Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
Another lockdown birthday, this time for Sofia, aged 12, who created a table character for a booklet of What am I? puzzles.
Just been talking to a neighbour who’s a teacher. Getting schools running again is proving an even more difficult than closing them.
Fox-and-cubs grows from between the stones by the bridge at Smithy Brook. Some years ago a few rosettes of it popped up at the top end of our lawn at the edge of the patio. Much as I like the flowers, we made efforts to weed them out because they can spread by stolons (creeping stems on the surface) and rhizomes (under ground storage stems) into turf where they are near-impossible to eradicate.
In today’s session, the 42nd of the live ‘From the Sofa’ sessions that Adobe has been putting out since the lockdown began, we were invited to draw along with illustrator Rachael Presky (who I briefly sketched as the workshop got underway). It’s rare for me to laugh while I’m illustrating, but today . . .
Although my character ended up looking like Catweazle, it’s actually supposed to be Tony Harmer, design ninja, in the character of Biggles. Tony’s cat, also in flying outfit was supposed to be adopting the Tree pose too . . . but it looks as if the duo are dancing the Highland Fling.
It’s drawn in Adobe Fresco on my iPad Pro with an Apple Pencil using the ‘Blotty Ink’ pen and the ‘Natural Brush’.
Taking part in the ‘From the Sofa’ design challenges can seriously damage your reputation as an illustrator.
Thanks to Rufus Deuchler for his advice on what is and what is not anatomically possible in Cat Yoga positions.
This morning’s visit to Alverthorpe Meadows, six miles from home, is the furthest that we’ve been since lockdown began nine weeks ago. We’re meeting up with our friends, or rather Barbara is meeting with Sue and I’m meeting with Roger, as one-to-one with social distancing outdoors is as far as we’ve got in England with the easing of restrictions.
Wrenthorpe Park and the adjoining Alverthorpe Meadows are good for social distancing as there’s plenty of space and most of the paths are wide. Roger and I head up the slope. As we walk by a nestbox on a London plane tree, a blue tit pops out.
Along the top path, close to the railway, I record a blackcap singing. There’s another bird in the recording but we didn’t identify it. We later get a good view of a blackcap singing from the top branches of a willow in a hedgerow near the settling ponds.
A young white poplar in the wood has rows of diamond-shaped scars on its bark. The Collins Tree Guide describes white poplar as ‘the whitest tree in the landscape’.
My friend Roger remembers when the wood was planted during the restoration of the landscape here, twenty or thirty years ago. The wood has established itself well but he feels that it needs some management now so that some of species that were planted can continue to thrive. For instance, he thinks that the hazels might get shaded out at the tree canopy closes in.
We walk down the slope crossing Balne Beck and through a belt of trees to the central meadow.
Elder is now in flower and a pink-flowered hawthorn is still hanging onto its blossom.
In the meadow, flowers of yellow rattle are dotted about amongst the buttercups and the red clover.
Pignut is also in flower and, in a damper area near the ponds, marsh orchids are starting to show.
Growing alongside the orchids, I think that this grass is foxtail, Alopecurus pratensis. Timothy grass, also known as cat’s-tail, is very similar but it flowers a bit later than foxtail.
Common sorrel, Rumex acetosa, was a popular vegetable in Tudor times and was used to make a fish sauce.
This speckled wood was sunning itself on the leaf of a hazel down by the stream. We saw several of them in the dappled shade of woodland edge habitats, along with a few white butterflies. There are extensive nettle patches but Roger commented that there were no signs of damage from caterpillars. The tops of the nettles were slightly wilting but that was because of the morning sun.
We’re setting off this morning on our longest expedition since the lockdown began, all the way to Wrenthorpe Park on the other side of Wakefield, six miles away to up in two separate twosomes with my Lockdown Lepidopterist friend Roger and his wife Sue. Roger has put his time to good use by capturing aspects of butterfly behaviour that he wouldn’t normally have had time to sit and wait for, such as butterflies laying their eggs on his carefully tended backyard nettle patch.
This was the birthday card that I drew for him a couple of weeks ago. You can’t buy this in the shops. Even if they were open.
Start with a squiggle . . .
Our latest assignment in Mattias Adolfsson’s Art of Sketching course.
Some saucy stand-ups on the open mike night but I’m afraid the Cruets weren’t impressed. They gave the acts a peppery reception: inclined to take things with a pinch of salt was one comment. Even the mustard wasn’t keen and the non-brewed condiment was positively vinegary.
On my Art of Sketching course, Mattias Adolfsson encourages by saying that no idea is too silly to make a drawing. I think that I’ve managed to go a long way to proving him wrong.
Yes, I know 35 mm and Polaroid are enjoying a bit of a revival but Instamatic and 120 roll film for Box Brownies are more nostalgia and nouvelle vague.
That’s supposed to be a pack of Polaroid film on the right, but he does look rather like a mobile phone.
Once again, this is more cartooning for my Mattias Adolfsson The Art of Sketching course.
I’m missing our local Penguin colony on the High Street; lined up along their ledges with that evocative smell: fresh paperback. Bright plumage with distinctive orange stripes; a crisp riffle as you browse your way through and, on their backs, to make them even more attractive, each has a unique patch of blurb. I’m concerned because, these days, we don’t see many Puffins. York once had a thriving colony of them, nestling on stacks near the Jorvik Centre.
I can tell that the lockdown has gone on for too long because a few weeks ago I started reading – for the first time – a textbook from my college days Man and the Vertebrates: 1 by A. S. Romer. It was written pre-DNA studies, so really it’s out of date, but it’s interesting to go through a story that I’m familiar with through David Attenborough’s Life on Earth and other books and documentaries, but written from a different point of view. I don’t think that I’ll be going on to Volume 2, which is about human anatomy and evolution. We’ve come a long way since the book was reprinted in 1963 and even further since the original edition in 1933.
The cartoon is my weekend’s homework for my Mattias Adolfsson illustration course.
Here’s a story that I was told at a wedding reception in Thorpe on 4 September, 1982:
‘Graham Smithson and David Jones who were fishing at Walton Hall some ten years ago (so about 1972) found a log at the side of the lake. It was hollow and inside they found an old parchment and a diary. Yorkshire Television were doing a feature on Waterton at that time. They sent the material through the post and heard no more of it.’
From my pocket sketch/notebook, 1982
An additional detail which I remember but didn’t add to the note is that the parchment referred to a land transaction. I have a vague idea that the documents might have been hidden in a compartment in an old tin, but I’m not sure on that one.
What they’d found was probably one of Waterton’s bird habitat hollow trees. He had one enormous tree trunk moved to the lakeside and converted it into a combined nesting box and hide. Perhaps Waterton was in the habit of spending time there and for some reason kept a diary and a particular document there.
I’d love to know more. So, if you’ve been clearing out a cupboard at Yorkshire Television and you’ve come across an old notebook . . .