able to confirm that it’s yellow rattle, Rhinanthus minor, which is semi-parasitic on the roots of grasses.

It is a  member of the figwort family, Scrophulariaceae.

Each rounded capsule has a short beak at its tip. As it rattles in a breeze it distributes its winged seeds.

Bands of Blue and Green

pondI felt that I was getting a bit fussy as I painted the loosestrife so I went for a simpler approach with this nearby pond. With the quickest of pencil outlines I went straight on to the rapidly changing sky and its matching reflection, followed by bands of the lightest greens in each area to indicate distant trees, meadow, reedbed and reedbed reflections, plus the nearest willows.

With every bit of paper assigned a tone I could them add mid-tones of foliage and finally the darkest patches, adding a few of the brown branches of the willows.

Five Minute Sketch

sketchDuring the working week, my friend Helen Thomas has been busily painting forty small paintings during a strict forty hour period for her 8 x 5 project so I thought that before I settled down to catching up on my website this morning I’d start with a strictly five minute sketch.

The wood and meadow really do look as blurry as this through my sloping studio window as the depression labelled ex-Bertha progresses north-eastwards across the British Isles. We had to cancel a Wakefield Naturalists’ field meeting at Adel Dam when we heard that the Met Office had issued a yellow alert for today.

Colours used; yellow ochre and Winsor lemon in an initial all-over wash, then also French ultramarine, permanent rose, permanent sap green and neutral tint. No drawing in pencil first – there wasn’t time for that!

Link; Five by Eight, Helen Thomas’s Facebook gallery page.

Ten Minute Goose

Canada gooseThe Thornes Park Canada geese are used to passing dogs but still a bit wary of them, timing their morning traipse from the duck pond to the adjacent football field until there’s a break between dog-walkers.

‘Come away!’ says one dog-walker, ‘not everybody likes dogs!’

Well, you’d have to be very anti-dog not to like this quiet, wide-eyed, little white terrier – looking freshly shampooed and as if it’s going to a fancy dress party as one of Bo-Peep’s little lambs. It doesn’t want to walk past without pausing to check what I’m up to. Not to fuss me, or to yap but just to take in what I’m up to as I sit on the park bench.

I assure Ms Bo-Peep that it depends on the dog and, to be honest, I would have done a quick sketch of it if I’d had time but it does illustrate why I find that I can be more productive heading for Old Moor bird reserve for the day. I can sit amongst the herbage and get absorbed in my work.

Don’t get me wrong, I really like breaking off to chat to passers-by but there are only so many hours in a day for drawing.

I was ten minutes early for an appointment and driving past the park and thought why not have a ten minute break at the duck pond rather than arriving early. So, I’ve only spent a single minute of my precious time chatting but scale that out across a day and I could happily while way 10 percent of the time available!

Storyboard

storyboardhandHere are a few recent sketches from my urban sketchbook (the Wainwright one that I’m keen to get to the end of).

Two men were sitting with A3 sketchbooks in Café Costa, not drawing the passing scene but in an animated discussion of a storyboard for a film. I’d have loved to have eavesdropped on the process but I could see that the guy in the baseball hat was going through a shooting script while his colleague, after listening intently, would start sketching out ideas.

When you’re watching a movie the storytelling – when it works – just flows along but a huge amount of planning and choreography goes into it.

Rhea Window

view from Charlotte's, Whitleyrhea rheaWe invariably head to Charlotte’s ice cream parlour after my mum’s weekly eye appointment. She doesn’t usually get out during the rest of the week but the short excursion to Whitley is about as much as she can manage these days.

The view taking in Holme Moss and a great meander of the Calder Valley is unbeatable and the activities of peacocks, goats, donkeys and hens add to the interest.

The rhea inevitably reminds me of birdlike dinosaurs. A pair of them make a tour of their enclosure. Curiously expressionless eyes almost seem to look through us, as if we were a dull and harmless part of the environment. It’s the kind of gaze that I can imagine looking out on the world during the Cretaceous era and ears like that (the round spot behind its eye) must have heard the occasional Tyrannosaurus approaching.

