Category: Habitats

Scarifying

I GIVE the lawn a rake with the springbok rake at this time of year to get some of the moss out of it but my new Scarifier, one of this week’s bargains at Lidl supermarket, does a much better job. The lawn is no more than 25 square metres, but I raked up this pile which is almost entirely moss. It amounted to 7 or 8 trug-loads to take to the compost bins.

I’ve got nothing against moss but it has obliterated the grass in places so I’ll need to put some seed down. It should soon germinate and grow at this time of year. Meanwhile the Blackbird is making the most of the newly exposed bare ground, picking up worms or insects.

This scarifier is basically a long-handled rake on wheels with 11 stainless steel blades. The eccentrically attached wheels give an up and down motion to the blades which makes the action a lot easier than it was with springbok. The instructions recommend that you scarify your lawn at this time of year, after you’ve cut it short and in dry weather.

I don’t think that I’ll bother adding any fertiliser but I might sieve some garden compost over the lawn when I scatter the grass seed.

Spring Greens

I DREW this with my 08 nib Pilot Drawing Pen and made a start adding the colour as I waited in the queue for advice from a government helpline. After all the waiting, it turned out it was a problem of my own making but at least the hands free phone gave me an interval to sketch. I keep thinking that all the work that I put into mundane tasks like accounts and tax returns will eventually give me some freedom but at this rate by the time I get all the loose ends tied up it will be time to start all over again.

In this view of the woods there’s a Sycamore in full leaf on the far right with an oak just coming into leaf behind it. There’s dark green ivy on the boughs of the big Ash tree on the left, the branches of which are dotted with the Ash flowers, now going to seed, and its fresh green leaves. At the bottom left by the little store house there’s a Blackthorn bush, which was in blossom a few weeks ago.

In my efforts to catch the subtlety of the greens which are actually made up of a stipple of different colours I’ve ended up with an autumnal cast to my watercolour. When I compare the finished result with the actual view from my studio window the real foliage is a fresh light green. I’ve added too much ochre and the odd touch of crimson. There might be traces of both those colours in the barely perceptible flowers, twigs and buds but the foliage is the predominant colour.

You’d have to go for a pointillist technique of lots of tiny dots of pure colour to reproduce the experience of all the colour that you can see but in washes of watercolour you’ve got to average it out and any attempt to introduce those flecks of red and brown will simply dull down the dominant pure greens of the spring foliage.

Rhubarb

I WANTED to draw something in the garden but nothing too fussy so at this time of year an obvious subject is the newly unfurled leaves of Rhubarb. Some are still looking crinkly from recently unpacking themselves from the folded-up form that emerged from the bud.

The glossy elephant’s ears leaves bring a touch of the luxuriantly exotic to the vegetable garden, flouncing around by the hedge with the kind of grand, swaggering gestures that you’d find in Baroque theatre or Elizabethan costume.

The pattern of veins with sections of puckered leaf surface between reminded me of the river valleys and hills of Europe that I’d been sketching from the plane a couple of weeks ago.

I was intending to stick purely to line and I didn’t want to add watercolour but by the time I’d finished a few leaves my drawing was looking like a map so I added cross hatching in the gaps between the leaf margins and indicated some of the shadows from the afternoon sun to give some clues to the way the leaves are arranged relative to each other in space.

Being right-handed I started in the top left corner and worked my way across. Theoretically I could have continued in this fashion, piecing my subject together from interlocking shapes like a jigsaw but my attention soon wavered and by the time I got to the large leaf in the centre of the top row I went drastically wrong in scale. I’ve left my mistake in the drawing so that you can see that at my first attempt I drew the main leaf vein about two thirds of the size it should be and 2 centimetres to the left of where it should have been on the page.

I realised that however relaxing this drawing was supposed to be I needed a strategy to tackle such a convoluted subject so I started by indicating the main veins before getting involved in the subsidiary details.

It sounds like a controlled process but the outlines and veins make what might appear to be a still life feel as if it’s animated. I felt as I imagine a novice skier must feel if they attempt to go straight from the nursery slopes onto the red routes. A feeling of controlled chaos.

The lighting was consistent and there was little breeze and little to distract me other than a sparrow chirping in the hedge above the rhubarb.

Imitate the Action of a Tiger

Thinking about the need for a degree of determination even when you’re doing something that is supposedly relaxing, after I drew this I was listening to a short talk on Radio 3 by choral music conductor Gareth Malone who said that when he had a big performance to conduct on the way to the concert hall he would read the ‘Once more unto the breach dear friends!’ speech from Shakespeare’s Henry V on his mobile phone. Not that singing is like fighting but he feels that he needs to instill in his choir some spirit and determination.

Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more;
Or close the wall up with our English dead.
In peace there’s nothing so becomes a man
As modest stillness and humility:
But when the blast of war blows in our ears,
Then imitate the action of the tiger;
Stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood,
Disguise fair nature with hard-favour’d rage;
Then lend the eye a terrible aspect;
Let pry through the portage of the head
Like the brass cannon . . .
For there is none of you so mean and base,
That hath not noble lustre in your eyes.
I see you stand like greyhounds in the slips,
Straining upon the start. The game’s afoot:
Follow your spirit, and upon this charge
Cry ‘God for Harry, England, and Saint George!’

