1 p.m.: I sketch this mullioned window at Blacker Hall Farm shop during a break in wintry showers. The mullion is the upright between the windows; the horizontal stone above is a dripstone.
Category: Art
My Homework and Other Animals
The Sunday evening ITV series The Durrells prompted me to take another look at a comic strip of My Family and Other Animals that I drew in my school days. I was so lucky to have Gerald Durrell’s account of a naturalist’s childhood in Corfu as the set book for my O-level English Literature exam.
Bilberry and Heather
11.20 a.m, mid-height stratus, cool breeze: I’m reminded of the piece of childhood writing that I re-read the other day (Blue Remembered Hills):
‘I found a dry bog plant and a stone with water trickling down the middle and green on the stone around it’
That was when I was aged nine and here I am, over half a century later, still fascinated by the plants and rocks of millstone grit moorland. No wonder I feel as if I’ve come back down to earth every time that we get out here.
I add colour using watercolour pencils but, once again, I’ve forgotten to bring my water-brush so I dab it with a finger moistened in a puddle on the moorland track.
Giant Club Moss Fossil
I draw the club moss fossil in the comfort of the Bank View Cafe at the end of the walk. I’ve spotted a few impressions of Carboniferous plants in the millstone grit blocks that make up some stretches of the path at Langsett and someone has brought together a small selection of plant fossils on the windowsill in the cafe. Shouldn’t every cafe should have a collection of local fossils, rocks and minerals?
White Rose Centre
I’ve drawn my hands a couple of times waiting by the changing rooms in one of the stores in the White Rose shopping centre, Leeds, but just as I start sketching the shoppers – by trying to take a mental snapshot as they walk away – Barbara gets fitted up and we head off to find a likely place for lunch.
Farmyard Goose
At the car park at Cannon Hall a gaggle of about a dozen farmyard geese, mainly white, graze on the grass verge until a couple of walkers arrive with a bag of breadcrumbs.
The domestic goose is descended from the greylag but stands more upright than its wild relative because it has been selectively bred to be three times as heavy and to accumulate fat around its rear end. One of the geese had a dewlap and a similar flap hanging between its legs. This is a feature of the Toulouse, an old French breed.
In the American Pilgrim goose, males are always white and females grey.
‘Denied the opportunity to forage [geese] are uneconomic,’ writes John Woodward in The Field Guide, ‘for they have large appetites . . . the income derived from geese rarely justifies the use of valuable pasture.’
A toddler with a large bag of breadcrumbs is next in line to feed them.
Jumbo Grip Pencil
My drawing is a composite as these geese never keep still. I started with the head and worked down. When the birds set off in a different direction I kept adding to the sketch, transposing the shapes as if I was mirror-writing. Sometimes I’d be drawing one of the white geese, sometimes the one with the dewlap but the greyish-brown geese did have the white rear end, as I’ve drawn it here.
I drew the goose with a Faber-Castell Jumbo Grip pencil (below). With its triangular cross section and its rubberised ‘SoftGRIP’ stipples, this is one pencil that you’re not going drop even if you’re working in gloves. The matching pencil sharpener is easier to use on location than a craft knife. There’s a pencil-thin slot in my art bag that it fits neatly into so it’s not going to lose it’s point by getting jammed in with my pens and watercolours.
I’ve used various clutch pencils, otherwise known as propelling pencils, but they don’t have the bite of a real pencil. The Jumbo Grip is rated B for hardness and is described as ‘ideal for learning to write’. But I like it for drawing too.
Link: Jumbo Grip Pencil
Polypody Fern
This polypody fern is growing as an epiphyte on a crooked old hawthorn on by the nature trail at the National Coal Mining Museum, Caphouse Colliery. Epiphyte is simply a plant that grows on another plant: the fern isn’t parasitic on the hawthorn. This reminds me of the mysterious Wistman’s Wood on Dartmoor where old stunted oaks grow up amongst massive tumbled slabs of granite and every surface, rock and tree, is covered with moss, lichen and fern. This is on a much smaller scale of course but it has the advantage for me that its just a couple of miles up the road.
