Category: Art

Archer Hill

As we walked across the deer park at Wentworth Castle, two fallow bucks looked up then decided we were harmless and went on grazing as we passed them. The does and fawns were more wary. One made a show by ‘stotting’: prancing off stiff-legged, alternately putting the two front legs, then the two back legs down. This behaviour is thought to be a signal to predators that the deer is so fit, with its fancy footwork, that it won’t be worth the trouble of attempting to catch it.

Archer Hill Gate (all three arches of it: I’ve framed it with the tree to show only one of them) stands half way up the slope between Wentworth Castle, a Georgian mansion, and the ruins of Stainborough Castle.

Drawn at Diana’s

sketches of mugs, vases, lamp and clock

Drawn at Diana’s this afternoon, sadly P.C. the black cat is no longer with us, as I usually drew him when we visited.

Babylon

cartoon mouse

Some of my Night before Christmas mice have been drafted in for a comic strip version of the nursery rhyme How many miles to Babylon?

mouse hiker cartoon

Although first published in 1801, it’s possible that the rhyme originated in the 1600s as a Scottish Border folksong.

How many miles to Babylon cartoon

Scottish Borders is the setting I’m going for.

Masked Mice

mouse cartoons

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.

Pigeons

pigeons on a roof

A favourite spot for Horbury’s feral pigeons to gather is the Co-op roof.

Sketchbook drawing.

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.

Winter Walk

conifers at Langsett

With our Christmas finally sorted, it’s time for one our wilder walks around the reservoir at Langsett.

The moor 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.

Langsett reservoir
The reservoir has filled up since our last visit.

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.

Langsett reservoir from the dam head

Sketches

chairs and people sketches

Recent sketches from my 125×90 mm Hahnemühle D&S sketchbook. Tones added in Photoshop.

The Top End of the Wood

They must have been running short on sand when they mixed this concrete during World War II.

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.

World War II anti-aircraft gun emplacement, Newmillerdam woods.

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.

Alongside the gun emplacement, I wonder if this was the ammunition store

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.

Published
Categorized as Drawing

Christmas in a Box

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.

Christmas stockings

The Christmas stockings that Barbara ran up at short notice work well with knitted characters from her late – and much missed – mum, Betty.

packing the car

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.

Published
Categorized as Drawing