Category: People

Betty

Barbara’s mum, Betty Ellis, would have been 100 years old today. Here she is in 2010 remembering the birth of he son John at Manygates Maternity Hospital during an air raid in 1941.

In some ways Europe hasn’t progressed much since then.

Betty delivering a Christmas cake to Barbara’s dad, William at his army camp in Sheffield.

Just after he was born the Air Raid Siren went, I asked where my baby was, they said he had been taken to the shelter, but I said could I go too, but they said no, as I had to stay in bed.

The [bomb] that dropped down Thornes when I was in Manygates Mum told me after, that it lifted her from her chair to the other side of the room.

We had a few bombs drop, one doodlebug dropped in Aunt Annie’s spare bedroom it did a bit of damage but not much, I used to go and clean for her and I didn’t like going in that room after.

Another dropped in Ossett, Mum and I had gone up to see Aunt Sarah Elizabeth and Uncle Wilson, Mum was in the kitchen with Aunt Sarah and I went into the garden with Uncle Wilson, we heard the Plane then we heard the Bomb coming down, I ran into the house, it knocked Uncle Wilson off his feet into the side of his shed, but he wasn’t hurt but we were all shaken up.

It made you realise what People in London and places [were going through] where they were getting that all the time.

Betty Ellis (1922-2012)
Betty and Joanne
Betty and granddaughter Joanne

Barbara walked around Newmillerdam this morning with John, watching a tern, the first they’ve seen this year, hovering about near the outlet. I stayed by the car park and drew hogweed and curled dock.

The Lone Wreck

The Lone Wreck

I am working for my Pianoforte recital at Horbury (Nr. Wakefield) which is on the 16th of this month — how I look forward to these occasions. Oh! music — what a delight you are to me — it is one thread between man — & spirit.

For “bread money” — I play as “relief pianist” at the Electric Theatre (Picture House) (York) — hours 4.30 to 7 o’clock.

It does not take up too much of my time — what a blessing! !”

William Baines, 1899-1922, in his diary for Wednesday, 2 January, 1918
Baines

Baines biographer Roger Carpenter thought that William Baines’ 16 January 1918 recital would have been only the second public recital that the 18-year old composer gave. I’ve met people who remembered William playing at the Primitive Methodists’ Ebenezer Hall, so probably that was the venue.

Goodnight to Flamboro'

Tomorrow lunchtime at a recital in Ripon Cathedral Robin Walker performs William’s Tides, two sea pieces for piano, The Lone Wreck and Goodnight to Flamboro’ in a program that also includes performances of William’s Five Songs.

birds in flight sketch

Fifty years ago, for my ‘major project’ at Leeds School of Art I was organising a Baines exhibition and a biographical leaflet. Looking back through my file today I like the inky roughs that I produced on layout paper. Unfortunately the finished publication was in two colours only, so I didn’t take those any further.

Flamborough cliffs
My drawing, from an old postcard, of the cliffs at Flamborough, for Roger Carpenter’s 1977 biography of Baines, Goodnight to Flamboro’.
The sea stack known as Adam, since eroded away, at Flamborough. Drawn from an old postcard for Goodnight to Flamboro’.

1921

My mum, Gladys Joan Swift as a child
Mum heading for the hills in the 1940s.

Where was my mum, Gladys Joan Swift, one hundred years ago today on Monday 25th April 1921?

Thanks to the 1921 Census records now available on Find My Past, I’ve been able to track her down. She was just three years old at the time, living at 77 Nether Edge Road, Sheffield.

Census record

Maurice Swift

Swift census record
Maurice Swift signature
Maurice Swift

Her father Maurice describes himself as a Cabinet Manufacturer and Undertaker, the employer at his firm Swift and Goodison Ltd.

His signature seems to fit with what I know of his character, bold with a bit of a flourish.

Childhood drawing by Maurice Swift senior.

Maurice Junior

But there was another Maurice Swift, Maurice T. Swift, cabinet maker at number 77. This was my uncle, then aged 16 who was employed as a Cabinet Case Apprentice at Maurice Senior’s workshop on Headford Street.

Giving your son your own Christian name and training him up in your business isn’t without its risks and after a falling out with his father, Maurice junior set up his own funeral business, resulting in confusion when people turned up to pay their bills. Maurice senior had to resort to placing a notice in the local paper pointing out there was no connection between the two businesses.