As I shelter under an umbrella, I realise that to draw all the pinnate indentations on each leaf is going to take me a lot longer than the time that I’ve allowed, so I outline all the fronds and decide to come back another day to complete the drawing and add some colour.
Link: National Museum for Coal Mining for England, Caphouse Colliery.
Snow on the Hills
From molehills to mountains: the moors on the tops of the Pennines are still covered with snow. We returned to Charlotte’s Ice Cream parlour at Whitely this morning, a regular coffee stop in the days when we had my mum in tow. It was often the one day of the week that she got out and, despite her deteriorating eyesight, she always appreciated the panorama . . . and of course the coffee and the scone.
I must take after her. Oh dear!
Lamy Nibs in Close-up
At one time I always carried some kind of of fibre tip pen with me, such as a Pilot Drawing Pen, but these days it’s just my three Lamy fountain pens – an AL-Star, a Safari and a Vista – with fine, extra fine and broad nibs. Fibre tips offer a degree of precision and convenience, until they start to dry up, but I find that a fountain pen feels more natural.
Vista
For natural history drawing, I usually go for my Lamy Vista with an extra fine nib which I keep filled with Noodler’s brown ink. Noodler’s becomes waterproof on contact with the cellulose in paper so I can add a watercolour wash. This gives a similar effect to a dip pen and Indian ink plus watercolour but a fountain pen is easier to work with as there’s no bottle of ink to either hold on to or to risk knocking over.
The Vista is a transparent version of the Safari so it’s even easier to check that the filler in the pen has enough ink in it when I set off to draw. At the moment this pen is filled with a mixture of Noodler’s black and El Lawrence brown (a kind of khaki, desert brown, named in honour of Lawrence of Arabia), because I had two half empty bottles and it’s easier to fill the pen from a full bottle. The black/brown mix reminds me of Pelikan Special Brown indian ink which I used for many years.
AL-Star
I keep the AL-Star, the aluminium version of the Safari, filled with black Noodler’s ink. This pen is fitted with a fine nib.
Safari
For bolder drawing I’ve got a bright yellow Safari (difficult to lose) with a broad nib. This is the freest flowing of the three pens and the larger, rounded tip, as seen in my photograph taken with a microscope, enables it to glide across the paper.
Ink Links
Drawing in Gloves
2.25 p.m., 43ºF, 8ºC, still and sunny: I spotted this ash stump growing on an old stone embankment wall when we visited the Go Outdoors store, Middlestown, yesterday. I’d gone looking for grippy gloves because the welt on the fingerless mittens that I’ve been using gets uncomfortable if you’re drawing for a while. My knuckles have been getting red and raw, drawing when it’s close to freezing.
I found the various gloves with gripper pads a bit cumbersome but we spotted some in pure silk which aren’t the warmest available as they’re mainly intended as lining gloves but they’re better than having exposed fingers. It’s easy to grip pen, water-brush and paintbox.
I found myself rushing to complete my drawing of Caphouse Beck yesterday so, today, when I sketch the rabbit which suddenly runs up the grassy bank and check my watch to record the time, I decide that I should allow myself more time so I’ll return tomorrow to finish off and add colour.
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Mitten (acrylic) |
Trekmates silk glove |
Links
Crack Willow
10.30 a.m., 44ºF, 6ºC: Robin and song thrush are singing in the wood; other than that the soundtrack as I’m drawing is the wind in the willows, the patter of rain on my umbrella and the rippling of water over a gravelly bend of Coxley beck. The shower passes so that I’m able to discard the umbrella when it comes to adding the watercolour. That makes the process a whole lot easier.
I call this bend in the beck Willow Island but it’s only after heavy rain that this overgrown side channel fills with water. Wellies are essential when I’m drawing here as I have to wade along a 20 yard stretch of the beck. I proceed with caution as on one constricted bend the stream has scoured out a channel that looks more than wellie deep.