Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
Novelist Stan Barstow at Lumb Bank, leading an Arvon Foundation creative writing course, 1975. Drawn from a photograph, photographer not credited, in his 2001 autobiography, In My Own Good Time.
This is the first drawing I’ve made using Procreate on my iPad Pro for quite a while. I used one of the new brushes from the latest version of the program: the Bellerive brush from the Pens folder. It approximates my Lamy fountain pen drawings.
As I walk up Coxley Valley on a misty morning, I’m surrounded autumn leaves so, thinking about a new logo for Willow Island Editions, I decide that leaves might have more graphic impact than the tree-on-an-island logo that I currently use.
I pick up four crack willow leaves from alongside where the beck splits, creating the willow island that I used as a name for my self-publishing imprint.
A windswept version might have a lively look but the logo also needs a solid hint of authority as I want readers to feel that they can trust the instructions in my walks booklets.
“In nature you’re surrounded simple but stunning copyright-free design”
As I sat with a latte and flapjack by the The Little Acorn, the coffee cabin at the top end of the wood, I felt that their pun of a logo shows that simpler can be better.
A woodcut-style ink drawing of the willow-leaf ‘W’ would be more punchy than using the soft autumn colours of the leaves themselves. It would also hint at my hand-drawn approach.
The reason that I’m rethinking the look of Willow Island Editions is because I’m transferring my 27-year old website, www.willowisland.co.uk, from regular HTML to WordPress.
I find that a quiet walk in the woods in the perfect way to clear my mind a bit and focus on design. In nature you’re surrounded simple but stunning copyright-free design.
Please pick me up next, urged the book on the shelf,
You must know that reading is good for your health:
To be lost in a book is like getting a hug
And isn't dependent on battery or plug.
You might think me pushy but I've waited ages
For any kind reader to riffle my pages.
You may feel you'd hate me but might be a lover:
Remember you can't judge a book by its cover.
Folk not using bookmarks are one of my fears,
They fold down my pages and give me dog ears.
Now that I'm older, I'm weak in my spine
But handle me gently and I'll be just fine.
On this shelf I've rubbed shoulders with books thick and thin
But we found 'War and Peace' a bit hard to fit in.
We had one of those library books come here to stay -
It stayed one extra week, now there's four pounds to pay!
I was dazzled by sunlight when I was unboxed,
So please pull down that blind or I'll be slightly foxed.
I hope classic reading comes into your plans:
I'm set in Times Roman and not Comic Sans!
After 15 years I thought that it was about time that I made my local walks booklets, local history and sketchbooks available on my Wild Yorkshire blog. It’s simple enough but while experimenting with templates I did briefly convert my blog into a rather upmarket vase boutique. Thank you to Matt at flairdigital.co.uk for getting me out of that one!
The Book Shelf link should be on the menu at the top of this page. Fingers crossed!
Another of my finds from old Wakefield Market. The original isn’t in colour but I thought that the ‘Ripping Yarns’ scenes from Edwardian school life deserved a spot of colourisation in Photoshop.
From my www.wildyorkshire.co.uk blog, 30th May 2004:
A family gathering means that I meet up with George, aged 7, my great nephew. At a previous family party he and I collaborated on a story, Firefeet. George improvised the story – and for once I was careful not to prompt him, or discuss the plot with him, it was entirely from his own imagination – and I drew the illustrations as the story progressed. George kept the original copy, which was just on a piece of folded scrap paper but I was so haunted by the tale that I wrote it out again from memory, redrew the illustrations, coloured it in Photoshop and printed out a few copies on my colour printer.
It’s a lovely time to get out walking in West Yorkshire and my friend Heather, now living in exile in Staffordshire (which she tells me is also brilliant for walking) has ordered a couple of my walks books for a friend of hers who lives on the fringe of Pontefract’s liquorice country, as featured in my full colour booklet, All Sorts of Walks in Liquorice Country.
I want the one with the walk from the Chantry Bridge to Featherstone. I think it a splendid walk, and the book will make a lovely present for my friend.
