Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
For the first time in years, Farrow and Ball have released a new range of colours.
Happy birthday to Ali at the weekend. There are eleven colours in the new range and I couldn’t fit them all on Ali’s card but I couldn’t resist drawing the remaining four who didn’t make it into the final cut.
Healthy options in Ancient Rome. Happy birthday to Tom yesterday.
Happy birthday to Susan, who always avoids encounters with cheese straws at parties. Come to think of it she always avoids Twiglets too. After this she’s probably going to avoid me at the next party too.
You can see that I’m still missing Gary Larson’s Far Side cartoons. I can’t believe that his last cartoon appeared as long ago as 1995.
Milestones in spaniel history. Happy birthday to Sarah.
To keep in spaniel mode that last caption should have read: ‘Spaniel Radcliffe: ‘Hairy Potterer and the Philosopher’s Bone’.’
“I didn’t expect you to survive for more than a few days.” I said to John recently.
“I hope that I haven’t disappointed you.” he replied.
He’s celebrating his 82nd birthday today.
All the family is gathering around but as this is the Hospice in relays rather than in one big noisy party. I drew my usual view of trees from his patio windows on our visit this morning.
Another day at the Hospice but, because we’ve got a few extra visitors this morning, I head down across the racecourse, under the M62 and over the railway at Glass Houghton Station for a coffee break at Junction 32 Freeport.
On my return walk through the strip of woodland alongside the railway, robins and blue tits are singing, a wren investigates the undergrowth and a sulphur-yellow brimstone, the original ‘butter fly’, flies determinedly but erratically, zig-zagging along the scrubby hedgerow in a roughly north-westerly direction,
We accompanied Barbara’s brother John in a wheelchair on a circuit of the Hospice grounds this morning.
The light was fading when we arrived at the hospice so this evening it was still life rather than landscape in my pocket sketchbook.
Another exercise in not lifting the pen from the paper as I draw. Colour and negative colour added in Photoshop.
The fast food at the Falafel Street Kitchen was a tad too fast for me and this was as far as I was able to get in sketching the customers.
Luckily the pace at the Nats’ AGM was a little more sedate. Even so, these days we get through the business side of the evening in a little over fifteen minutes.