Category: Urban

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.

The Weeping Birch

sketchbook page

Stan Barstow Memorial Garden, Queen Street, Horbury, 2.30 pm, 65℉, 17℃: As soon as I sit on a bench beneath a weeping silver birch, aphids and plant bugs start trundling about on my knee and over my sketchbook page.

Curled Dock

Fine strands of dodder twirl around the clusters of flowers at the top of this curled dock’s stem. Dodder is a parasitic climbing plant, a member of the convolvulus family.

Secret Walls

George Street, Wakefield: Wall-rue and Maidenhair Spleenwort on a brick wall which probably dates back to the days of the cattle market, and a mossy pool on the roots of an old flowering cherry. The ‘well kept secret’ herbs and spices are served at Kentucky Fried Chicken, Westgate Retail Park.

St Pancras

St Pancras

It’s so long since I drew in London so I took the opportunity as we waited for a train to draw St Pancras from a bench in the welcome shade of the Francis Crick Institute.

Junction 32

As part of my attempt to get to know my way around my digital camera I’m making a point of taking it with me whenever I can, even on a trip to Junction 32 shopping centre at Castleford this morning. This is the view from our table at Bakers and Baristas.

bastion

Just to get started I took a photograph of the gabion wall by the car park.

bastion edging

If I can get relaxed about using my camera in public I’ll move on to including people in my photographs.

The View from the Car Park

Wakefield from the Ridings Centre car park

My favourite view from Wakefield’s Riding Centre multistorey?

  • To the south, to what Lawrence Butler called the ‘upturned pudding-basin’ of Sandal Castle motte?
  • To the south-west to the Emley Moor transmitter on the edge of the South Pennines?
  • Or looking back across the precinct towards the peregrine eyrie on the tower of Wakefield Cathedral?

Since the Hannah Starkey show at the Hepworth, the view that I always park facing is the one of the flats on Kirkgate.

In Starkey’s thoughtfully stage-managed take on this scene, she gives Wakefield an aura of Indie movie sophistication (which it has, especially on a morning like today’s). One of her characters leans on the parapet, like a split-hair-dyed Rapunzel, looking out over the cloud-capped towers of Wakefield.

Longest Day

pigeons and plants

I find a quiet bench by St James’ Hospital’s historic workhouse chapel and settle down to draw the cherry tree but get distracted as two town pigeons bustle past me inspecting the turf.

stone, squirrel, birch and crow

A crow chases a scrawny-tailed squirrel across pedestrian crossing, up a couple of steps and behind a low wall towards birches.

On the artfully boulder-strewn roundabout a blackbird gathers beak-fulls of worms. After a long dry spell, yesterday’s persistent rain must have brought them to the surface again.

pigeon, crow and stone block

The grand Victorian architecture around the hospital attracts me but I prefer to draw something organic. There was a breeze blowing around the cherry tree leaves so, returning after a break, I draw its trunk and the sandstone block next to it.

crow and cat's ear

One of the crows finds an acorn-sized brown object, which immediately interests a second crow which follows it around until the item is either eaten or discarded.

Cat’s ear, self-heal, white clover and daisy grow on the lawn, although the much larger ox-eye daisy, or marguerite, that I drew was in a flower border, alongside berginia.

workhouse chapel

We have a brief shower in the afternoon, so I head for the church. The multi-coloured round-topped arch looks more byzantine than romanesque to me. There’s another similar arch above it with a balcony overlooking the chancel. As this was a workhouse chapel, I did wonder if anyone with an infectious disease would be put up there but it’s probably more likely that it was originally an organ loft.

Addingford in May

The Calder Valley at Addingford, down Addingford Steps from Horbury, is looking at its best now with hawthorn and cow parsley in flower.

I was intrigued by the old building in Fearnside’s Yard (now renamed Fearnside’s Close) off Horbury High Street. There’s no trace that it was ever half-timbered but it looks very old to me. Those rows of through-stones make me wonder if it was originally faced with stone too.

I got a chance to re-photograph the boy’s entrance to the Wesleyan Day School on School Lane, opposite Fearnside’s Yard on the south side the High Street. When I photographed it for William Baines’ centenary in November there was a skip in front of the window (previously the door for the boys’ entrance).

A new route for the footpath was recently excavated alongside the mineral railway. The embankment’s shale, sandstone and occasional lumps of coal, has been exposed. This kind of debris was once a common sight on colliery spoil heaps and there was always the chance that you might spot a fossil plant such as the bark of a giant clubmoss or horsetail, a reminder of the lush forests that grew here – when this part of the Earth’s crust was close to the equator – 300 million years ago.

Link

The Gaskell School, more about the Wesleyan Day School and William Baines