Heather
The Robin Hood booklet, also in full colour, also includes walks around Pontefract and in Brockadale, Wentbridge, where Sayles, a rocky outcrop overlooking the old Great North Road, features in the earliest surviving Robin Hood ballad.
I’m posting these booklets to her friend with a bookmark with a message from Heather and an artist’s impression of Heather on a recent trek she made up a hill.
Just 530 words so far but although I haven’t made much progress on the challenge to write a 50,000 word novel in November it has given me the opportunity to dip into the novel writing format of Scrivener, a program that I’ve used for writing articles for years.
The Novel Format includes folders for two blank chapters, which you can easily adapt and add to.
Each chapter can be divided into scenes. As an illustrator I tend to think in scenes rather than in chunks of dialogue, so I like the visual approach of the corkboard view where I can see the files and, if necessary, rearrange their order. Each scene can have an image attached to it.
There are folders too for characters, locations and research plus, one of my favourite Scrivener writing tools, the Name Generator. My characters Clark Rafferty and Vanda Redman were the first names to pop up on the suggestions for male and female names. For Len Platter – the disaster prone TV chef, star of the ill-fated Platter’s Oven-Ready Deal, I had to scroll down the list a bit. But Len Platter sounds about right for a character who’s attempting to follow in the footsteps of ‘backstreet mechanic’ Fred Dibnah and ‘gastronaut’ Keith Floyd.
Each character gets a character sketch sheet.
When you’re writing you’ve got the choice of keeping an eye on the overall structure of your novel or going for a clutter-free Composition Mode.
If you finish your novel, which I won’t, Scrivener can:
generate a document in the standard manuscript format for novels. Settings are also provided to make it easy to compile to a paperback-style PDF for self-publishing or an EPUB or Kindle ebook.
Scrivener, notes on Novel Format
If I do get around to writing another book it’s likely to be non-fiction rather than a blockbuster novel but there’s also an option for a standard non-fiction template . . . plus templates for theses, screenplays, poems and stage plays.
Scrivener – Literature and Latte
It might be 50 years ago since Bill’s homemade stereo spontaneously combusted, singeing my books and diaries on the shelf above but, as he’s my brother I’ve never let him forget it!
I still remember the thrill of first hearing familiar records in stereo for the first time. The track I particularly remember was ‘The Shirt Event from Olympia’ by the Bonzo Dog Band. Going from mono to stereo was the equivalent of switching from 2D to 3D. The surprise was that we could tap into this sophisticated technology with Bill’s concoction of bits of old amps from a record player and radio wired together and held in place with tacks hammered into an offcut of plywood. Initially the speakers weren’t even in boxes, they were just lying there on the floor next to makeshift amplifier.
We now know that attaching a transformer to a piece of wood isn’t a good idea.
Here’s just one of the casualties amongst our treasured records, books and diaries on the metal shelf unit above. I got our local printer Mr Chappell to trim off the worst of the charred edges from my copy of Coyler & Hammond’s Flies of the British Isles. Still readable but hardly a pleasure to use, so naturally when I spotted a pristine copy amongst the secondhand books in the cafe at the National Trust’s Wentworth Castle I went for it.
Nor could I resist Guide to Microlife by Rainis and Russell, Animals under logs and stones by Wheater and Read and Small Freshwater Creatures by Olsen, Sunesen and Pedersen.
I’ve never done Inktober because it’s too near to real life for me but when I heard about NaNoWriMo – a challenge to write a 50,000 word novel by the end of November, I couldn’t resist it. It’s free to sign up, if you want to give it a go.
As you can see from my project page I’ve so far written zero words, but at least I’ve designed a cover.
Here’s my summary:
Looking out on the ocean. Currents in our lives and eddies in history. And a bit of marine biology. I love marine biology. Returning tides, a secret garden surrounded by blank walls and blocked doorways . . . and redemption. Just say if you think If’m being too ambitious!
And an extract, difficult to choose an extract when I haven’t started writing it yet, but this was a quote from a recent conversation:
“I used to dive but now I have an irrational fear of the sea. I know where all of the fish live and what they can do to me. If there’s a strip of grass at the top of the beach I can sit there, but I can’t go on the beach.”
Well, it’s a start . . . only 49,950 words to go.