Category: Art

Squirrel

squirrel 1986squirrel 1986A grey squirrel approaches the bird feeders but I rattle open the patio doors and send him away. The problem is that our bird feeders aren’t squirrel-proof and we’ve had the plastic perches and seed-hoppers nibbled away in the past. Time to grease the pole, I’m afraid. I don’t like doing it but I’ve yet to come up with a better solution.

The leaping squirrel is another rough from my children’s picture book Deep in the Wood. I was trying to see the world from a squirrel’s point of view. What would it be like to be up there leaping with the squirrel?

You can see where I’ve had to adjust the head, sticking on a new version. The darker lines on both these drawings show where they were traced down onto watercolour paper for the final artwork. The squirrel with the nut was an early version of the cover. We didn’t use it because it looked as if the book was just about squirrels. A new version of the cover featured all the animals that appear in the book.

Walton Hall

Photograph by John Welding
Photograph by John Welding

Walton HallI was beginning to think that I’d been a bit indulgent, suggesting that our next meeting to discuss the Waterton Comic should be at Walton Hall, home of Charles Waterton, but, when I drove over the bridge and through the old park gateway, as the panorama of lake, hall and copses opened up, I realised that this was going to be more inspiring than a conference room at Wakefield One.

It’s only today that I received my new drawing pen, a Lamy Safari with an extra fine nib, but already I feel that it’s going to be my favourite. John Welding, who is illustrating the opening segment of the Waterton Comic, photographed me starting my first sketch with the new pen, appropriately of the place where I first opened my eyes; Walton Hall was an annexe of Manygates maternity hospital in the baby boom years. No wonder I feel so attached to the place.

Tilly 29/04/15chimney detailAs I call to pick up Barbara from the Rickaro bookshop in Horbury (for the last time as she retires today!), I try out the pen again by drawing Tilly the bookshop’s Welsh collie and a couple of architectural details across the road.

I ordered pen with a filler so that I could use Noodler’s ink in it and I’m pleased that it proves waterproof when I add the watercolour wash to my sketch.

Link; John Welding, illustrator (and talented photographer!)

Mason Bee

walltilemasonbeesAt the top of Quarry Hill, mason bees are busy around their nest holes in the mortar of an old stone wall. At first I think they’re a yellow and brown insect but the yellow appears to be the pollen sac on the leg. When I look at photographs of mason bees, they mostly carry the pollen on the underside of the abdomen, so I need to check out that detail when I see them again.

They stock the nest holes with pollen then seal the entrance with mud. The larva grows, then pupates in the hole. Several bees might use the same hole, one after another, so when it comes to emergence it must be a case of ‘first in, last out’.

mason bee mason beeYou can now buy bee nest boxes at most garden centres and bird reserve gift shops, so perhaps it’s time for me to invest in one (or make my own) so that I can take a closer look. Bumblebees have already taken over the blue tit box, a hint that I ought to start thinking about insect homes.

Tilly

TillyTillyIt’s so difficult drawing Tilly the bookshop border collie because she’s always alert to what’s going on so, even if she’s quite settled, her ears keep changing the direction they’re pointing in, which gives her a different expression.

I try using the brush pen version of the Pitt Artist Pens that I’m using in my current sketchbook but it’s a marker pen version of a brush, so it’s difficult to get the same life into the line that you would with a more responsive sable brush.

Tillysugar and saltBesides, it’s detail that I like. I’m always aware that I’m failing to catch what’s in front of me but a character like Tilly is a real help in that whatever I do manage to catch of her takes on a certain character on my page. It’s as if she has the ability to project something of her presence into the sketch.

Adding the black and tan watercolour also helps give the right impression.

Chiff-chaff

weeping willowchiff-chaffWe’re so used to our resident birds that the warbler, probably a chiff-chaff, recently returned from north Africa, in the freshly green hawthorn hedge doesn’t seem to belong.

starlingA pair of starlings regularly come down to the pond, bathing and foraging around it.

sparrows and blackbirdHouse sparrows and a blackbird are busy on the bean bed where we spread the tomato compost. Ants were starting to nest in the buckets of dry compost.

The big news at Wakefield Naturalists’ this evening; there’s been lots of peregrine activity around the cathedral. A young male seems to be making a claim to the nest platform attached to the tower.

Published
Categorized as Drawing

Storrs Hill Seed-bank

Storrs Hill, summer 2012
Storrs Hill, summer 2012

gorseOn Storrs Hill, between Horbury and Ossett the gorse is at its best, yellow against an intensely blue sky.

pigThe pigs that have been grazing on the hill have recently been removed, no doubt to fill a freezer or two.

They haven’t made inroads into the gorse but, according to a smallholder friend of mine, they’ve cleared away rank vegetation exposing the ground beneath. He thinks that if the hill isn’t intensively grazed from now on, the original ground layer of vegetation will be able to re-establish itself from seeds that have been lying dormant in the soil.