I know what he means because you need something of that sense of attack when tackling a drawing. You’ve somehow got to keep that ‘stillness and humility’ but also harness the controlled energy suggested in the line about ‘greyhounds in the slips, straining upon the start’. Relaxed concentration is what I usually call it, but that’s what the ‘action of the tiger’ appears to be when you see one hunting in a wildlife documentary; fluid movement and observant determination.

Drawing Pen

I used a Pilot Drawing Pen with an 08 nib for the rhubarb drawing which contains waterproof, light resistant brown DR pigment ink. When drawing botanical details I’d normally go for the finer 01 size nib but I wanted a more expressive and relaxed line here.

For me this 08 nib might be the nearest that I’ll get to the feel of a fountain pen when using a fibre tip. I tend to wear down the fibre tips before the ink in the pen runs out, perhaps because I’m using too much pressure or because I’m drawing on slightly toothed acid free cartridge paper. I soon find that I have to hold the pen vertically to get a consistent line out of it. I’m hoping that the larger tip size will enable me to draw at an angle for longer. Perhaps a proportionally larger tip in relation to the size of the ink reservoir helps give a smoother flow.

Links Gareth Malone, Pilot Drawing Pen

Sallow Catkins

Trees drawn on our travels yesterday.

FEMALE CATKINS of the Pussy Willow – also known as the Goat Willow or Sallow, Salix caprea, are starting to release their fluffy thistledown-like seeds.

This willow is dioecious, meaning unisexual. An individual Pussy Willow will have either all male or all female catkins. Pollen is distributed on the wind so pollination and seed-dispersal has mainly taken place before the leaves unfurl, obstructing windblown pollen or seeds.

The shape and size of this beetle is a good match for the leaf buds.

Corfu Town

OUR FINAL full day and we walk up via the hairpin bends through the olives and pines for a last coffee at the Garden of Dreams, at the San Merino wine and snack bar at Milia, on the terrace opposite the Achillion Palace. Theodorus Vassilakis the owner (above) treats us to a glass of red wine made with grapes from his vineyard, a five year old vintage, and a toasted olive sandwich – his own olives of course – which is delicious. He sits patiently as I draw him. He runs a traditional Corfiot distillery, producing kumquat liqueur, which you can sample here.

After lunch we’re probably a little overenthusiastic as we set off along the road to Corfu town, a walk that takes us about 3 hours to complete and which takes us alongside one of the islands busiest roads with no pavement in several places.

We stop at a small bar halfway and manage by gestures to make the barman understand that we’d like two mugs of tea but, when he brings them, we have the problem of asking for the milk. In the three weeks before the holiday I made a half-hearted attempt to learn some basic Greek phrases but I had to resort to an internationally understood impression to make myself understood by saying ‘MOOoooo!’

We find our way to the Liston Square, where we sit at a cafe table at the Libro d’Oro in an arcade overlooking the park in front of the fortress and have a fresh fruit salad, which is something of a work of art. I try the honeyed tea. The waiter speaks English so there’s no need to do my impression of a bee.

We walk back through the old town along streets wide enough for two donkeys to pass each other then take the bus back to Benitses.

Link Vassilakis and Sons

Grey Monday

IT’S A SHAME that after all the settled dry weather that we’ve had that the Easter bank holiday has turned out so grey but it’s a good opportunity for us to head to town for some shopping we had to do. I painted this terrace of houses from a table in MacDonald’s while Barbara waited in the queue for our veggie burger wraps. MacDonald’s don’t take so very long to serve you; by launching straight into watercolour without any preparatory drawing I got this far in 5 or 10 minutes.

I replenished the bird feeders at lunchtime. Starlings soon came to the mealworm/fat block but the Great Spotted Woodpecker doesn’t seem to like it when its just been put out. It flew in as if it wanted to land then thought better of it and went off to explore the trunk and branches of the crab apple. Perhaps because the block is too slippy for it. It clings to the plastic stem once the Starlings have nibbled down the block a bit.

A surprise visitor was a Nuthatch coming for sunflower hearts an overly cute ‘Little House on the Prairie’ style feeder which our goddaughter Helen bought for us. If it keeps attracting the Nuthatch, I’m prepared to tolerate a little bit of cuteness in our garden.

Pidglings

THERE’S BEEN a strange looking pigeon around, one that looks as if it’s been sprayed with a coat of grey undercoat. It’s been pecking around below the bird table where it was joined by an adult Wood Pigeon. As the mystery pigeon then started flapping its wings in the ‘feed me! feed me!’ mime adopted by most fledglings, it was obvious that the two were related. This evening the adult was accompanied by two plain grey youngsters.

