Category: Drawing

Garden Painting Workshop

Hilary Cooper

I did consider taking acrylics and a canvas to today’s painting workshop at RHS Harlow Carr run by their current artist in residence, Hilary Burnett Cooper, but I stuck with my regular pen and watercolour and it was a chance to try my larger watercolour box on location. I recently updated it so that there are fewer strident greenish blues and earthy browns, replacing those with colours that would be more useful for flower painting.

Bergenia

Link

Hilary Burnett Cooper Landscape, scenic and figurative artist

PenTips PenPad

PenTips accessories
Procreate drawing

More PenTips goodies: glove, grip and, my favourite, the PenPad Shortcut Panel for Procreate on the iPad. I’ve used Procreate a lot and gone through dozens of tutorials but there are some shortcuts, such as ‘Cut’, that I have a mental block about. There they all are on the pad, so I don’t have to break my workflow by searching through sub-menus.

I’m still searching for my favourite virtual pen in Procreate. In Clip Studio Paint my go-to pen is usually the ‘Real G-Pen’ but in Procreate with dozens of virtual pens to choose from, I’m still undecided.

Perhaps drawing my chitted potatoes with a selection of pens from the Procreate ‘Inking’ section will help me narrow it down.

Pentips 2 Soft

Procreate drawing

I like the extra control that I get with the PenTips 2 ‘Soft’ rubber-like replacement tip for the Apple Pencil but I’ve now damaged two of the three that come in the pack.

Although most of the time when I’m drawing my touch is reasonably light, when it comes to adding colour or erasing it’s a different story. I find that it’s necessary to press on extra hard to squeeze a pool of virtual watercolour from a brush. If I’m using one of the subtler forms of the eraser I can find myself pressing hard to remove a stubborn line.

3 PenTips should potentially last 2 years but I’m getting through one a week! Perhaps I should have gone for their new tougher version designed for wiring.

The PenTip can then stick to the glass and split at the end, revealing the metal core.

Real G-Pen, Clip Studio, ‘Between the Covers’, BBC2.

Saltholme and Hauxley

Saltholme sand martin wall

The Sand Martin Wall, RSPB Saltholme, 12.45 pm, Friday 21 April 2023

black-headed gulls

Our favourite coffee (and carrot and coriander soup) stop on our trips to Northumberland and today the view of the lagoon from the first-floor café is quite different to what it was on our autumn visits. Instead of exposed mudbanks and shallows for waders and dabbling ducks, water levels are now raised, creating what appear to be fox-proof islands for the breeding colony of black-headed gulls.

swan feather

Queen Elizabeth II Country Park, Ashington

This swan breast feather is almost transparent so that you can actually read large-print text through it. I drew it on a dark background as on white it fades into the background.

Hauxley lagoon

The new Willow Hide, Hauxley Northumberland Wildlife Trust nature reserve, 1.20 pm, Saturday 22 April, 2023, 15℃ 59℉ in the hide. Rain had passed over, grey skies, getting brighter.

There are thousands of dancing gnats in loose gatherings, especially in the shelter alongside hedges. On the window of the café I can see there’s a mix of hump-backed females and males with feathery antennae.

Teal are dabbling and twirling, picking up insects from the water surface.

Hauxley nature reserve

The Lookout Café, Hauxley Northumberland Wildlife Trust, 2.30 pm, Saturday 22 April, 2023.

Pea and mint soup with a cheese and beetroot scone, overlooking a corner of the lagoon with teal, gadwall, mallard and Canada goose. Oystercatchers and lesser black-backed gull go over. We see our first swallow, flying low over a field towards the reserve’s lagoon.

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Categorized as Drawing

New Sketchbooks

sketchbooks

Saturday, 15 April, 2023: Sad news that Barbara’s brother John died peacefully in his sleep early this morning so I’m keen to finish the little grey sketchbook which started at the beginning of January when he was taken ill. His last short walk with us was at Thornes Park on Monday 9th January and he was taken into hospital the following weekend when it was expected that he had just days to live.

studio sketches

During the three months that he has been in Pontefract Hospice it’s been a welcome distraction for me to work on my John Carr Redbox Gallery display and I finished work on that today.

Looking forward to making a fresh start with my new sketchbooks.

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Categorized as Drawing

Apeman

musicians

Thanks to Allan, James and Tom for their acoustic version of Apeman by The Kinks, accompanied by Rick on bongos. Special guest appearance from Ian.

songers

Black Ponies

Recent iPad sketches drawn in Procreate and Clip Studio Paint.

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Categorized as Drawing

Birds by the River

Coxley wood
reed bunting

Addingford, 10.30 am: A male reed bunting flits into a hawthorn bush by a pond between the canal and the river, flashing its white tail bars.

goosander

Wintering duck have now moved on but a single drake goosander makes its way down the river, diving occasionally as it goes. Later we see a female heading up river.

swan
reedmace

Swans often nest on the quieter side of the canal but this year a pair have built an island nest on a tennis court-sized pond by the Strands. They’ve built up the nest platform from the dried stems of reedmace, which is now bursting into fluffy masses of downy seed. Slender willows along the banks are dotted with pale catkins.

wagtail

A pair of grey wagtails bob about on a flooded corner of the The Strands.

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Categorized as Drawing