Category: Art

Saturday, 15 April, 2023: Sad news that Barbara’s brother John died peacefully in his sleep early this morning so I’m keen to finish the little grey sketchbook which started at the beginning of January when he was taken ill. His last short walk with us was at Thornes Park on Monday 9th January and he was taken into hospital the following weekend when it was expected that he had just days to live.

During the three months that he has been in Pontefract Hospice it’s been a welcome distraction for me to work on my John Carr Redbox Gallery display and I finished work on that today.

Looking forward to making a fresh start with my new sketchbooks.

Recent iPad sketches drawn in Procreate and Clip Studio Paint.

A few more pages from my current pocket sketchbook

Addingford, 10.30 am: A male reed bunting flits into a hawthorn bush by a pond between the canal and the river, flashing its white tail bars.

Wintering duck have now moved on but a single drake goosander makes its way down the river, diving occasionally as it goes. Later we see a female heading up river.

Swans often nest on the quieter side of the canal but this year a pair have built an island nest on a tennis court-sized pond by the Strands. They’ve built up the nest platform from the dried stems of reedmace, which is now bursting into fluffy masses of downy seed. Slender willows along the banks are dotted with pale catkins.

A pair of grey wagtails bob about on a flooded corner of the The Strands.

I could go on adding details (or start again and try to get nearer the actual proportions!) but there’s enough to evoke John Carr’s spire in my recycled materials model for the Redbox Gallery show.

Think of this as being more stage set – well a stage set for a stop action animation perhaps – rather than architectural model.

I’ve given my cut-out version of the Beechey portrait of Carr a bit of a Pop-Art makeover in Adobe Illustrator.