Category: Water

But is it Art?

pink-footed goose

Have you ever come across the idea that natural history illustration “isn’t art”? I remember you trained in design and illustration rather than fine art – have you ever had to defend your work against this charge?

My friend, writer Richard Smyth, in an e-mail today

Interesting question. It’s not anything that anyone has ever challenged me on but, like most creatives, I wouldn’t want to use ‘artist’ as a job description. I’d always describe myself as an illustrator/writer. Although I’ve had exhibitions of paintings, probably 99% of my work is illustration and intended to be seen on a page or screen with text. My sketchbooks are part field notebook.

It’s a relief to be off the hook as far as art is concerned. When I draw a flower, bird or snail, I love the idea that the creature has the right just to be itself. I can’t avoid being an observer and therefore having an implied presence in a drawing but I don’t want to burden the poor creature with how I was feeling that day, or with my views on Life, The Universe and Everything.

I feel that when Picasso draws a dove, a monkey, a horse or a bull, the critics have to scramble around to tell us what that symbolised at that stage in his career, whereas if I, as I did this morning, draw a pink-footed goose, I’d like the actions, appearance and personality of that particular goose on that particular day, to be the main subject: not to mention the energy and mystery implicit in said goose simply being a goose.

I know this is impossible, as I’m not a camera, but that would be my aim.

The Boathouse

Boathouse

To my mind the prettiest village is Newmillerdam, four miles from Wakefield. The scenery is in the village, not outside . . .

In summer people are allowed to walk round the lake, and admire the beautiful trees and ferns and flowers. In winter, when everything is covered with snow, and skaters are gliding along the lake, which is about a mile in length, it is a picture worth painting.”

Florence E. R. Clark, letter to the Leeds Mercury, 10 August 1907
British Newspaper Archive

Newmillerdam was ‘the ice skaters’ mecca in the Wakefield district’, according to the Yorkshire Evening Post, in January 1946, but they warned that although the surface was strong, it was ‘far from smooth’.

Spare a thought for the Chevet Estate gamekeepers, George Stephenson and William Mellor, who in October 1870 spotted a familiar trio of poachers – Henry Smith, Alfred Grace and William Crowther – in the Boathouse Plantation, sending a ferret down a rabbit hole. While Smith ran away, Crowther picked up a stone to strike the keepers with. They admitted poaching but said that they’d go to Sir Lionel Pilkington and ask to be let off. At Wakefield Court House, they were fined £2 each plus costs or two months imprisonment.

£2 in 1870 would be equivalent to £220 today.

Watercolour Border

I’ve redrawn this border from my Dalesman nature diary featuring the walk around the lake at Newmillerdam Country Park, near Wakefield. In the first version, I thought that the pen and ink was competing too much with the text. To soften it I’ve gone for:

  • soft B pencil instead of black ink
  • textured watercolour paper instead of smooth cartridge
  • loose brushwork, all with a no. 10 sable round, instead of trying to define what textures are
page layout

Floating the Ducks

page layout

As I’m writing about our circuit around Newmillerdam for one of my Dalesman nature diaries, I thought that I’d represent our walk as a decorative border. The text fits neatly into the frame but it’s better to drop in the ducks, swan and coot to float above the background and text, then, in a program like Adobe InDesign, you can set it so the text wraps around them.

It makes a change to my usual nature diary format and I’d like to try it again with another walk, along the seashore, for example.

The Mob

birds

“As we head down the track we spot a buzzard being mobbed by a magpie and kestrel. As it dips and soars fending off the two birds another buzzard soars carefree over the ridge.”

From Barbara’s nature diary, 30 January 2020

I needed to inject a bit of drama into my next (January 2021) Wild Yorkshire diary for The Dalesman, so I’m illustrating the incident Barbara described, along with a male stonechat perching on a fence post. The pen and watercolour of the reedbed and lagoon will go right across at the foot of the double-page spread. I was busy with Sandal Castle and the Rhubarb Festival last January, so I’m having to recreate what my sketchbook might have looked like if I’d had time to draw on the day.

lagoon

Alder

alder cones

The alder is the nearest that we get to mangroves as it produces adventitious roots above ground which enable it to grow in very wet ground, even at the water’s edge. These female woody ‘cones’ are ripening and will attract seed-eating birds such as redpolls and siskins.

Hard Rush: feel the grooves

hard rush

Rotate the stalk of hard rush, Juncus inflexus, between your fingers and you’ll feel the ridges. The similar-looking soft rush feels smooth. There’s a filling of white fleecy pith in these rushes; in soft rush it’s continuous and the pith was collected to make the wick of rush lights and candles. The pith in hard rush is interrupted.

Skelton Lake

Skelton Lake

“You’ve got a good day for it!”

The anglers don’t agree with me: “It’s terrible weather for fishing!”

But Skelton Lake is a great place for a muddy stroll on a dull October morning; at the motorway services, a family are getting their children to change into wellies.

We’re here to take photographs of autumn colour, alder cones, the flowers in the wild flower beds by the services, which itself has a green roof. Rather than put this morning’s photographs in a slide-show style gallery, I’m putting them into an e-pub publication. I’ve only got as far as the cover so far, but I’m learning as I go along.

St Aidan’s, October

  • Birch catkins
  • Hoverfly, meadow buttercup
  • Buttonweed
  • Clover leaf
  • Dandelion
  • White deadnettle
  • Dog footprint
  • Feather
  • Greater knapweed
  • Michaelmas daisy
  • Red clover
  • Rush
  • Wild carrot
  • The Pastures and The Hillside
  • Yarrow
  • ‘Oddball’: Bucyrus Erie BE 1150 Walking Dragline Excavator

A perfect morning for an autumn walk around St Aidan’s RSPB reserve. I set the Art Filter my Olympus E-M10 II to Pin Hole. All of these were taken with the Zuiko 60mm macro lens. It wasn’t until I crouched down and focussed on the buttercup that I noticed the hoverfly. There are also a couple of green aphids at the top of the stem.

Buttonweed, Cotula coronopifolia, is a native of temperate South Africa, introduced to Britain.

Rodley Nature Reserve

Rodley

You drive down through what feels like a factory yard, cross a small swing-bridge over the canal then cross the River Aire via a century-old 38m long Pratt truss steel bridge to reach a low-lying area of lagoons and meadows, enclosed on three sides by a meander of the river, so that being on the reserve feels like being on an island. We’re actually on the inner side of the busy Leeds Ring Road, but I feel as if I’ve got a long way away from all that rush.

As a change from my usual approach, I thought I’d launch straight into watercolour for this sketch – no pen, no pencil – which is based on a panorama that I took from one of the hides on a Wakefield Naturalists’ Society field meeting at the reserve in August this year. No field meetings at all this year, which is probably a first for the Nats since the end of World War II.

Dalesman article

This is the header image for my August Wild Yorkshire nature diary in The Dalesman.