
Great Philosophers. Happy birthday to Jo for yesterday.
Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998

Great Philosophers. Happy birthday to Jo for yesterday.

We set off at 8.30 or so and whisked down the M.1. to Linnie & Dave’s

Where we had lunch before going and putting my things in my room at Evelyn Gardens.

Then Shopping – Mother bought a bright Red Trouser Suit.

Trying the new Manga brushes, including the vector G pen in Adobe Fresco.

Happy birthday to batworker Heather last week.






Sketches from Newmillerdam, Harrogate and Queen Street, Horbury, in my pocket-sized A6 landscape Seawhite Travel Journal. Lamy and TWSBI EcoT pens, De Atramentis ink (a mix of brown and black as both were running out).

Happy birthday to Zach.




Hands drawn on the iPad with Adobe Fresco and Clip Studio Paint plus one in regular pen and ink and watercolour.

Clip Studio Paint on the iPad: experimenting with adding colour.


I’m also trying screen mirroring so that if I’m working in, for example, Photoshop on my iMac, and I’ve got something intricate to do, like erasing background texture on a scan of a sketchbook page, I can switch over to working with the Apple Pencil on my iPad.
It would be possible to do a whole drawing this way but with Adobe Fresco, Clip Studio Paint and even a version of Photoshop on the iPad there’s no need to, I can draw directly.
I haven’t noticed any delay when I’m drawing using screen mirroring; the marks appear in real time.
For years I’ve used as Wacom Intuos 4 graphics pad for erasing or drawing in Photoshop on the iMac but with the latest Apple operating system, Monterey, Wacom no longer support that model. Working on the iPad should be more flexible, once I’ve learned the ins and outs of it, as I can see the iMac screen on the iPad. The graphics pad was blank, so I got used to drawing on the desktop and seeing the results appear on the iMac.

Beech at Newmillerdam, drawn this morning with the constant accompaniment of cooing wood pigeons and the occasional clatter of a beech nut dropping from the still-green canopy.

Deep amongst the rhododendrons.