Category: Habitats

Willow Island Logo

logo sketch

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”

tree canop
Willow Island Logo: Willow Island Logo

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.

path amongst larches

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.

woodland path

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.

Ikea Hedge

Sloe and hawthorn and a Vildpersilja cushion at Ikea, Birstall Retail Park this morning.

The car park is adjacent to one of the busiest stretches of the M62, which may be the reason for the lush lichen growth on the twigs. The yellow lichen Xanthoria polycarpa can tolerate high levels of nitrogen while the grey-green lichen, Hypogymnia physodes, tolerates acidic conditions.

Widescreen Watercolours

I’m starting a 12 x 6 inch format Pink Pig sketchbook, 150 gsm textured Ameleie paper (their own make). I’ve started with a couple of half-hour watercolour sketches, trying to get away from my usual approach of drawing in detail first, then colouring in.

View from my window, overlooking the lower end of Coxley Valley.

I quickly drew outlines in pencil for my first sketch (top) but started straight off in watercolour with the second.

Studio window

Yesterday I’d made a start: I’ve drawn this view (below) from the garden centre at Shelley several times over the years but I draw it as if I’m recording the shapes of fields and woodland for a sketch map. Yesterday, fortified with latte and an elderflower and blueberry flapjack, I dived straight in with the Pentel Aquash water brush.

View from the Shelley Garden Centre yesterday.

Link

Pink Pig 12 x 6 sketchbook

Cutting Back

gardening gloves

Time for the autumn cut-back in the garden, starting at the top end trimming back bay and oregano, hawthorn hedge and the long grass around the pond.

It’s tough on my thumb joints but also on the Fiskar’s hedge shears that I’m using. They have a gear mechanism but – especially when I’m cutting thicker stems – it springs out of gear, with the result that one of the blades flaps about uselessly.

It doesn’t taken long to loosen the bolts amd put it back togetheer but I’m evidently not there yet with judging how much I should tighten the three bolts: too much and the shears are too stiff to use, too slack and they pop out of gear again.

shears

The long-handled shears, without any gearing, are proving most reliable.

Black Kale

black kale

For me black Tuscany kale, Cavolo Nero, is about as drawing-friendly as I could wish for. Every line has a built-in wobble to match my default rather shaky pen. It’s got clear structure so I don’t have any problems simplifying a complex mass of foliage.

I think of the colour of black kale as being tinted with purple but I find that a cool green with just a spot of crimson is a reasonable match, with regular yellowish green where the light shines through it. The stems are cream or ivory: a very pale coolish yellow with a hint of green.

Raised Bed no.3

Raised bed no. 3: carrot, kale, lettuce and foxgloves (in the top right corner), outnumbered by spurge (petty spurge, I think). But we’ll soon weed that out . . .

A month ago in raised bed no. 3, we put in lettuce, carrots and black kale, plants from the garden centre.

Some of the lettuces are starting to bolt but the carrots haven’t done much. Carrots aren’t always successful when replanted because of the risk of damage to those delicate tap roots.

pigeon

The Cavolo Nero was beginning to outgrow the mesh tunnel cloche we’d covered it with to protect it from egg-laying cabbage whites and our ever-hungry wood pigeons.

In my opinion, our pitifully small carrots tasted more wholesome than the shop-bought variety. The freshly-picked leaves of Cavolo Nero were excellent: ‘rich, mellow and autumnal’ would be my attempt to describe the flavour.

Beetroot and Marigolds

sketches of beetroot and marigold

Immediately I start drawing, a hoverfly zooms in and settle on the lime green top of my pen. As I work there’s a continuous chiff chaff and a v. loud blackbird, with house martins chittering overhead.

Despite several overnight frost setbacks our veg is making progress.

Eucalyptus

A eucalyptus with long strips of sloughed bark in a plantation of eucalyptus close to the former Woodhorn Colliery, Ashington, Northumberland.

I find it hard to believe that this is the regular way a eucalyptus would shed its bark, has this tree been struck by a lightning?

Heart Urchin

art urchin sketch

I photographed this heart urchin, Echinocardium cordatum, on the strandline at Druridge Bay in April.

One reason that I’ve started doing daily drawings again is to make a record of how my tremor effects me in the run up to my physio appointment for my thumb problem in two or three weeks’ time.

When it’s bad the tremor certainly results in a lively drawing but, when I get over my current cold, I look forward to being a little bit more in control!

Knotted Wrack

knotted wrack

Knotted wrack, Ascophyllum nodosum, has single bladders in the middle of its fronds.