Sarah Ann

Sarah Ann

I checked out 79 Nether Edge Road because I knew that my great grandma, Maurice’s mum, Sarah Ann Swift (nee Truelove) was living there at the time of Sheffield Blitz but she hadn’t yet moved in a hundred years ago today.

33 Cemetery Road, Sheffield, August 2020, copyright Google 2022.

A search of the census shows that, aged 70 and a widow, she was supporting herself as a boarding house keeper at 33 Cemetery Road.

1921 Census record, 33 Cemetery Road, Sheffield
1921 Census record, 33 Cemetery Road, Sheffield.

Her boarders were a Singer Sewing Machine Salesman, James Pemberton, aged 50, and Mantle Shop Manager, John Robert Preston, aged 46.

Sarah Ann Swift signature

She was born in 1851 so her signature is Victorian copperplate. I’m intrigued that she ran the Sarah and Ann together, signing herself as Sarahann Swift.

Pizza Noir

Rivers Meet Cafe, Methley
Rivers Meet Cafe, Methley
pizza sketch

I’m reading Shawn Martinbrough’s How to Draw Noir Comics so I’m on the look out for seedy characters and bleak urban settings on the mean streets of Methley and Birstall.

He suggests that you should take photographs of characters, cars and ‘still lives’ – plants, tables and chairs. Set the camera to black and white because that gets you looking for compositions in dark and light.

There were several diners in Pizza Express who would have made suitable characters but I didn’t have the nerve to ask them if they’d mind being photographed and opted for a discrete sketch instead.

Erik ten Hag
Football manager Erik ten Hag gets the noir treatment.

Villagers

villagers

In Framed Ink 2, Marcos Mateu-Mestre suggests that the shape of the frame in a comic can help tell the story. This Clip Studio Paint sketch is a rough idea for the scene from The Book of Were-Wolves where the traveller, Sabine Baring-Gould, arrives at a small village in search of a pony and trap and meets the local curate and the village mayor.

villagers

I’ve drawn them as full figure character sketches but for this scene it’s the reaction of Monsieur le Curé and M. le Maire to a mysterious traveller that we’re interested in so we could got into letterbox format and make the traveller more mysterious by only including part of the figure.

mayor and curate
Monsieur le Maire

When it comes to the discussion between M. le Curé and M. le Maire about how to deal with the traveller’s request I could go for a square head to head panel of just the two of them.

And when we meet Monsier le Maire for the first time he might merit a panel to himself, with a vertical format to show the full figure.

Himesh Patel

Himesh Patel

Himesh Patel plays Jeevan Chaudhary in the TV mini-series Station Eleven, adapted from Emily St John Mandel’s novel about a band of travelling players in a post-pandemic Great Lakes landscape.

Once again this is drawn in Clip Studio Paint on the iPad, using a standard drawing figure for the pose but this time instead of relying on my memory and imagination I took the details of the character and costume from a photograph in last week’s Radio Times.

Figures

figures

More figures and these first three are ready-made poses that you can use on the virtual 3D drawing figures in Clip Studio Paint. They were chosen at random and happened to line up like this on my row in this order entirely by chance, but looking at them, I find it impossible not to imagine that there’s some story going on.

The man on the right is actually one of a pair, he’s seizing someone by the shoulders and the other figure, not shown here, is being pulled back.

figures

The man on the right is loosely based on a bad guy in a movie we saw recently. For the figure on the left I decided that I’ve drawn enough jackets and that it was time to draw someone wearing a jumper, so I thought that I might as well add rolled down wellies and make him into a fisherman.

figures

By now I was running out of ideas for costumes, so these two are based on a couple of the students from my art foundation, way back in the late 1960s.

Figures

figures

I’m practising using the 3D drawing figure in Clip Studio Paint – a kind of virtual lay figure – keeping to the standard body shape but developing the character through its actions and costume. I’m going for a limited range of tones because it’s the form of the character that I’m interested in, but I look forward to adding colour, which I can do later on another layer, over the tonal layer but beneath the line drawing.

Sketches

chairs and people sketches

Recent sketches from my 125×90 mm Hahnemühle D&S sketchbook. Tones added in Photoshop.