Category: Habitats

The Top of Europe

THE DAY STARTS as our clearest yet, so we head up the hill towards Jungfraujoch, the highest railway station in Europe. After we change trains at Kleine Scheidegg the railway ascends via a tunnel through the Eiger, with two brief stops to take in the view. At the first stop you look through the most unlikely of picture windows, cut in the North Wall of the Eiger, down on Männlichen and Grindelwald while at the next you feel you’ve entered the mountain world as you look out over the Eiger Glacier.

Unfortunately by the time we arrive at the terminus station in the mountain at Jungfraujoch, cloud has shrouded the summits. It soon fills the valley below too, erasing the view even of these nearby pinnacles of the Jungfrau (above). The terrace by the restaurant is closed because of the danger of falling ice.

After a break for hot chocolate, I resign myself to drawing the icicles hanging from the roof – which is as far as I can see in the cloud – but I’m delighted when the cloud clears sufficiently for me to make my drawing of the glacier.

The Aletsch Glacier

At 23 kilometres (17 miles) long, the Aletsch Glacier is the longest – and also the widest – in Europe. There are no trees or buildings to give an idea of scale in this mountain landscape. It’s not until later, when I see figures far below walking on the glacier and tobogganing in the Snow Fun area, that I realise that those crevases on the left would be large enough to swallow up our house.

Ascending from Wengen (1274 m, 4180 ft) to Jungfraujoch (3454 m, 11333 ft) involves a large drop in air pressure so when I attempt to start drawing with my ArtPen, a fountain pen, I find that the ink leeks out uncontrollably. Luckily this doesn’t affect my Pilot Drawing Pens which are fibre tips.

For the view of the Aletsch Glacier I switch to pencil for the drawing before adding watercolour. In the original of this drawing the watercolour washes fade imperceptably into the white of the paper, something that seems to be impossible to reproduce in a low res scan.

As I sit on the floor by a full-length window in the coffee shop I’m just on level with a small Japanese boy who ask me repeatedly (as his father eventually translates) why don’t I use brighter colours, such as red.

Two South Korean women ask if they can photograph my drawing then photograph me with my sketchbook. I’m touched by the way they thank me; standing, side by side and bowing in unison.

Jungfrau from the Sphinx (left), which is the highest point you can visit at Jungfraujoch .

Pressure change also affects the journey down; I drink the last of my water as we wait for the train to set off, then screw the cap back onto the bottle. When I take the bottle out of my bag in the hotel, I discover that it has collapsed under the increased pressure.

Grindelwald

Monday (Montag), 6 (seches) June (Juni) 2011

WE’VE GOT just one ‘big trip’ still to do during our stay here; we want to visit Jungfraujoch, the ‘Top of Europe’ but today isn’t the day to go up there as cloud is swirling around and down below us even here at Wengen. This is the view looking up Lauterbrunnen Valley from the station at 10.15 am, as we wait for the train.

We arrived in cloud on Wednesday and the next morning, when the cloud cleared partially to reveal the mountains at the head of this U-shaped valley for the first time, it was as if the curtains had been raised on a great scenic theatrical spectacle.

A man cuts back the scrub on a steep banking by Allmend station, the next on the line as we travel uphill from Wengen. Alder scrub is one of the habitats recreated at the Alpine Garden at Schynige Platte.

It looks as if the cloud will hang around for a while so we take the next train down the other side of the slope from Kleine Scheidegg to resume Saturday’s walk down to Grindelwald from Brandegg, where we finished up the other day.

A St Bernard, much larger than the Swiss Mountain Dog I drew yesterday, is one of our fellow passengers.

There’s time for a coffee break at Brandegg Restaurant before we start. I settle down to draw the musical cows in the surrounding pasture and, feeling a little more confident with my phrasebook German order:

‘Drei cafes mit milch, bitte.’

Which I think is German for ‘Two coffees with milk, please.’ It isn’t; the waitress brings three coffees! But she kind enough to take one away again, much to the amusement of the staff.

Sheep have smaller bells than the cows. A group of 9 or 20 were slowing grazing around an old barn in the flower-rich meadows above Grindelwald.

Odd Sketches

ARE YOU sitting comfortably? After cats and views from trains, just to round off the selection from my sketchbook for May, here are some of the other subjects that I drew in odd moments.

The retro chair was in Caffe Italiano in the Ridings Centre, Wakefield, back in mid-May, the chair back and chair legs are probably from one of the waiting rooms that I’ve spent time in.

