Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
There’s only one way to get into Clip Paint Studio and that’s to dive in and have a go. This is far from the look that I’ve envisaged for my Adam & the Gargoyle comic strip but I realise that – as happened with the scans of colour slides I’ve been doing recently – the way to get familiar with the process is to keep going through it, again and again, building from the bits that I can do now to the more subtle tweaks that should enable me to get things looking just as I want them to.
Continuing to archive Richard Brook’s slides of potential wildlife habitats in the Aire and Calder valleys in the 1970s and 80s, I came across this spread, which Richard had photographed, from a Yorkshire Post Magazine from 1986 which sums up what was at stake. Journalist Derek Foster, who interviewed Richard at the time, writes:
“. . . the birds still come, though in dwindling numbers, and the question is; can they wait until 2001 to resume the good life they have built up over a hundred years?”
Richard has made a note on the slide that the aerial photograph of Fairburn Ings dates from 1983.
So ‘wonderland’ or ‘nightmare’? I don’t think that Richard, even in his wildest dreams, would have predicted that spoonbills, which haven’t nested regularly in Britain since the 1700s, would ever nest in an area that at that time was so largely dominated by colliery spoil tips but which is now the RSPB Fairburn Ings Reserve.
It might have taken some imagination to see the potential in derelict spoil heaps but the reed beds at Stanley Sewage Farm, which Richard photographed on Tuesday, 11 September, 1973, already looked like a nature reserve.
In recent years, Stanley Church (far left) has been demolished and I’d be surprised if those rhubarb forcing sheds, in the field on the right, beyond the reed bed, are still there.
Looking up the Calder Valley, this is the bed at the south-east end of the sewage farm, with the houses of Ferry Lane, Stanley, in the background. This does look more utilitarian, and, looking at the photograph, I can recall the smell that lingered around sewage lagoons.
Finally, here’s the main bed with the houses of Aberford Road, Stanley, in the background. I think that large brick building on the left must be the former Stanley Picture House, built in 1930. According to the Stanley History Online website, this was once known as ‘The Clog and Rhubarb’.
I’ve been making a start on archiving a collection of colour slides taken by Richard Brook (1943-2017), for many years the Conservation Officer of the Wakefield Naturalists’ Society. He photographed the East Ash Lagoon at Leventhorpe from the lagoon’s northwest corner on Sunday, 2 September, 1973. Pulverised fly ash was pumped from power stations into lagoons and left to settle out.
Richard could see the potential of these lagoons as nature reserves and he documented every one of them – along with subsidence flashes and sand quarries -within five or six miles radius of Wakefield, so his collection of slides form a unique record of post-industrial West Yorkshire.
I’m gradually learning my way around the slide scanning option of my SilverFast scanning program and also learning easier ways to remove specks of dust and other blemishes from the slides.
In Photoshop CS5, I’ve just discovered the Dust & Scratches filter, which is hidden away in the Photoshop Filter Menu under the heading Noise.
It’s a lot quicker than using the Spot Healing Brush to individually remove blemishes, although that has it’s part to play too: Dust & Scratch Filter for the whole sky, Spot Healing Brush for getting into more detailed parts of the image.
This Eco-T Fountain Pen, by TWSBI of Taiwan, is chunkier than my regulars, which suits my large hands. The grip is triangular, or rounded triangular, which means that it’s easy to be sure that you’re holding the nib at a consistent angle to the paper.
The screw-off cap and the filler at the end of the pen also have a triangular cross section so it’s just the transparent barrel that is cylindrical. This pen doesn’t have an option to pop in a cartridge so the whole barrel can serve as a piston filler, giving extra capacity.
It comes with a small plastic spanner, which is used for maintenance on the piston filler: you can lubricate this with silicone grease, a small bottle of which is included in the kit.
This is the version with an Extra Fine nib, so, filled with my favourite Noodler’s Brown Ink, these drawings are probably indistinguishable from those that I’d make with my Lamy Safari or Rotring Art Pen, but after just a few days of using it, I think that I can say that the Eco-T is going to be my favourite, mainly because of that extra chunkiness but also because it has a firm, positive feel to it. At first I felt as if I’d be holding it a bit too close to the nib but as soon as I got into drawing and became less self-conscious about the unfamiliarity of a new pen, it felt perfectly natural.
It was supplied by Pure Pens, so thank you to them for flagging it in one of their e-mails and, after I’d ordered on the Friday afternoon, for getting it to me via first class post by the next morning.
The lime green is a new colour but it’s definitely the one for me to go for, as it’s different to any other pen that might be lurking in the front pocket of my art bag.
When I’ve finished a project – such as the Dalesman nature diary that I sent off this afternoon – it’s such a relief to be able to create order out of chaos again and clear my desk . . . but, before I get started, surely I can spare half an hour to draw a corner of clutter.
This is drawn with a new pen, more of that later, with a rapid wash of watercolour added, just as information, rather than getting in to the light and shade.
In yesterday’s post, I’d got as far as the pen and ink for the ransoms or wild garlic for my woodland flowers spread. Adding the watercolour makes such a difference. As I painted it, I started thinking about the wood in spring with a waft of garlic drifting through the shadier, damper valley bottom by the beck.
