Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
I MADE this zero calorie bar of chocolate using a recipe from Chipp Walters’ book Create 3D like a Superhero!, an entertaining introduction to the Vue 3D modelling program. A new – and free to use – version Vue Pioneer 11 is now available and having downloaded it I was inspired me to pick up the book and continue where I left a year ago.
My last Vue creation was Chipp’s Dolphin mini-submarine, but I remember struggling with the paint-shop part of the tutorial!
Link: Cornucopia 3D
IT’S A LOVELY Easter Day and also the last day of March so it seems the perfect opportunity to trawl back through my sketchbooks for the first quarter of the year to pick out the drawings that I never got around to putting online.
My first sketch was drawn from a photograph that I took on our first and sadly so far only walk around Langsett reservoir back in early January. The two stones are gateposts of an abandoned farm called North America.
Quarter of a mile further on you come to a cleared area of plantation sheltered by a belt of silver birches. The habitat has been opened up to encourage nightjars and other birds to return.
We had most of the house decorated in February so I felt that I couldn’t settle down to work at home and as the weather was impossible for getting out drawing I took the opportunity to escape to the cinema a couple of times. This was drawn as I waited for the matinee showing of Lincoln. I wrote;
A few black-headed gulls and a carrion crow patrol the car park. A few tiny patches of snow linger on the fringes of the rough grassland. Dull bare trees shroud the busiest section of the M62 – currently being widened. The valley is more or less snow free, the higher ground snow-covered It’s easy to spot the cars that have come down from higher ground because of the 3 or 4 inches of snow that they carry on their roofs.
Since I started writing the nature diary for the Dalesman I’ve been reading up on the history and the natural history of the Yorkshire Dales and, despite sleety, snowy weather, we managed a shore break, staying at Carperby in Wensleydale at the Wheatsheaf, the hotel where James Herriot and his wife spent their honeymoon. I’ve got out of the habit of packing for drawing trips so I printed out a check list that I’d made when we were touring eastern England a few years ago. One of the items on the list was a clutch pencil, not something that I normally think to take with me so when we stopped for lunch in Grassington I gave it a try. It’s probably marginally quicker than pen and the lighter tone brings the sketch nearer to watercolour than my normal pen and wash approach.
There’s a walk across the fields from Carperby to Aysgarth falls, where I sketched again in the Mill Race tea rooms. In the craft shop in the old mill there are photographs of Kevin Costner filming Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves at Aysgarth. The production spent four days here filming the encounter between Robin and Little John and, according to the caption next to the photographs, Costner’s wife had admitted that he was terrified when it came to the fourth day and he had to launch himself backwards several times into the foaming waters of the falls (flowing at 100 m.p.h. according the caption!).
We sheltered in the Dales Folk Museum on the Friday, familiarising ourselves with the history of the area and I drew the view from the cafe during our coffee and lunch breaks.
This gave me the chance to return to another medium that I haven’t used much recently; my Pentel Brush Pen. This forces you to work quickly and once dry its waterproof so you can add a watercolour wash.
There wasn’t much opportunity to draw as we made our steady progress around the museum and I found it difficult to choose just one item to sketch before we headed back to Carperby. I wrote;
This Bronze Age cup found at Crayke Farm near Hawes wouldn’t have been of any use to drink from as it is perforated by small holes, as if someone had pricked the clay with a cocktail stick around the base.
9 March; This morning at Wakefield One, the metropolitan council’s new headquarters, you’re greeted by dancing caymans and wandering minstrels. The smell of freshly cooked medieval food wafts from the booths outside while inside there are the squeaks and occasional pops as balloon are made to order.
I’ve been invited to the opening of the new museum galleries as a thank you for helping out with some of the illustrations for the Charles Waterton exhibit. I squeeze in at the back of the crowd that has gathered on the landing by the library. Some students from Leeds camped out from 5 in the morning to be sure of getting a place but they’ve now had to close the doors to the queues outside.
Standing next to me is a six year old boy wearing a cayman suit.
‘Have you been dancing?’
He’s overawed at the spectacle but his mum explains that no, he wasn’t one of the dancers but when he heard what was happening he insisted on wearing the costume. He reminds me of the boy in Maurice Sendack’s Where the Wild Things Are.
Councillor Box, leader of the council introduces ‘a man who needs no introduction’, Sir David Attenborough.
WITH BUS routes over the hills disrupted by the snow, we ended up taking a taxi to the matinee at the Theatre Royal and Opera House in Wakefield this afternoon. John Godber’s adaptation of Stan Barstow’s novel A Kind of Loving was as funny and evocative as the read-through which we attended in Ossett last summer had suggested. One of the hazards of a live performance; John Godber strolled onto the stage at the start of the production and explained that because Christine Cox who plays Vic’s mum had lost her voice he would be reading her part, while she continued in mime only (we did very briefly hear her in one scene). I’d like to see the play again and hear her speak her lines but in most scenes you could have understood her character’s emotions without any dialogue. Every live performance is different and it didn’t detract from the experience, if anything it was another way getting us to use our imaginations to draw us into the story and the lives of the characters.