The Chair and Eye
chair

optchairA haircut and my mum’s regular eye appointment give me a couple of chances to draw chairs. I can always use more practice because I find that as I move down the page I run into problems with the proportions, for instance making the legs too long. I keep switching to observing the negative spaces to double-check that I’m on the right lines, for instance the wedge-shapes between the starfish-like feet of the hairdresser’s chair.

Occasionally I find myself in a chairless environment, such as while waiting for Barbara outside the fitting rooms at M&S. Rows of clothes on hangers didn’t strike me as interesting subjects so I drew the handbag. I can see that the designer has made several decisions in the look of the handle alone to introduce some character; dependably chunky and in it’s unashamedly utilitarian details perhaps harking back to a simpler era, such as the 1950s.

bag in M&S.In Debenhams there wasn’t even a bag rack nearby for me to focus on so it was back to drawing my hand.

hand

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Saturday Morning at Salts

bus190714Even on a fifteen minute journey on the 232, if I’ve got the enthusiasm, I’ve got the time to make a sketch and even add the colour. I’ve been reading a few books on urban sketching recently which are encourage you to try sketching even in the least promising situations, such as here on the bus, which is lurching forward and swaying from side to side.

Bookshops now have a section devoted to sketchbooks, writer’s notebooks and inspirational adult activity books encouraging you to draw, doodle, scavenger hunt or even to ‘destroy this journal’ so I think that you’re much more likely to see someone on a bus scribbling away these days.

Gutter Shadow

Platform 2, LeedsI’m using my least favourite sketchbook today, the A5 hardback decorated with Wainwright drawings. Although they’re supposed to encourage to put pen to paper, the fact that when you do the ink soaks through two pages at a time is rather off-putting!

gutter
Without ‘gutter correction’.

I’ve been using my current scanner for years but I’ve only just spotted that the software has a ‘gutter shadow reduction’ option. It no doubt works better on pages of text where it can tell where the gutter is supposed to be. It doesn’t seem to have made any difference to the strip where my drawing straddles the gutter.

Saltaire

SaltaireAt least as I’m so keen to get to the end of this sketchbook I don’t mind starting a page as we wait for our coffee in Masserella’s.

The lower floor of Salts Mill houses an art materials and art bookshop the size of a couple of tennis courts. I try out a Moleskine sketchbook for size in my bag. Can’t wait to get started on it.

There are inspirational  books galore including Drawing Your Life by Michael Nobbs, who I used to be in touch with in his Beanie sketchbook journal days. I’ve got more subjects clamouring for me to ‘draw me, draw me!’ than I can manage, so I don’t need Michael’s attractive and encouraging book to spur me on.

I can only indulge myself in one inspirational  art book this morning so I go for Austin Kleon’s Steal Like an Artist, as I enjoyed his Show Your Work (and, who knows, one day I might put some of his suggestions into practice!).

hazel

Links; Drawing Your Life by Michael Nobbs
Austin Kleon

Sunflower

sunflowerI’ve always preferred to use cartridge for sketchbook work and to save the more expensive watercolour paper for my finished work but I’ve recently moved over to Pink Pig’s Ameleie watercolour sketchbooks, which I think is a step in the right direction.

sycamore trunksToday as I set out to a golden wedding garden party I grabbed an A5 landscape format Langton sketchbook. Langton is traditionally mould made fine grained 300 gm (140 lb) ‘Not’ paper. ‘Not’ means cold rather than hot pressed. I thought this might be too absorbent and textured for ink but there’s no sign of bleeding, which makes a welcome change from my current ‘Wainwright’ sketchbook.

The ‘hammered’ surface of the paper is enough to give a slight stippliness, which adds character to a watercolour wash.

Potato

potatoHaving the plant right there in front of me should make it easy but, like all flowers, this potato is a restless sitter.