Despite the recent snows, it’s young leaves are already beginning to appear, so I couldn’t resist tearing off a small piece yesterday morning, to crush it between my fingers to release that gentle scent of garlic.
In a month or two, when it’s at its lushest amongst the crack willows and alders alongside Coxley Beck, it looks rather tropical. When we moved here, thirty or so years ago, that area was open and meadow-like. Alder saplings started to colonise the open ground; now it’s alder woodland with ransoms spreading like weeds. Except ransoms isn’t a weed – in the sense of ‘a plant growing in the wrong place’ – because in Coxley Wood, it’s growing exactly where it should be growing. It’s good to see a wild flower doing well and spreading for a change.
Another drawing that’s been transformed by a wash of watercolour is the yellow archangel, which is one of my favourite woodland plants, as it’s supposed to be one of the indicators of ancient woodland. My original drawing, in my Sketchbook of the Natural History of the Country Round Wakefield, was just an inch and a quarter across, line only, so it resembled a Victorian engraving. Adding colour reminds me how this plant brightens up the odd corner alongside woodland paths.
Wood sorrel isn’t nearly as widespread as lesser celandine, wood anemone and bluebell in the wood. I like those clover-shaped leaves, which are usually, if not always, folded back.
Next stage is to drop these scanned images onto a sketchbook background for my May nature diary spread in The Dalesman magazine. I realised that I’d need landscape format this time, not a double-page portrait sketchbook with the spiral binding in the centre, which is what I’ve used so far for my articles.
As luck would have it, the afternoon light was still suitable for me to go out to photograph an A5 sketchbook on a mossy rock on the raised bed behind the pond. I look forward to putting the whole design together and adding some lettering: not too much as I don’t want to crowd out the flowers.
I thought about calling this post The Last Snows of Winter, but who knows?
We passed a van and a car that appeared to have been abandoned in the weekend’s snow. Up on the ridge around Emley snow had drifted in the sunken country lanes.
The sky wasn’t really green – I’ve got out of the habit of using cerulean blue and it didn’t turn out as I’d expected on the warm cartridge paper of my Daler sketchbook, especially as I’d added a light wash of Winsor lemon.
As we sit in Pizza Express in the White Rose Centre, there’s a constant stream of passers by. As there’s so little time, I start with one man’s head but then add the next man’s body. No, that’s not going to work because everyone has a distinct overall character: Man One wore an anorak, Man Two had a brisker gait and held his head more erect.
If I mix and match, I’m not going get the jizz, as birdwatchers used to call the characteristic impression given by a particular species.
So the remaining four figures are mental snapshots. I follow a figure’s progress across the entrance hall then, only when they vanish from sight, attempt to draw the whole figure.
I add the watercolour twenty or thirty minutes later, after a Leggera Padana pizza, when the Noodler’s ink has dried. I can remember the colours of the coats pretty well but there’s a bit more guess work on the colour of trousers, bags and footwear.
Leggara Padana pizza, only 465 kcals . . . chocolate brownie to finish, er, another 235, then there’s the cappucino . . .
Reviewing my A6 postcard-sized Pink Pig landscape format sketchbook for this winter, you might think that my life has been dominated by a search for the perfect scone. It has, and we’ve got our visits to Nostell timed to coincide with when the scones emerge from the oven, however these freshly-baked scones, were at the Rich & Fancy Cafe on Queen Street, Horbury.
But I don’t insist on Bake Off standard cakes to draw; I equally enjoyed drawing the salt and pepper pots and the sauce and vinegar bottles on my brother-in-law’s dining table. These drawings are all larger than they appear in my sketchbook because I like the texture of pen on cartridge paper, which I lose at screen resolution. Drawn with my favourite pen, a Lamy Safari with an extra fine nib filled with brown Noodler’s ink.
I’ve got another Lamy Safari filled with a cartridge of Lamy black ink, which I blotted with a water-brush to get this wash effect on a brooding morning at Charlottes. Again during a coffee and scone break. A pattern is emerging.
We’re having wintry showers this morning but it’s milder so the sleety rain and wet flakes of snow are actually clearing the pavements of the snow and ice that have covered them during the last week.
We’ve decided that it’s a good day to stay put and catch up, so we’ve got a batch of dough rising above the hot water tank in the corner of the studio, ready for knocking back, and I’m delving back into my sketchbooks to catch up with my blog posts.
When I drew at Charlotte’s at the end of January, patches of snow on the distant moors were imperceptibly disappearing into the mist.
I drew these in my pocket-sized notebook, which has such small pages that you can pick it up even when you’ve only got minutes to spare.
That morning I also drew cushions on my brother-in-law John’s sofa and a crow by the boulders in the goat enclosure. They’re similar subjects; when I can’t get out to draw rocks, cushions make a reasonable substitute.
The goats love climbing and settling down at strategic look-out posts on the rocks but during the winter they’ve been confined to the stables. Hopefully they won’t have long to wait before it’s suitable for them to live in their outdoor enclosure again.
The old Cart Shed at Blacker Hall Farm dates from c.1620, so the old beams always appeal to me as a subject.
The little sketchbook was handy again when at a family meal at Holmfield House in Holmfield Park, Wakefield, I drew this tree.