In those days cigarette smoking was an everyday activity and you couldn’t evoke the late 1950s and early 60s without having the characters smoking in various situations. A silver cigarette case, a 21st birthday gift, features in the plot. But it was strange to catch a whiff of smoke indoors again after years of it being banned. Luckily it didn’t set off the alarms. It reminded me of a time when any cinema, bus (upstairs) or pub that you went in would have to varying degrees a fug of stale smoke which you’d carry it back home on your clothes. But I should explain that this was just the slightest hint of fresh smoke and we were close to the stage on row E in the stalls, so don’t let it put you off attending when the production moves on to Hull and Stoke!
Here’s a subject that most of us get a chance to draw every day, except perhaps the people who live in the old windmill further up the lane; the corner of a room.
Moving a little to the right, this jug on the hearth came from Barbara’s mum’s. I guess that it dates from the fifties but it could be slightly pre-war. It’s hand-painted with orange flowers. Marrying the curvy vase with the geometric pattern of bricks proved beyond me and I was unable to match up the proportions of the vertical and horizontal sections of the fireplace when I came to draw the bottom righthand corner of my drawing. My guess is that I drew the jug slightly larger than the bricks that I’d already drawn by the gas fire on the left.
So for my next drawing I went for something with no geometric grid. This is my A5 size art bag, a grey Mantaray bag which I most often take with me for everyday drawing, such as this afternoon at the theatre.
EVERYONE IS getting fed up about the winter. It might not have been the worst but it seems to have gone on for so long, especially as it stretches back to merge almost imperceptibly with a long wet summer.
But it doesn’t have to stop me drawing. I grab the nearest pen, the Lamy Safari that I like to write with and draw whatever happens to be around me. The only thing that I rearrange is my pair of trainers, taking them out from under the coffee table and setting them at what for a human sitter you’d call three-quarter face.
It’s surprising how fascinating familiar objects can be when you really look at them. Different types of trainers seem to have different expressions. Tongues, eyes and a hint of a smile give them an individual character that you’ve got to draw with as much care as you would a face. They even have a sole.
This is the first drawing that I started this evening. As you can see it took me a while to get into drawing. To me this looks rather stilted and awkward but perhaps that’s because the bowls and the vase are standing around like the guests at a party that hasn’t quite got off the ground yet.
I soon realised that the cartridge was running out so popped upstairs for a refill.
According to a Horizon documentary that I watched last week the optimal way to increase your creativity is to take on a task which is moderately demanding. Sitting there doing nothing doesn’t free up the creative side of your brain as you might think it would do and nor does getting involved in a task that demands all your concentration.
So drawing a bookshelf, with those repetitive but slightly different shapes, must put you in the ‘Goldilocks’ zone for creativity when you’re drawing. Not too demanding but sufficiently engaging to get the creative parts of your brain ticking over.
TWO WEEKS ago one or two small mounds of earth appeared near the bird table. I tried to persuade myself that they might be molehills but I realised that it was more likely that they were the work of brown rats attracted to the quantities of sunflower hearts spilt by the birds that use the feeders.
We’ve stopped feeding which is a shame as it’s been such a pleasure to see the regular goldfinches, greenfinches, blue tits, great tits, house sparrows and siskins, up to 20 of the latter at a time.
Am I making a mountain of a problem out of molehill? A hole has also appeared beneath the compost bin and that must be the work of a rodent. Our neighbours report that the rats have actually nibbled holes to get into their compost bins. They’ve put a couple of baiting boxes down.
I’m going to move our compost bin to a more open position. Hope they’ll get the message and move on.
More bad wildlife gardening news; our neighbours have filled in the pond in the corner by the hedge as their garden has to accomodate a growing number of young children. When our previous neighbours originally put in this pond almost 30 years ago I was convinced that this was too shady a site for a healthy pond. I was wrong because the pond was always more popular with the frogs than ours was, despite all my efforts to create the perfect habitat.
I’m really hoping that all the local frogs weren’t hibernating in the pond when it was removed. It’s the first day of spring today and I’m hoping that any returning frogs will hop along to my pond when they find their favourite spot has been destroyed.
IT’S GOOD to be back at Charlotte’s ice cream parlour where I drew this cockerel and the Soay sheep a couple of weeks ago. The distant moor tops are lost in the mist today but the blue skies and sunshine that the area of high pressure has brought are a welcome change from the uninspiring weather that we’ve been used to during the past month.
My mum celebrated her 95th birthday at the weekend but we’re getting back to normal taking her for her regular appointment and to our current favourite coffee stop to take in the wide open spaces of the view over a broad curve in the Calder Valley.
We watch a buzzard circle to gain height over a sunlit slope then make its leisurely way down the valley. I say leisurely but no marathon runner could cover the ground in anything like the time that the buzzard takes.
I haven’t been drawing as much as I’d have liked recently as we’ve been doing so much on the house, in the garden and with my business and I’ve been writing a couple more instalments of my Wild Yorkshire nature diary for the Dalesman magazine.
