Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
Experimenting with Procreate and loosely based on Coquet Island lighthouse but minus the puffins, sandwich and roseate terns this is my take on the first project in the ‘Beginner’s Guide to Digital Painting in Procreate’. My thanks to freelance director and artist Izzy Burton for her step-by-step tutorial.
Mosey Downgate, RSPB Bempton Cliffs, 12.30 pm, Thursday 6 July, 69℉ 24℃: Most of the kittiwake chicks now have conspicuous black stripes along their forewings, although there are some downy chicks still around. One birdwatcher tells me that he was here a month ago and he estimates there are now three times as many nesting.
The warden suggests that this impression might be because a month ago many of the pairs were nest building and spending more time away from the cliffs. Kittiwake numbers are stable at Bempton but nationally the bird is in decline, so the wardens are keeping a close watch on numbers.
Whelks gather together for a mass spawning, so each of these egg cases was added by a different individual. Each case can contain 1,000 eggs but the first few to hatch will feed on the remaining eggs.
I photographed this egg mass on the beach at Druridge Bay and used a handy feature of Procreate, a reference image panel, when I drew it using Procreate’s ‘Technical Pen’.
Planting the runner beans yesterday I came across this bead – or perhaps I should call it a stud, as the cylindrical cavity in it doesn’t go right through. It’s exactly one centimetre across.
In close up you can see that it’s not cut with machine precision. That could be clay that’s filled the cavity but I’m leaving it in place for the moment in case it’s a part of the original artefact – some kind of cement, for instance?
As I explain in my book Yorkshire Rock, a journey through time, Whitby Jet is fossil monkey puzzle wood from the Jurassic Period, used by the Victorians for making jewellery.
We’re meeting up with some friends, Jenny and Clive, on holiday at Whitby in July and Jenny, who has never visited is determined to find a piece of Whitby Jet on the beach. That could easily take up the entire holiday, so perhaps we better take this piece as a stand-by.
Yorkshire Rock, a journey through time, available from my Willow Island Editions website
Shells, seaweed and a sandstone pebble from Druridge Bay at the weekend.
Another dip into my student sketchbook from 50 years ago and I was visiting Christopher and Doreen Reynolds in Broadstairs. I’d written about Christopher and his approach to natural history illustration and writing as a closing section in my thesis at Leeds College of Art but this was the first time I’d met him.
It was so useful to go beachcombing ‘with someone who could not only say what the shells and washed up animals and plants were but could also, if prompted, come up with some interesting observation about it.’
He was writing and illustrating his children’s non-fiction book Creatures of the Bay at that time.
I’d normally assume that this was scentless mayweed but as it was growing at the top of the sandy beach at the foot of the sea wall at North Beach, Bridlington, I’m going for its near-identical relative, sea mayweed, Tripleurospermum maritimum.
As always, at Bridlington last week, I was amazed how tolerant turnstones are of people and dogs walking by just a few yards away.
Bridlington may be ‘West Riding by the Sea’, the most traditionally familiar of Yorkshire’s seaside resorts, but with Flamborough Head jutting out at the end of North Bay, you’re soon on a wilder-looking stretch of coast. I was sorry to hear that the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust had reluctantly decided to close their Living Seas Centre at South Landing to all except booked-in parties but we’re glad that RSPB Bempton is so popular.
A low tide had exposed all the mud in Bridlington Harbour, attracting turnstones and redshank. This adult herring gull was in streaky-headed non-breeding plumage but it had raised a chick during the summer, which was still following, hunching itself up as it begged, fairly continuously, for food.
The adult looked embarrassed by the attention but I didn’t see it offer the youngster any food.
Beachcombing along the strandline at Druridge Bay, 16 September: barnacles, wartime concrete, bladder wrack, kelp, keel worm, lichen, limpet, lyme grass, septarian nodules and serrated wrack.
Cod, Gadus morhua, washed up amongst the kelp from the strandline on Druridge Bay near Hauxley, Northumberland.