Storrs Hill c.1890 by Frank C.J. Cockburn, from 'Cockburn's Ossett Alamanac'.
Storrs Hill c.1890 by Frank C.J. Cockburn, from ‘Cockburn’s Ossett Alamanac’.
sofa
Sketches while visiting Barbara’s brother in Ossett today.

Summerhouse

summerhousebrushpen branchI’ve got another chance this morning to sit and draw my mum’s leafy garden. The summerhouse was built in the 1930s. I remember meeting Enid Baines who had lived at Smeath House before the Second World War and she told us that they’d built it. A neighbour across the road, John Haller, engineer, keen golfer and founder member of Horbury Pageant Players, told me that he remembered playing tennis in the back garden at Smeath. When we moved in we found the net stored in one of the outhouses but by then a large rectangular rose bed had been cut out of the middle of the back lawn.

fir top limeWe’re going back to the era when ‘who’s for tennis?!’, garden parties, Agatha Christie and Jeeves and Wooster.

As boys, my brother and I adopted the summerhouse as our clubhouse. Don’t think William and the Outlaws; this was the headquarters of the ambitiously named Horbury Junior Naturalists’ Club, modelled on the British Junior Naturalists’ Association.

A great garden to grow up with.

Published
Categorized as Drawing

Buzzard

buzzard I-SpybuzzardA buzzard circles above the wood then heads over the meadow and garden towards the house. Looking up through my sloping roof-light window I can see it almost vertically overhead as it passes over my studio, the pancake patterns beneath its wing picked out by the afternoon sun.

However many times I see it fly over, I don’t think that I’ll ever get over the excitement that I feel when I see a buzzard. Even when it’s flying over our suburban street, that circling silhouette conjures up wild places for me.

I-Spy BirdsI saw my first buzzard in the Lake District, aged nine, on Wednesday 31 August 1960. I know the date because I still have the I-Spy Birds booklet that I started on that holiday.

I-Spy BirdsBirds of prey in general made a big impression on me, so much so that I chose them as the subject for a school project.

Birds of Prey

 Aged of nine or ten I already had big ideas about the kind of books that I’d like to write and illustrate. The gold label and ambitious title suggest that I was aiming for something authoritative.

I was struggling to work out how to produce the stand-out illustrations that I saw in books and on the Brooke Bond tea cards that I collected. Using large hogs-hair brushes and school powder paints wasn’t going to help.

from my Birds of Prey booklet
There’s some evidence in this handwriting of the essential tremor that I remember having since age seven. No wonder I’ve always found drawing and writing something of a challenge.

The method used for teaching joined-up writing or ‘real writing’ at my junior school was to keep the pen in contact with the paper throughout the word then go back to dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s. By the age of nine I’d already given up this method for my personal projects, preferring more compact block capitals which allowed me to fit my text in amongst my drawings. 
Observer's Book of BirdsI treasured a copy of The Observer’s Book of British Birds which I kept in my gabardine pocket, even though it was unlikely that I’d spot a Montagu’s harrier or a Dartford warbler in the school playground.

buzzardUnfortunately I found myself unable to emulate Archibald Thorburn’s elegant illustrations in the wax crayons available to me in Mr Lindley’s class. But I’ve added my own touch with the background; the Lakeland hills and crag where I’d recently seen that first buzzard.

The Woman over the Window

caryatidThere are carved heads on keystones above the entrance and the windows of this Venetian palace style branch of the Wakefield and Barnsley Union Bank (now occupied by Barclays) built in Ossett in 1870. The Santa Claus lookalike above the door seems to be a portrait, perhaps of the first manager, but this woman over the window has classical proportions and probably represents a mythological figure.

The man in a winged helmet over another window is probably Mercury but it would be nice to think that he was Osla the Viking, who, according to one interpretation of the town’s name, settled at ‘Osla’s seat’ or ‘Osla’s ridge camp’ a century and a half before the Battle of Hastings.

Frankie

frankieYou wouldn’t want to mess with this guy. As he’s one of two bronzed characters looking out from the kitchen in Frankie & Benny’s, I’m assuming that this must be Frankie.

He’s part of the late 1940s, early 1950s New York Italian decorative scheme. The retro soundtrack at breakfast-time (we shared maple syrup pancakes with bacon) includes Tell Laura I Love Her. The music pulls a thread in my memory. I can picture myself in a coffee bar in Carlisle on a family holiday to Scotland and the Lake District, aged nine, in 1960, listening to the Ricky Valance version, which was number one in the singles chart for three weeks.

carlisle 1960In this 1950s ambience, I feel as if I’m being regressed under hypnosis. I have an impression that we were eating soup (cream of mushroom?) from white pyrex bowls somewhere towards the back of the long and airy coffee bar.