They’ve taken to the sunflower hearts so adult will now be able to introduce them to the greens available; yesterday three adults Wood Pigeons were nibbling the leaves of our purple-sprouting broccoli. We’ve been using the broccoli flower-stems in stir-fry. The Wood Pigeons know a good thing when they taste it, although they seem to be intent on nibbling the leaves to shreds, but probably the flowers are equally acceptable.

The Dolphin Paint Shop

The finished model should have had a tessellated texture. I'm not sure what happened to that, or why my altitude specific 'go-faster' stripe has turned out to be green, black and white.

My attempt at the Create 3D like a Superhero! metablob tutorial has reached the virtual paint shop. It hasn’t quite turned out like author Chipp Walters’ Dolphin underwater recon vehicle, partly, I think, because my version of Vue Pioneer isn’t quite the same as the one referred to in the book but it’s been interesting going through the process and discovering where certain functions of the program are stowed away.

Links; Chipp Walters’ blog

Cornucopia 3D where you can currently download the latest version of Vue Pioneer for free.

Instant Meadow

IT MIGHT not look very impressive but after all the planning, weeding and preparation this is my mini-meadow; a small area of turves from a friend’s wild flower meadow surrounded by an area sown with a mix of wild flower and grass seed collected in the same meadow. I’ve left the fringes as they are; a tiny strip of woodland edge where Cow Parsley and Snowdrops are already well-established.

We sowed about a litre of seed, a third of which had been kept in the freezer until today. This should convince it that after a long hard winter spring is really here and it’s time to burst into life.

I’ve seen photographs of my friend’s wild flower meadow in full flower and it appears to be dominated by Red Clover, Dog Daisy and Yellow Rattle. The latter is important because it is semi-parasitic on grass-roots, so it helps prevent the grasses becoming lushly dominant and shading out the wild flowers.

We’ve covered the seeded area with garden netting because I know our House Sparrows will love to dust-bathe in the fine tilth and they’ll then discover the seeds and start feasting on them.

Metablobs

After all that work in the garden I felt indulging in another tutorial from Create 3D like a Superhero, making a start on this ‘Dolphin Underwater Recon Vehicle’, simply constructed from ‘primitive’ shapes – squashed spheres, a torus and a skewed cube – which you can melt into each other by hitting the ‘Metablob’ button. Just the canopy and the shark style vents to add and I can take my model to the paint shop.

Much easier than installing a wild flower meadow.

Black Poplar

THIS TREE by the old mineral railway bridge over the River Calder at Addingford mystifies me every year. It’s the combination of catkins, which I associate with willows, with broader, glossy, bright green leaves that don’t look willow-like. I stop to draw the details and my best guess is that it’s Black Poplar, Populus nigra, a tree introduced to Britain from Europe.

Chiffchaffs are now singing in the trees and bushes on the old railway embankment, along with Chaffinches. I sketch a Long-tailed Tit which flits amongst the branches as I’m drawing.

chaffinchDespite its loud and cheerful song, I have difficulty spotting a Chaffinch in a hedge.

The song is so conspicuous that I expect the bird to be conspicuous too; I look in the top branches but, no, it’s singing from half way up in the hedge 12 or 15 feet tall hedge.

I think this must be the preferred height for a song post for Chaffinches because fifty yards along there’s another one, singing from exactly the same height.

I’d usually walk straight into Horbury up Quarry Hill alongside the busy A642 but I decide to give myself a bit more time today, to walk via the quiet towpath, derelict railway and Addingford Steps, returning alongside Slazenger’s playing fields and the riverbank (right). This stile is little more than 10 minutes walk, via Wynthorpe Road and across the bypass, from Horbury High Street. New  footpath signs direct you to Thornes downstream or Netherton across the valley.

 

Verge of Spring

WE’RE HEADING down the M1 with an urgent consignment of Rhubarb and Liquorice; another batch of my Walks books for the distributor. The spring countryside is looking so inviting for walking so it’s ironic that we have to spend so much time delivering walks books when we’d really like to be getting out to walk ourselves!

Barbara is driving, giving me chance to scribble in a notebook. Scribbling is all that I can do to start with, as the little roads around home are bendy and bumpy, but I make a start with the sky, attempting to sketch and to write ‘100% cloud’, a contrast to the 100% blue sky that we had a week ago today.

When you’re getting into the mood for sketching or taking notes, you sometimes have to start with the abundantly obvious, just to break the ice and get you moving.

Dandelion and Gorse are in bloom and in the fields Oilseed Rape is starting to come into full flower so yellow is the dominant colour but in gardens there’s the dusky crimson of flowering currant alongside Magnolia and flowering cherries. Red Deadnettle brings a touch of crimson to disturbed ground by the roadside verge.

Collared Dove, Blackbird, Wood Pigeon and Carrion Crow are the birds that I jot down before we reach the motorway and, as we slow down because of a minor accident at Tinsley, I sketch Crows building their nest and a larger, domed Magpie’s nest (or possibly a Grey Squirrels drey?).

At Orgreave a large Red Fox lies by the road near the extensive open area of the old colliery site.