Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
Barbara’s brother John has seen the outside world just once in the last month on a brief wheelchair tour of the Hospice grounds so he asked us to photograph some of the spring flowers that are currently coming up in our garden.
The rest of the garden is ready for a bit of a spring clean but the crocus, daffodils, irises, winter aconite and pulmonaria give a welcome burst of colours.
Feather that I picked up by the track at St Aidan’s yesterday and I think that it’s a secondary from the right wing of a goose. A large flock of pink-footed geese went over, touching down at the Astley Lake end of the reserve.
Drifts of snowdrops, winter aconites and a variety of hellebores at Brodsworth Hall this morning.
There are a few bright spots of colour beginning to appear on the raised bed behind the pond.
With the afternoon light starting to fade I went for the easier option of photographing them and drawing from my iPad.
This is my first drawing with my refreshed Winsor and Newton watercolour box which I’ve filled with botanical subjects in mind and so far it seems to be working.
Cherries and hawthorn boughs at the Hospice this morning.
My thanks to Beth and Ian who ran the Art Tour: Drawing from Observation at the Apple Store in Leeds on Thursday morning. We headed for Trinity Kitchen and settled down to draw using Procreate on the latest version of the iPad Pro. This was the central tree, I think that it’s a weeping fig, Ficus benjamina, with a ‘trunk’ of intertwined stems.
The cherry trees surrounding the Hospice are all the same age and currently they’re being lopped back. Hopefully they’ll burst into blossom again, but we might have to wait until next year until they’ve fully recovered.
Trees and shrubs at the Prince of Wales Hospice: hawthorn, sycamore (?) and elder.
Memories of wintry cross country ‘runs’ (actually my friend and I strolled once we were out of sight of the school, which didn’t take long on a foggy morning) in my ‘Wild Yorkshire’ nature diary in this month’s Dalesman.
It was muddy going around Newmillerdam yesterday but this morning it’s crunchy underfoot and ice has formed over parts of the lake.