GIVE OR TAKE a few colours that have been swapped around since, this is the box of Winsor & Newton’s artists’ watercolours that I took with me on a tour of England, Wales and Scotland, when I compiled my Britain sketchbook for Collins (1981). One review commented on ‘the brownish greenish charm’ of my sketches. That was partly due to my choice of colours, including so many greens and earth colours in my selection, but also because, in the mainly off season periods when I drew on location, Britain really does have a certain brownish greenish charm.
One of my favourite pages was a double page spread of Rannoch Moor, where I let heather, bog and misty hills fill the entire field of view. You can’t get much more greenish brown than that! The book was printed on slightly tinted paper which muted the colour still further.
I scratched away at brown watercolour washes to suggest some of the lighter stems of rushes and the wake of a Water Vole, swimming across a peaty pool. I’d forgotten that Water Vole until I took the book off the shelf just now.
I can see why these colours appealed to me at the time. If I was making up a similar box today, I’d definitely include a cooler red – alizarin crimson for example. I’ve just added four colours that I happened to have spare, to fill in a few gaps. I could take a guess at the names of most of the remaining original colours – sap green, sepia, burnt sienna and so on – but at least painting these swatches familiarises me with the general layout.
Why have I dug out this battered old paintbox from the back of the watercolours drawer? I’ve got 4 art bags and one art passport wallet on the go at the moment, with sketchbooks ranging from postcard to place-mat in size but it’s frustrating when, like Goldilocks, I grab a bag that is ‘just right’ for the location I’m heading for, then later realise that I’ve forgotten to transfer the watercolours. Hopefully I’ll end up with 5 bags with a reasonable box of watercolours in each.
THE LANDSCAPE is looking increasingly wintry so we appreciate the wood-burning stove when we take my mum out for a coffee at the new garden centre at Grange Moor.
We’ve had a period of zooming around on errands so there’s been little in my sketchbooks recently but I always tell myself that a table of magazines or leaflets in a waiting room, or quick sketch of a mug of coffee is better than nothing!
However with various loose ends tied up I’m really feeling the need to get down to some solid drawing.
These are all from my ‘urban’ sketchbook, the one I take on errands around town. They’re mainly drawn with my Lamy Safari pen except for the wood-burning stove which I wanted to add watercolour to, so I went for an ArtPen filled with Noodler’s ink.
CONSIDERING THAT as a teenager I only ever bought two or three copies of Mad magazine, I feel that it made a big impression on me.
The American artwork was sharper than the gentler English cartoons of Punch. Besides, Mad was aimed at my age group so instead of the witty verbiage that filled the spaces between the cartoons – which for me were the main event in Punch – there were comic strip satires of television and movies; spoof advertisements, magazine articles and books and regular strips such as Spy v. Spy.
The sheer exuberance of the graphic design made me eager to try out some of the formats for myself. That sense that publications can be fun, that they don’t have to be subtle and worthy, has stayed with me despite the training that I had in graphic design, which probably accounts for the wayward nature of my publications to this day.
Looking out the photograph of my sister in my Summer Holiday 1965 journal I can see an example where I’ve squeezed a cartoon into the margin; what Mad magazine called a Marginal Working Out. An example I remember, drawn across the top of a page on an entirely unrelated article in Mad, was a guitarist looking out at a row of crows sitting on telephone wires and playing along as if he was reading them as notes on a stave. Clever.
My mini cartoon of the car encountering continental calamities isn’t so original; it’s my version of a cartoon that I’d seen in Punch, I imagine that it was a Thelwell, but other cartoonists drew this kind of subject.
I’m having a rainy day in the studio, clearing my desk, so, before I threw out some scrap paper and a couple of paper bags I thought I’d scan these marginal workings out, drawn when I was working out ideas for various jobs that I’ve been doing.
I don’t think ‘Reg’ in the doodle on the left related to anything at all. He really is just a doodle.
Yesterday I watched Life is Sweets, Nigel Slater’s evocation of childhood as remembered through the sweets and chocolate bars he ate at the time. It really was a big thing for him. I remember sweets of course but the memories that make the biggest impression on me, that can bring back a whole little episode in my life are particular books, comics or magazines.
Nigel Slater remembers tastes and textures, I remember things like the feel and smell of the paper in Mad magazine and the crispness of the line work and the half tone printing, the accuracy of the caricatures and so on. I guess that’s why Nigel became a food writer and I became an illustrator.
I’M THINKING about setting the scene in my latest comic strip course exercise, putting figures, in this case a mountaineering version of my Jack and Jill characters, into a panel which has a foreground, middle ground and background.
There’s also a section in this chapter in Drawing Words & Writing Pictures which offers advice on devising figures. I’ve long used what the authors Abel and Madden refer to as figurettes to set a scene, drawing rough figures, similar to a wooden lay figure, consisting of ovals and sausage-shapes to work out action poses.
They ask you to try the technique on figures standing, walking . . .
. . . running and kneeling.
Then to trace figures from a book or magazine using the same ovals and sausage-shapes (the light pencil lines in my sketches, left) then, using these ‘figurettes’ as a basis, to draw a different character in the same pose (dark lines).
As I was saying the other day, this way of a constructing a drawing is the opposite of the process that I’m familiar with in my sketchbook work where careful observation of a figure, animal or building should result in the underlying structure looking convincing.