Category: Water

Snowdrops by the Pond

pond sketch view from pop-up tent10.30 a.m.: Snowdrops are at their freshest around the pond so I set up my pop-up tent and start a sketch in the gusting wind and passing showers.

Before the afternoon rain sweeps in I roll up the tent into its dustbin lid-sized bag. I can never quite work out how such as large tent fits into such a small bag but it does, in what seems to me like the most tent folderillogical and inelegant fashion. I resort to grabbing the writhing figure-of-eight coils and pushing them to the middle. I’ll try and practice with it on a regular basis until it becomes second nature.

On the Banks of the Barnsley Canal

canalsideI’ve got there at last with my introductory frame for the Waterton comic and I enjoyed finishing off adding the colour this morning. There are a few things that I’d change if I’d started again but my main consideration is to tell the story as clearly as I can. This packs in the necessary elements. Time to move on to the next frame.

The Ragged-Trousered Conservationist

first roughCharles Waterton was a hands-on conservationist so as he set about turning the grounds of his ancestral home, Walton Hall, into the world’s first nature reserve, visitors sometimes assumed that he was a gardener or labourer. In the first frame of my comic strip, a railway surveyor mistakes him for a tramp but when I put the meeting in its location by the Barnsley canal, he looks more like a bargee.

Barnsley canal

Sitting on the Fence

sitting on the fencesitting on the fenceHow do I make him look more like an idle bystander? How would that come across in his body language?

Instead of standing on the towpath making a mock-deferential bow, I try him sitting on the fence. And instead of having him wear a shirt and a waistcoat like a bargee, I give him a battered top hat and a rumpled tailcoat.

Waterton could climb trees with ease right into his 80s but I’m struggling to make him look at ease while sitting on the top rail of a fence. Barbara suggests that no one is going to look comfortable sitting on a fence so why not have him reclining on the canal bank?

Barefoot in the Park

fence roughWaterton liked to walk barefoot which helps identify him as a dishevelled tramp-like character but to look down at Waterton’s bare feet as well as up at the tree tops of the park beyond that high defensive wall means that I have to fall back on that old cheat used by illustrators, rubberised perspective. It’s not so much of a cheat though because, if this was a film, which is the way that I keep thinking of it, and this was a panning shot, the perspective would keep changing as the camera tracked across the scene.

final rough

Yes, Waterton has ended up looking like Willy Wonka, but I think that this version tells the story more clearly than my first rough. It also leaves plenty of space for the three speech bubbles that we need in the space between the characters.

Watercolour Ripples

oar

palette
Nickel titanium yellow, gamboge genuine, permanent rose, cerulean blue, French ultramarine, indigo. I later added a touch of burnt umber for the oar.

I sometimes get the feeling that, rather than drawing a comic strip, I’m acting as production designer and storyboard artist for a big budget movie of The Life of Charles Waterton.

I’ve been watching period dramas such as Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, which is set in the same period and was filmed in Yorkshire on locations that included two Georgian streets in Wakefield which Waterton would have known.

The BBC Films 2012 version of Great Expectations included costumes and scenes that would have been perfect for my comic strip. At the climax of the film there’s a scene on the Thames which had me thinking about the dawn procession of boats across Walton Lake which was arranged for Waterton’s funeral.

In today’s illustration – a premonition of Waterton’s funeral – I tried to suggest dawn light on eddies in the water. The gradation of watercolour from lemon yellow to indigo called for some forward planning. My Winsor & Newton watercolour box didn’t have enough divisions in the palette for all the colours, so I moved on to another box for the French ultramarine and indigo.

Giant Hogweed

mallard pairgiant hogweedA pair of mallards negotiate the rapids below the old weir at Horbury Bridge. The shady south bank of the river resembles a jungle with reed canary grass, giant hogweed, Japanese knotweed and sycamore forming a green screen in front of the embankment wall.

The giant hogweed is starting to come into flower. This introduced species is a native of the Caucasus Region and central Asia.

The only native amongst these four plants is the reed canary grass, Phalaris. It’s like a smaller version of common reed, Phragmites.

Germander Speedwell

germander speedwellOn our front lawn, in the shade of the rowan, germander speedwell is in flower. I’m going to mow around it when I cut the lawn.

It’s considered a weed on lawns but I like it as much as the daisies.

Summer Green

sun on streamyellow flagIn the wood the beck now runs through a tunnel of fresh green foliage backlit by the sun. There are so many trees in full leaf that the valley seen from the Balk looks like the edge of a forest but a pair of mistle thrushes and a heron appreciate the acres of open space where grass has been cut, most likely for silage. The Strands has been cut too but the marshier sections have been left. Yellow flag is in showy bloom.

summer greenThe landscape seems so lush and green that it feels as if it’s overdoing it, like a Samuel Palmer rural idyll. It’s the way England appears when I’ve been away in the Mediterranean and become accustomed to the grey green of herbs and olive trees. I come back and the green seems heronalmost overwhelming.

Buttercups are at their best, some of the currently ungrazed pastures almost rivalling some of the buttercup meadows we saw in the Dales last.

The causey stone path has narrowed since we last walked along it as the mixed hedges the cow parsley close in on it.

Goosanders

goosandersHorbury Bridge, 2.55 p.m.; A female goosander leads her seven young up the rapids at the foot of the old weir. As we watch the whole family disappears from view, giving the impression that mother and young have dived simultaneously. It’s the first time that we’ve seen a mother with young on the Calder.

Semerwater

Hawes High Street from the Bay Tree cafe.
Hawes High Street from the Bay Tree cafe.

oystcatcherThe level of the lake is up compared to last year but tide-marks of dry sedgy debris show that it can rise by another five or six feet. Oystercatchers call at the top, marshy end of the lake.

dipperA dipper perches on the bridge as we get back to the farm then flits off upstream.

kestrelOn the drive back to Hawes, I see a kestrel fly to the corner of a field barn to enter by a square opening, just below the roofline, which I guess must be an owl window.

Sandpipers

sandpiper preeningsandpiper feedingRiverside hide, Nethergill Farm, Langstrothdale, 3.45p.m.; A common sandpiper preens itself on a rock on the far bank of the beck then it sets off probing along the edge of the river.

It’s joined by a second bird, which trots off up the grassy bank while the first bird continues downstream.

sandpipersA pied wagtail perches on rocks in the beck, flitting out to take invertebrates from amongst the pebbles.

Blackbird feeding Newts to Young

blackbird with newt11.30 a.m.; The female blackbird has caught another smooth newt and is dealing with it in a corner of the lawn.

Blackbird with newtThe orange on the belly of the newt shows that it’s a male.

blackbird with newtHaving killed the newt she hops to the middle of the lawn in front of the pond then flies directly to the hedge where she’s nesting amongst the elder, climbing rose, honeysuckle and ivy.

dragonfly larva4.50 p.m.; it perches on the debris I’ve raked towards the edge of the pond. Watches for a minute or so then flits to the centre of the pond and catches a dragonfly larva. It takes this into the flower border to deal with, then flies over to the hedge then perches on the top of a gate-post next door before taking to it’s nest in the hedge, approaching from our neighbour’s side, rather than taking its usual route direct from the pond.