I think of these chair sketches as being rather poor as I draw them, because they’re always fitted in as I’m waiting for someone and, more often than not, there isn’t the chance to finish them but when I look back at them they don’t look so bad and, for someone who wants to improve their drawing, like me, it’s better than just sitting there staring into space.

Favour or Forfiet

We were in London for an old friend’s wedding, held in the grounds of Ham House, down by the River Thames below Richmond Hill. I’d got the idea that I could be the wedding artist, as opposed to the wedding photographer, but the trouble with weddings is that there are people you haven’t seen for years . . . and food, and drink and dancing and you don’t get the chance to sit and sketch. This wedding also included, uniquely in my experience, a game of pass the parcel, including favours and forfiets in alternate layers. Luckily I avoided a forfiet and ended up with a lei, so I didn’t have to receit Shakespeare or tell a joke or sing a song. Phew!

Jamie’s Italian

The next day we walked alongisde the river from Teddington Lock to Kingston-on-Thames, stopping for lunch at Jamie’s Italian (which I liked, must try and get to the one in Leeds), before continuing to Hampton Court.

The Fastest Milkman in the West

It’s interesting to walk along with a couple of locals – Barbara’s nephew Simon and his partner – and hear stories about the area; Benny Hill was a local a celebrity and you can’t help thinking that it might be true that his ghost still occasionally pops in to the old Thames Television studio at Teddington Lock.

‘Fairy Dairy Land’ was a quote recently used by David Cameron at Primeminister’s question time. It’s from Benny Hill’s hit record Ernie, the Fastest Milkman in the West, which also includes a character ‘two ton Ted from Teddington’ who ‘drove the baker’s van’. The spirit of Benny Hill still roams these mean streets. Simon lives opposite the depot where the milk floats, and formerly the horses that pulled the milk floats, were kept in Hounslow, but the dairy closed a few years ago . . . gone to ‘Fairy Dairy Land’ like so many others.

I’ll finish this odd-and-ends posting from my sketchbook for May with Simon’s sofa.

Trackside Landscapes

I DREW Xander the black and white cat in colour this weekend and I felt that my usual rapid sketches drawn as the train headed for London should have colour added to them too.

Instead of drawing individual trees, hedges and buildings as they flash by, I try to link them into a landscape composed of bits and pieces that may have been drawn miles – ten miles or more in some cases – apart.

By my first sketch I’ve written ‘Doncaster to Grantham’, while the second was drawn between Stevenage and Potters Bar.

Midland Landscapes

On the return journey there’s a section where the line follows an attractive lowland river for a while.

After that the landscape features rolling hills, farms and stumpy church towers with small spires. My sketch also includes a couple of sheep, a crow and a cutting through Jurassic limestone. These features were scattered across miles of trackside landscape in the Grantham area.

Finally, as we neared Doncaster, here’s a landscape of more church towers, cows and distant hills that I didn’t quite get finished. I got as far as dabbing in a grey and pale green wash. It was a dull, overcast afternoon.

A Sketchbook Underground

Until you leave the central zone, there isn’t much to see through the windows of a London Underground train. A fearless drawing journaller like Dan Price might have sketched fellow passengers in the busy train but I settled down to drawn my left hand. Again, as this is unfinished, you can see how I start off with a pale wash of grey before adding yellow ochre, sometimes with a dash of permanent magenta.

Permanent magenta is the cool red that I’ve used to replace alizarin crimson, or permanent rose or whatever else I was using in my pocket watercolour box. The thinking behind this is that magenta will be more useful for mixing the colours of wildflowers, so many of which are variations on magenta. Neutral tint recently replaced the rather acid, greeny blue version of Paynes grey that I’ve used for a decades as the grey in my watercolour box. So far neutral tint seems to work well for the natural subjects I’m keen to draw.

Finally, here are hand studies, and a handful of details drawn as they flashed by through the window, drawn between Kings Cross St Pancras and Hunslow East on the Piccadilly Line.

Meadow Buttercup

THIS Meadow Buttercup, Ranunculus acris, has grown to about a foot tall with flowers three-quarters of inch across in the week or two since we last mowed the lawn. Ranunculus, the Latin name for the buttercup, comes from the Latin Rana, for frog, as this genus of plants grows in damp places.

In preparation for planting our tomatoes, I’ve been spring-cleaning the greenhouse. Below the staging, behind the plastic bags of compost and grit, as I swept up the winter’s debris, I disturbed the greenhouse’s resident Common Frog, Rana temporaria, which hopped off to find a damp crevice behind the water butt.

