Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
Drawing the dogs and trying the s’mores kronut, a cross between a croissant and a donut, at the ØL cafe in Horbury this morning.
The dogs took so much interest in their surroundings that they soon wound their leads around table legs and chair legs.
With summer temperatures and autumn colour, there’s a feeling of being in a continental city today in Harrogate. There are the now-redundant grand gates of Harlow Carr, which remind me of the walk from the top of the Spanish Steps to the Villa Medici in Rome and some solid stone-built arches near the station which reminded me of the ruins around the Forum but, as you can see from my photograph of the street guide with his tour group by the Pump Room, it was mainly Paris that came to mind. To add to the resemblance, there are several Paris-style Morris Column advertising pillars dotted around the town centre.
The giant rhubarb leaves of gunnera add a tropical feel to the Valley Gardens.
A male blackbird bathes enthusiastically in a small puddle in The Pinewoods as we walk down from Harlow Carr. On our return walk a black spaniel pauses to lap up water from the puddle.
Much as we like our homemade bread it doesn’t keep long at this time of year so while the wood pigeon tucked into that (see the greatest hits from of the 103 selfies it took of itself on my new trail cam in my next post), we enjoyed the roast Mediterranean veg sandwich at the Cafe Capri.
While we’re in Horbury, we check out my Addingford display in the Redbox Gallery in the old telephone box on Queen Street. I’m pleased that the foamboard artwork isn’t buckling too much under the summer sun and that I can see the Addingford Steps artwork and map so well on the back wall, then I realise that the reason that I can see them is because the two stork cut-outs, suspended on fishing line, have fallen down behind Joby’s riverbank.
I’ll reinstate them, but I’ll draw the birds again at half the size, so they don’t blot out the display at they did previously.
Helen Thomas’s paintings at the opening of her Dandelions and Double Yellows show at Wakefield Cathedral celebrate street flowers, such as the willowherb, sow thistle and Oxford ragwort that I spotted at Bank House on Burton Street.
We were on our way to the Museum at Wakefield One to take a look at another inspiring exhibition, also opening this weekend, which brings to life the letters of Charles Waterton in a suitably Victorian combination of paper craft and magic lantern show, with narration and readings by Sir David Attenborough, Sir Michael Palin, Chris Packham, Liz Bonnin and Waterton Discovery Centre countryside ranger, Dave Mee.
This morning we took a look at a gardening display in the old telephone box at Horbury Bridge, which included a small selection of items – a tomato plant, a pair of gardening gloves and a trowel – to tell its story. It made me realise that the simpler and bolder my display for the Redbox Gallery, the better.
My main characters were always going to be Joby and his dad from Stan Barstow’s novel and I realise that including historical characters, such as railway and canal engineers, will overload the display.
Watching the closing scene of Yorkshire Television’s 1975 production of Joby on YouTube, I’ve found a perfect exchange of dialogue which will work as the keynote for my show. I’d been thinking of phrases to sum up Addingford such as ‘just ten minutes walk from this phone box’ and ‘Horbury’s unofficial nature park’, which would be fine but I don’t want too many text boxes. People often skip reading labels but dialogue is more compelling.
As we’re trying to get people to stop briefly and peer into the box, we need something eye-catching – like the pocket cartoon amongst the articles in a newspaper – to hook passers by.
Green Park, South Ossett, 10.45 am, 10℃, 50℉, sunny
A jingling orrent of song from a dunnock in an adjacent garden. Three blow flies gather around a tiny naked chick that has been taken from its nest. A male blackbird perches on a tangle of honeysuckle stems cascading from a larch lap fence.
A robin perches on a branch, watching intently, then spots something and swoops down to the ground to pick it up.
Apart from a few quick sketches in the co-op car park, I’m out of practice for drawing on location, so I decided that I had to be kind to myself this morning and not to worry if, for instance, I get the flowers of the honesty out of proportion with the rest of the plant.
Flowers by Skelton Lakes motorway services, near Leeds. The chamomile and sowthistle may officially be weeds but they work well alongside the prairie-style planting. The gorse at the edge of the woodland is full bloom.
On a rainy mid-autumn morning I set the Art Filter on my Olympus E-M10 II to Key Line, to give a solid-colour pop art look to my photographs. I like the reflections on the wet roads but Blackburn’s Florists and Darling Reads’ bookshop provide some welcome bursts of colour on the High Street, as do the Handyman Supplies and The Green Berry on Queen Street.
The phone box has been converted to an art gallery but currently, due to restrictions, there’s no show in there. Social distancing is impossible in a phone box.
This feels like getting back to some kind of normality: sitting with a latte at a table outside Bistro 42 overlooking Ossett’s Friday market and watching the world go by. I want to just draw what is in front of me rather than, as I often do, taking a mental snapshot of a passing figure, so I draw people who look as if they might stay in position for a few minutes. The men waiting on the bench are the most obliging. I find back views expressive. Rather than slapping a facial expression on a character, you can leave the viewer to work out for themselves whether a character is feeling relaxed or slightly; tense, bored or curious.
It’s now fifty years this summer since I left Batley School of Art and it must now be twenty since I attended a one-off reunion there so I couldn’t resist taking a look at the old place while Barbara made a start on the shopping at Tesco’s this morning. I was hoping that I might find it open for this year’s final show but the art school moved to Dewsbury some years ago and the building now houses the Cambridge Street Muslim boys only secondary school.
The upstairs room on the left with the huge east-facing window and the skylight running along the apex of the roof was the life room. Below that, immediately to the left of the main entrance, was the office of the principal, Mr Smethurst, and, to the right of the entrance, the admin office for essentials such as buying your ticket for dinner (plus a separate ‘SWEET’ ticket for the pudding!) in the college canteen.
