Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
Like a scene from Peter Rabbit, a woman walks up the garden path to Hilary’s cafe with a large bunch of fresh carrots, holding them by the lush ferny foliage of the carrot tops.
She’s soon back down the shed, returning again with three Petanque boule-size beetroots, again with fresh-looking foliage.
“I only came here for a cup of coffee!” she explains.
Some possibilities for using the library logo in a letterhead. Hopefully the secretary won’t be misquoting Cicero’s Latin as in the placeholder text of my mocked-up example.
My first thoughts on the typography to go with the Horbury Library logo.
I couldn’t exactly match the ‘KNOWLEDGE IS POWER’ typeface used in the iron gates of the porch of the library but I thought thats the font Hunter from the font family P22 Arts and Crafts available on Adobe Fonts had the right sort of confident swish about it.
I’d like to incorporate some of the flourishes in the wrought iron, if I can do that without making the logo too fussy.
I like this font, Scotch Display Condensed, Semi-bold (and semi-bold italic for the ‘of’). It’s more readable but slabs of black and the prominent dots over the ‘i’s echo the illustration and the ‘of’ gives a little Arte Nouveau flourish.
As a complete change from the graphic symmetry of the library logo on our day off in Harrogate today I’ve gone for a freeform drawing exercise, suggested by Ian Burke of the Staithes Gallery on a recent episode of Robson Green’s Weekend Escapes.
In contrast to all the planning that went into constructing the library facade for the logo, the aim here is to keep your pen on the paper and just keep drawing.
I know what you’re thinking, even for a freeform drawing isn’t that too wobbly? But I was drawing through the windows of the Palm Court Cafe above Farrar’s so I was looking through the rippled glass leaded lights of the cafe’s windows.
The Crown Hotel, Harrogate
Palm Court Cafe, Harrogate
There are two vital skills that you need if you’re going to design a logo based on an architectural facade: organisation and analytical thinking. Despite my shortcomings in those departments, I have managed what I think will be a usable logo for the friends of the local library.
After struggling with Procreate I’ve constructed this, layer by layer, in the program that I’m most familiar with, Adobe Photoshop, with a bit of help from Adobe Illustrator for those carved panels and, my favourite detail, the curly ironwork on the newly restored weather vane.
The next step on my Procreate animal illustration course is to take one of my thumbnail sketches and try it with three different lighting set-ups. I’ve gone for the light coming from the left, the right and from below (as if the goose had been caught in the beam from car headlights).
The one I like best is the light from above left and slightly behind, with a glint of reflected light from the bottom right.
Then it’s on to a rough drawing, not too detailed, but indicating the different areas of plumage.
Happy birthday to Hannah.
As this is a big – jumbo-sized – birthday this year it’s a pop-up card.
How can I do a birthday card for a Pokémon fan, Ted, when I don’t know anything about Pokémon?
By the way, the rodent above right is supposed to be a dormouse.
A similar problem with Olive’s card, she’s a Bluey fan but I prefer terrier puppies in their natural colours (yes, they’re supposed to be little dogs, even if some of them look more like mice). Richard Scarry must have given himself more time when he drew his spreads of Busytown.
And finally, happy birthday to my brother Bill yesterday. I’d forgotten how he got his good looks until I spotted this in my 1973 diary. Bill and I are one quarter Welsh so really no excuse for not predicting what the consequences of a rugby tour of South Wales might be. I think this was Rugby Union, although Bill also played Rugby League.
The 1973 diary extracts continue inside the card …
I’m picking up again on Román García Mora’s Naturalist Animal Illustration with Procreate course and here we’re asked to work towards our final illustration by trying out miniature sketches of different poses of our animal or bird.
From the nine I’ve now got to choose three for my final spread. I’m intending to go for a flying goose top left, a main illustration bottom right facing into the page and somewhere in between, a small sketch illustrating some kind of behaviour.
I showed this to John – who is still surviving in the hospice – and he liked the aggressive goose in the centre and the one shown feeding in the water.
I’m designing a logo for the Friends of our local library, and Arts and Crafts style Carnegie Free Library and I’m struggling to get the precision I need for a simple graphic that can be reproduced at various sizes, including on a letterhead.
I’ve been learning all I can about Procreate and it should be simple to design it in the program but, as so often, my shaky hands are letting me down. For some projects I would welcome the wobble as it gives can make an intimidating facade look more friendly – and this is for a ‘Friends’ group after all -but I’ve decided to go for a program that enables even me to easily produce precise geometric shapes and I’ve gone to Adobe Illustrator.
But I might come back to Procreate for the finishing touches.