Nearby, in crevices in the concrete footings of the greenhouse, a couple of Smooth Newts, Triturus vulgaris, hunted invertebrates (the larger had some kind of invertebrate prey in its mouth – a small spider?) in a macro-habitat of moss plants that resembled a miniaturised version of the Giant Club Moss forests that its giant amphibian ancestors had swum and slithered through right here, 300 million years ago. I say ‘right here’ but at that time our part of the Earth’s crust lay near the equator. True flowering plants, such as buttercups, had yet to evolve.

Everyday Sketchbook

CHARLOTTE’S Ice Cream Parlour  at Whitley, with its assortment of farm animals and its panoramic views across the Calder Valley, is a relaxing place to draw. It’s up on a ridge-top but on a windy day you can retreat to the shelter of the cafe . . . and perhaps sample the Real Jersey Ice Cream.

As well as a contented Jersey cow there are a couple of donkeys, some heavily pregnant nanny goats and rare breed sheep.

Peacocks are displaying to the peahens, a black hen is leading her brood of black chicks across the meadow and, adding an exotic touch, a couple of rheas (or are they young ostriches?) are strutting along in the paddock by the car park.

The donkeys wander over to meet visitors and indulge in a bit of mutual grooming.

I’m back to working in the Crawford & Black portrait format sketchbook – that’s the one with the 96 gsm acid free cartridge which I find a bit thin and absorbent for my pen and watercolour sketches but it will do for everyday. When I get the chance for some natural history drawing, I’ll go back to landscape format.

Recent snatched sketches in my ‘everyday’ sketchbook include the backs of some shops and this tubular metal chair.

Pond in a Pocket-Park

Longlands Road, Dewsbury, OS ref: SE 233229

LEAVING my mum for her physiotherapy session at Dewsbury Hospital, I set off in search of a takeaway coffee then head off with it, via a gap in a stone wall, into a pocket-sized park, no larger than a football pitch.

As I sit down to draw this Water Mint, Mentha aquatica, growing in the pond, I crush some of its leaves that are growing on the bank in the mown turf, releasing a delicious cool, clean aroma of spearmint.

Three juvenile and one adult Moorhen dabble around the pond and come out to peck about on the grassy slope. A Blackbird sings from the trees in the leafy margins of the park.

Yellow Flag

The heads of Great Reedmace, Typha latifolia, are bursting into feathery white seeds, while behind them a few Yellow Flag Iris, Iris pseudacorus, are starting to unfurl their flowers.

Still on my learning curve, I refer to a book and add a few botanical terms and Latin names. Iris was the Greek goddess of the rainbow but pseudacorus means false.

Typha is from the Greek name for the Reedmace, while latifolia means broad-leaved.

Landscape Format

This little park is the perfect place to take a short break from a morning spent in or on our way to waiting rooms; in the doctor’s earlier I’d had to make do with drawing my hand – again!

I’m inspired, as I often am, by starting a new sketchbook. I gave up on my previous sketchbook – a birthday present from a kind friend – because I didn’t like the absorbent and rather thin paper. For my pen and watercolour wash work I prefer a thicker, smoother cartridge, so it’s back to a Pink Pig, made at a factory not far from home up at Emley, and this time, with travel to wilder places (rather than travel to waiting rooms!) in mind, I’ve gone for a spiral bound A5 (about 8 inches x 5.5 inches) sketchbook in landscape format. It seems perfect for the drawings and notes I’ve got in mind but it’s a format that I’ve used only once before, as far as I remember. With printed booklets in mind I usually go for portrait format.

I’d like to go for colour whenever I can (I finished off the sketch of my hand in colour later) and for wildlife . . . whenever I can escape through a gap in the wall.

Canary Island Ivy

MY BROTHER Bill gave me a large Canary Island Ivy as a house plant about 25 years ago. In a few years it had outgrown its corner in my studio and I planted it out by the larch-lap fence behind the greenhouse. It had survived for twenty winters, providing a nest site for Blackbirds and Song Thrushes, but last winter proved too much for it.

I’m not sure now whether the larch-lap fence is supporting the twisting stems of the ivy or whether the ivy is holding up the fence. The main stem is the thickness of a man’s arm. The spreading vines twist around like an untidy version of Celtic knotwork. Although it’s evident that they won’t sprout again, I’m not in a hurry to cut back the plant back as it’s now such an attractive subject to draw; more so than when it was just a wall of foliage.

