Category: Art

A Temporary Loss of Vision

View from Charlotte’s Ice Cream Parlour, Monday.

To lose sight of the direction your work is going in can be part of the creative process but to literally lose your sight in one eye, even for a short period, is alarming.

I feel as if I’ve been going through a prolonged period of writer’s (and illustrator’s) block but that’s been partly because every time I sit at my desk I find myself faced with one of the necessary but time-consuming tasks that are involved in the day-to-day running of my booklet-publishing business: accounts, printing problems, fulfilling orders and keeping up with deadlines.

There’s a certain guilty pleasure in taking a break from your core work to indulge in ‘mindless’ activities but I’m now wondering if spending the whole of last Tuesday staring at my computer, trying to design an automated invoice for my book sales, might not have been such a good idea.

In the Blink of an Eye

Start of my loss of vision.

It might have been only for a minute or two but the loss of vision in my left eye was emphatic and at the time – thankfully for a brief period – I didn’t know whether the sight in that eye would be restored or not.

A week later, I’ve had a blood test and an eye-test including an OCT scan of the back of my eye. Later today I’m heading for the new Eye Centre at Pinderfields Hospital for a closer investigation.

So far, so good, and I’m hoping the results will be reassuring for me. I’m so impressed at how quickly our hard-pressed National Health Service were able to deal with my problem.

A Dinner with the Naturalists

Strafford Arms, detail of a drawing of the Strafford Arms, the Bull Ring, Wakefield, c. 1890, by Henry Clarke. Copyright, Wakefield Historical Society, 1977.

Strafford Arms, detail of a drawing of the Strafford Arms, the Bull Ring, Wakefield, c. 1890, by Henry Clarke. Copyright, Wakefield Historical Society, 1977.Strafford Arms, detail of a drawing of the Strafford Arms, the Bull Ring, Wakefield, c. 1890, by Henry Clarke. Copyright, Wakefield Historical Society, 1977, from the original drawings, now held by Wakefield District Libraries.Wakefield’s Strafford Arms was an impressive building in its Victorian heyday with a portico and balcony overlooking the Bull Ring. Wakefield Naturalists’ Society held its Annual Dinner there on Tuesday, 16th May, 1876. Described as ‘an intellectual entertainment’, the evening started with a ‘most substantial meal’ supplied by hosts Mr and Mrs Coggin and rounded off with at least nine toasts and responses; luckily the Wakefield Magistrates had already granted an extension of the licensing hours.

Barnsley Chronicle article, copyright British Library.

Although the Society was established in 1851 we have very few records covering its first hundred years, so an account of the evening in The Barnsley Chronicle gives a rare glimpse of the activities and ambitions of our founder members.

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Sycamore Seeds

Apart from the squirrel-nibbled cone, which is from Nostell, I picked up these seeds and the lichen and the snail shell on a mossy tree-fringed lawn in Ossett.

Some of the sycamore seeds had begun to sprout while all that was left of the lime seed was the pair of wings that propelled it through the air.

The lichen, Xanthoria parietina, would normally be yellow but it turns greenish when it grows in shade. The insides of the spore-producing cups – the apothecia – have kept their colour.

Wrapping up Winter

View from Blacker Hall restaurant, 12th January.

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.

Shooter’s Nab (on the right).
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The School of the Future

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.

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Timepiece

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’s La 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.

Link

Harrison’s Garden

Vuillard’s La Cheminee

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Coffee Time

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.

The Forest Scene

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.

Roadside Buzzard

 

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.

Living Room

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.