Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
Summer 1965 and there’s been a delay in a delivery of lime in Swaledale. Perhaps you recognise the delivery man or the guys he’s talking to – the local farmer perhaps?
This colourised image is from one of my badly developed black and white negatives from 1965. There are dozens from a school trip of Richmond Castle, which Iooks pretty much the same today, so it’s the few which feature vehicles that particularly interest me.
From the Prince of Wales Hospice website, pwh.org.uk:
Thursday, 22 June 2023
We first came across Richard Bell’s artistic talent when he sent in a hand drawn illustrated card, thanking staff for the care provided to his brother in law, John. The card was an illustration about some of the hospice team Richard and his wife, Barbara met when they visited John in our Hospice. The card also included a drawing about one of John’s great moments in the Hospice, when he was visited by two star players of Featherstone Rovers on the ward.
Richard wrote: “Thank you for all that you did for John and all that you did to make us feel welcome – we’re so grateful.”
We were blown away by the level of detail Richard had used in his illustrations and we asked Richard if he wanted to design our new thank you cards. Fortunately, he kindly agreed to illustrate them for us and what a fantastic job he has done!
One of the new designs show a roundup of hospice staff, Richard explained: “I was aiming for a fairly generic version of the hospice staff but inevitably the individual characters keep asserting themselves.” The other thank you card design shows beautifully the Hospice building, gardens and surrounding area.
Emma Dunnill, Legacy and In Memory Fundraiser said: “Richard’s attention to detail is fantastic and we think our supporters will love the bespoke designs. We can’t wait to start sending out these well-deserved thank you cards.”
You can see more of Richard’s work on his website http://wildyorkshire.blog/ where he has also shared illustrations of the Hospice gardens from his visits.
The Prince of Wales Hospice, Pontefract
John meets Featherstone Rovers: my original thank you card to the Hospice
My favourite view from Wakefield’s Riding Centre multistorey?
Since the Hannah Starkey show at the Hepworth, the view that I always park facing is the one of the flats on Kirkgate.
In Starkey’s thoughtfully stage-managed take on this scene, she gives Wakefield an aura of Indie movie sophistication (which it has, especially on a morning like today’s). One of her characters leans on the parapet, like a split-hair-dyed Rapunzel, looking out over the cloud-capped towers of Wakefield.
Seedheads from the garden: Opium Poppy, Eastern Mediterranean; Sicilian Honey Lily, Mediterranean, Turkey and Black Sea; Chives, Temperate Europe, Asia and North America and Perennial Cornflower from the subalpine meadows and open woods of Europe.
These sketches from the hospital and the one of the wood were drawn with one of my regular fountain pens, the TWSBI Eco T.
But I’ve gone back to a fibre tip for these wood pigeons and sparrows in the back garden.
These were drawn with a Mitsubishi uni pin 0.3 fine line, which has water and fade proof pigment ink.
Cat’s-ear, Hypochaeris radicata, flowering and going to seed on the front lawn, which I left untrimmed during ‘No Mow May’ but which is now due for strimming.
I find a quiet bench by St James’ Hospital’s historic workhouse chapel and settle down to draw the cherry tree but get distracted as two town pigeons bustle past me inspecting the turf.
A crow chases a scrawny-tailed squirrel across pedestrian crossing, up a couple of steps and behind a low wall towards birches.
On the artfully boulder-strewn roundabout a blackbird gathers beak-fulls of worms. After a long dry spell, yesterday’s persistent rain must have brought them to the surface again.
The grand Victorian architecture around the hospital attracts me but I prefer to draw something organic. There was a breeze blowing around the cherry tree leaves so, returning after a break, I draw its trunk and the sandstone block next to it.
One of the crows finds an acorn-sized brown object, which immediately interests a second crow which follows it around until the item is either eaten or discarded.
Cat’s ear, self-heal, white clover and daisy grow on the lawn, although the much larger ox-eye daisy, or marguerite, that I drew was in a flower border, alongside berginia.
We have a brief shower in the afternoon, so I head for the church. The multi-coloured round-topped arch looks more byzantine than romanesque to me. There’s another similar arch above it with a balcony overlooking the chancel. As this was a workhouse chapel, I did wonder if anyone with an infectious disease would be put up there but it’s probably more likely that it was originally an organ loft.
The flower border in June: buttercup seed-head, cornflower, lady’s mantle, marigold, lavender, salvia, annual meadow-grass, seed-pod (lupin?), white clover and red clover.
These are taken on my newly-repaired Olympus OM-D E-M10 II using the 60mm macro lens. Good to have it back. I could have taken very similar photographs on my iPhone but the digital SLR camera gives me more control.
I’ve had my Olympus E-M10 for seven years but I think this is the first time it’s been to Europe, unfortunately I didn’t go with it. Thank you to Miguel Teixeira in Portugal for repairing the viewfinder and flip-up display, as well as checking it over, cleaning it and updating the firmware (something that I tried repeatedly to do but which never worked for me).
I’m now making efforts to relearn what all those dials and function buttons are capable of and particularly to improve my macro photography by at last working out how to use the focus-bracketing function.
Whelks gather together for a mass spawning, so each of these egg cases was added by a different individual. Each case can contain 1,000 eggs but the first few to hatch will feed on the remaining eggs.
I photographed this egg mass on the beach at Druridge Bay and used a handy feature of Procreate, a reference image panel, when I drew it using Procreate’s ‘Technical Pen’.