Besides, as I started to draw and moved an old post that had been leaning by the fence, a Blackbird flew out in alarm. I’m aware that a pair has been nesting in the mass of dead ivy stems and foliage that juts out above the corner of the fence.

Canary Island Ivy, Hedera canariensis, is a native of the Azores and Canary Islands and is less hardy than our native Ivy, Hedera helix. The popular house plant variety that I planted here on the fence and on our garden shed – where it also died back this winter – was Gloire de Marengo which has large variagated leaves, with green centres and creamy white margins. Our native ivy is still looking fine although a late frost a couple of weeks ago killed some of the young sappy spring shoots. They looked as if they had been individually scorched.

Raised Bed

THIS FLAGGY piece of sandstone on the edge of the raised bed was probably shattered by frost during the winter. The fragments have created a miniature landscape, surrounded by a lush forest of buckler-leaved sorrel, a bitter-tasting herb which likes this well-drained sunny spot.

The wolf spider is at home here too. Two females alternate between sunning themselves on the mini-cliff below and retreating into shady crevices to cool off. I say females because they’re both carrying egg cocoons and, as far as I know, it’s the female who provides the parental care. The cocoon, of dimpled spider’s silk, is over twice the size of the spider’s thorax. I notice one touching its cocoon with its back legs and I’m guessing that she was testing the temperature or perhaps the humidity of the bundle of eggs that she is incubating.

A group of House Sparrows are enjoying a dust-bath in the fine tilth of one of the veg beds – right where we sowed the perpetual spinach!

By the way, these drawings were made with dip pen and Daler-Rowney Calli ink. Although this is described on the label as ‘non-clogging, pigmented, waterproof calligraphy ink’ it does take – in places anyway – rather a long time to dry so that it ran into the watercolour wash. I didn’t have this problem when using my ArtPen with Noodler’s ink to draw the Aquilegia but I was keen to use the ‘inkiness’ of dip pen for my drawing of the shattered sandstone.

Aquilegia

AS A WILD FLOWER, Common Columbine, Aquilegia vulgaris, occurs throughout Europe except in the far north but it is also frequently found as a garden escape. This plant, 16 inches tall with flowers 2 inches across, has made itself at home in our flower border – we never planted it there but it has sprung up near the bird feeder.

Commn Columbine often hybridises with other species of Aquilegia grown in gardens but this specimen comes close to the typical appearance of wild species; for instance, its stamens scarcely protrude beyond the petals.

The hooked spur behind each flower gives the plant its botanical name because of a resemblance to an eagle, Aquila, but its medieval Latin name Columbina, meaning a dove-like plant, seems nearer the mark as the five flowers with their wing-like petals look like a little gaggle of pigeons getting together.

With that long spur behind the flower, it’s not surprising that the main pollinators are long-tongued bees.

Botanical Drawing

Every spring, I feel the need to learn more about botany as, in May in particular, so many wild flowers appear in quick succession. But after all the distractions from my artwork that I’ve had for the past nine or ten months, I also feel the need to get back into the habit of drawing; real drawings that you might spend an hour or more on, rather than the snatched sketches that fill the bulk of my sketchbooks.

By drawing flowers I can combine those two; I can get some drawing practice while I learn more about botany through close observation. Drawing is great from that point of view because you can be wholly absorbed in the artistic process of drawing and yet also totally involved in the scientific discipline of close observation.

This second Columbine was growing on the raised bed. It’s larger than the other plant, growing 27 inches tall with flowers up to 3 inches in diameter.

9.34 a.m. As I drew it, I was aware of a movement behind me to my left; a vole was scurrying and pausing, apparently oblivious to my presence, by the shed door before disappearing under the shed. Later it emerged again and made its way under the hatch of the compost bin.

I believe that it’s a Short-tailed Vole, otherwise known as the Field Vole, Microtus agrestis.

I went back to the first plant to draw it in close up and from above in order to show more of the structure of the flower. You get a better view of those bird-like flowers.

In his Complete Herbal, Culpeper suggested Columbine for sore throats, liver complaints and jaundice.

“The seed also taken in wine causeth a speedy delivery of women in childbirth ; if one draught suffice not let her drink a second, and it will be found effectual. The Spaniards used to eat a piece of the root thereof in a morning fasting, many days together, to help them when troubled with stone in the reins or kidneys.”

In Shakespearean English, reins is a synonym for kidneys.

I wouldn’t recommend you to try any of these remedies; Columbine is a member of the – often poisonous – buttercup family, so I would treat it with caution.