Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
The tones and textures were added to these pen and ink mice by using a clipping mask in Adobe Fresco. For the comic that I’ve got in mind, Mouse 1, Row 2, is the one to go for, drawn with Fresco’s ‘watercolor wet spatter’ brush. I want to rather dreary and slightly disconcerting look, like a production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot. If it was a Victorian story, I’d go to town with the ‘cross hatch’ from the selection of ‘Comic’ brushes.
A favourite spot for Horbury’s feral pigeons to gather is the Co-op roof.
I drew these in my pocket-sized sketchbook and rearranged them in Photoshop before adding the tones in Fresco on my iPad Pro, using an Apple Pencil.
With our Christmas finally sorted, it’s time for one our wilder walks around the reservoir at Langsett.
A stable mass of high pressure is starting to establish itself over Britain, forcing the jet stream into an Ω (omega)-shaped diversion right around it to the north.
This morning, the Pennine watershed marks the division between air masses and we can see a large grey cloud hanging over Manchester and rolling over the moor tops to envelop the Holme Moss transmitter but it doesn’t make any progress towards us.
Recent sketches from my 125×90 mm Hahnemühle D&S sketchbook. Tones added in Photoshop.
A jay screeches from up in the trees as I climb the steps to the Arboretum at Newmillerdam but woodland birds aren’t much in evidence as I walk briskly along, just the odd blue tit and great tit up in the branches and, more conspicuously, robins which are more on my level.
As a change from making a circuit of the lake, I’m heading up to the top end of the woods, towards the former railway cutting, where I haven’t been for years.
The original track between the drystone wall and the shelter belt of poplars gets steadily more overgrown with brambles as I walk along it before switching to the newer track alongside the Arboretum.
Reminding me of a scene from the Everglades, three cormorants, including a brown juvenile with a patch of white on its breast, sit on the twisting branches of a dead tree which rises from the shallows on a quieter stretch of the lake shore. A fourth cormorant splashes about near to them, going through a vigorous bathing routine.
It was a close thing, setting up The Night before Christmas display the Redbox Gallery’s telephone box on Queen Street, Horbury, this morning but with a few adjustments we were able to fit the sleeping dog, cat and mouse on the wedge-shaped space by the hearth.
The Christmas stockings that Barbara ran up at short notice work well with knitted characters from her late – and much missed – mum, Betty.
We were tweaking and trying to plan for every hidden snag we might meet but it all went smoothly, thanks to the help of Graham Roberts of Horbury Civic Society (who run the Redbox Gallery project) and Sarah Town who brought along the paper chains and baubles made by the local Brownies.
We particularly liked the clothes peg/paper doily doll angel they made which presides over the whole affair hanging in the crowded airspace amongst the paper chains.
I’ve drawn the sleeping dog and the cat and mouse as cut outs today but it looks as if we won’t have room for the dog.
Our Christmas card in a telephone box is taking shape but we had a setback when members of the local Brownie group, who’ve been busy handcrafting Christmas decorations for the show, had to call off their final crafting session because of two cases of Covid.
Barbara came to the rescue and ran up the Christmas stockings and the Bonsai frosted fir trees, which, along with the Christmas card byline, we’d hoped to get the Brownies to make at a crafting session.
‘Not a creature is stirring . . .’ in my Night Before Christmas scene but how do I imply that the mouse isn’t going to end up as a midnight snack for the cat?
I’m going for more of a cartoon look for the mouse.
Although I’d follow Beatrix Potter’s method of not adding much in the way of costume when she needed to emphasise the animal nature of her character.
We’ll be setting up the Night Before Christmas display in the Redbox Gallery on Friday and, as a break from constructing the scenery out of foamboard, I’ve moved on to the sleeping dog character.
‘No creature was stirring’, says the poem, so that’s the mood I’m going for here.