It takes me longer than I think to get so far and I’m far from satisfied with the result but the end result isn’t really the point of the exercise;

‘You can only reproduce something well if you [see and observe]. If you can decode what you see, you will be able to explain it, and anyone who sees your drawing will be able to understand it. The artist’s view is just as important and personal as the subject itself.’

Agathe Haevermans, Drawing and Painting the Seashore

I’m happy just to spend the day observing and hopefully turning that into a successful botanical drawing will follow on from that.

In Impressionism by sampling spots of colour in a detached way, you should be able to build up a convincing image even of an object in the landscape that you can’t identify. Courbet was supposedly able to accurately paint a patch on a distant hillside without ever asking what it was – a limestone outcrop, a patch of dried vegetation or a pile of chippings. The colour and texture were enough.

With botanic drawing you’re really trying to deconstruct then reconstruct the subject in order to clearly explain it.

potato flower partsPerhaps I should have taken the flower apart before I started drawing.

 

Pink Pig

Pink Pig sketchbook

I’m delighted to have made it into the Pink Pig catalogue (educational version) which has just dropped through the door. This is a sketch I made of the railway embankment in my Holly Green Sketchbook.

I feel it’s appropriate that I live just five miles from what might well be Great Britain’s biggest sketchbook factory, the rate that I get through them. On several occasions I’ve called there to pick up a bundle of a particular size of sketchbook, most recently I upgraded to their own brand of 270 gsm watercolour paper, Ameleie, in an 8 x 8 inch format which I’m intending to reproduce in print using one of the digital book printing services.

Pink Pig

If you’re sharp-eyed you might spot a couple more extracts from my Holly Green Sketchbook in the catalogue and by coincidence I’m sharing a page with fellow ex-Leeds and Royal College of Art student, John Ross. John spent most of his time at the RCA in printmaking, mainly in etching, ultimately producing The Biggin Hill Frescoes. My Royal College publication was A Sketchbook of the Natural History of the Country Round Wakefield.

John’s got as far as Andalusia but here I am still beetling away with my sketchbook in the country round Wakefield.

(That’s not quite the whole story because John recently spent a year in a project to restore the most Gothic of Huddersfield’s leafy parks, Beaumont Park).

Link; Pink Pig sketchbooks (they supply direct to the public but you might be lucky enough to find a stock of assorted Pink Pigs in your local art shop, which enables you to get the feel of them).

simply firesAnother link; my work also appears in a newly revamped website of Simply Fires. A small detail but I think it gives the site a warm and friendly look; which is just right for a family firm that supplies wood-burning and multi-fuel stoves!

The drawing of the coal bucket on their contact page was one I made when I stayed at Langsett Youth Hostel, which had just had a new stove fitted. Sadly, ten years later, the Youth Hostel has now closed, which is a shame because they would have been guaranteed a full house in ten days from now when the Grand Depart of the Tour de France passes within a hundred yards of their front door.

 

Potato Flower

potato flowerI take a break for coffee and when I return most of the flowers have closed up, so there’s an element of reconstruction in the watercolour.

Just the foliage to add now.

Potato in Pencil

potato flowers in pencilMr AtkinsonMr Atkinson, my maths teacher, saw me struggling with geometry and examined my pencil;

‘You could plant a potato with that, Bell!’

Sharpening up my act, this morning I’m drawing potato flowers with a 4H pencil, sharpened with a craft knife and honed to a point with an abrasive pad.

I don’t ever remember choosing a 4H for drawing but I’m taking advice from Agathe Haevermans’ The Art of Botanical Drawing and she often suggests starting out with a hard pencil. If you need to erase there’s less risk of damaging the surface of the paper because the harder lead stays on the surface.

For white flowers like these she suggests erasing almost to the point where your outlines become invisible, so that you don’t get pencil lines showing through your wash.

This variety of second early potato is Vivaldi and, by coincidence when I started this drawing they were playing Vivaldi’s Concerto in B Flat on Radio 3.