Category: Habitats

Kelly, Banger, Mizzy and Guy

market sketch, fruit stalls and penny for the guy boys
Fruit and veg stalls and Penny-for-the-Guy boys, Monday, 26 October, 1981 (which I’m guessing must have been half-term week for local schools).

My 1981 Wakefield Market acrylic on canvas painting makes a rare appearance at Wednesday’s Wakefield ArtWalk at the Gissing House, Thompson’s Yard, at the top of Westgate, along with some of the sketches I made on location.

sketchbook

I’d taken a new A5 hardback sketchbook and was drawing in fountain pen so I hoped that no-one would notice me scribbling away as I sat on the low wall in front of the Old Queen Elizabeth Gallery and started on the first page sketching the backs of the fruit and veg stalls. No such luck.

“Penny for the Guy, Mister?”

Grudgingly I agreed to make a small contribution to their firework fund on condition that they’d keep still for a few minutes while I drew them. The whole point of my market sketches was to get practice drawing a variety of figures.

I’m sure that poor old Guy didn’t last long but I wonder what creative entrepreneurs Kelly, Banger and Mizzy are up to now. Would be great to meet up with them again at the ArtWalk.

I guess that they might be about 50 years old by now.

Lingering Snow

Yesterday’s snow lingering on at the lower end of Coxley Valley.

Published
Categorized as Meadow Tagged

The Noonday Fly

Drawn from an iPhone photograph: colour version to follow.

A couple of these striking-looking flies – black with sunburst spots on the wing bases – were basking around the ivy flowers in the south-facing shelter of the walled garden at RSPB Saltholme.

The female Noon Fly, or Noonday Fly, Mesembrina meridiana, lays a single egg on horse or cow dung. The larva is a predator, feeding on other fly larvae in the dung.

Common Darter

common darter
common darterr

Still around at the beginning of November, two male common darter dragonflies, Sympetrum striolatum, were resting on a fence by the play area at RSPB Saltholme.

Hauxley Nature Reserve

Hauxley

The Lookout Cafe at the Northumberland Wildlife Trust Hauxley Nature Reserve is an ideal place to sketch.

Hauxley

At the opposite corner of the reserve, on the lagoon near the outlet to Druridge Bay, a female gadwall is dabbling amongst a raft of washed-up kelp.

Hauxley bird sketches

The spindle has fuchsia-red fruits which remind me of miniature pumpkins. It looks as if most of the orange berries of sea buckthorn have already been eaten, perhaps by redwings and fieldfares, but there are a few clumps left close to the path. We had a glimpse of what I thought was a flock of redwings going over, if so, these are the first that we’ve seen this year.

Woodhorn

Woodhorn

The view of the Queen Elizabeth II Country Park, from our first-floor room in the Premier Inn, Woodhorn, near Ashington, Northumberland.

Inspired by a book that I’m reading on drawing ‘Five-minute Landscapes’, I’m trying to speed things up in my sketchbook – although I’m unlikely to manage the five-minute ideal.

I’m also still rehabilitating my right thumb, which is still hurting after eight months. This Uniball Eye pen, a fibre tip with waterproof in, seems to be a gentler, more free-flowing option than my regular fountain pen.

Shovellers at Saltholme

reedbed

Redshank, black-tailed godwit and a flock of several hundred golden plovers at RSPB Saltholme.

We took a break at the reserve on our return journey from Northumberland too, when we also saw dunlin and marsh harrier.

Smooth Sow-thistle

sow-thistle sketch

Growing beside our compost bins, Smooth Sow-thistle, Sonchus oleraceus, is a common weed of disturbed ground.

The Collins flower guide mentions the ‘acute, spreading auricles’ at the base of the leaves as a diagnostic feature.

drawing sow-thistle

It steadily flopped as I drew it but since I finished it has perked up again, so I might get another chance to add a drawing of the shape of the leaf.

Golden Hornet

While pruning the Golden Hornet crab apple I became aware that someone was watching me. Directly overhead a buzzard was hanging in the air, about 100 feet above me.

At the top of the stepladder in the crown of the tree, I had a wood pigeon’s eye-view of our newly-built raised beds.