Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
Another page from my Skokholm Island sketchbook, drawn on Thursday, 10th April, 1980, watching razorbills, wheatear, and grey seals. My drawing of the rocks didn’t get finished because:
“The puffins were enjoying the evening sun, standing in pairs outside their burrows, when I came back from a tea-break so I decided to leave them in peace”
Probably a first even for me, blaming the puffins for an unfinished sketch!
My ‘pen & ink, bamboo pen, watercolour, a bit of gouache and a gull dropping’ drawing of Mad Bay, Skokholm Island, Pembrokeshire, dates from a week’s visit (extended by a day or two because of bad weather) in April 1980, but my first Skokholm adventure, ten years earlier, started, rather like a Sherlock Holmes story, with an urgent telegram:
I think that even today it would be difficult to arrive at Haverfordwest Railway Station at 6.15 a.m. and it proved impossible then. As it happened, the weekly boat to the island didn’t sail that day because of the weather.
Here’s my sketchbook from that stay on the island. I picked up the rope on the shore and attached it to the spiral binding so that as I walked around the island stalking seals and puffins, I could scramble over the rocks with both hands free but be ready to take out my pen and bottle of ink to start work.
While I was up in the attic looking for this sketchbook, I came across my diary for 1970, which I probably haven’t dipped into since then. I’ve forgotten why I was writing my diary in a Spicer’s triplicate book. I remember my time on the island vividly, but it’s interesting to put it in the context of my everyday life as a student.
On a boat trip to the neighbouring island of Skomer six years earlier, we’d called in at Skokholm on the return trip to pick up a small party of birdwatchers.
That day trip to Skomer gave me some of the material for my entry in the Daily Mail I-Spy Birds competition, which coincided with the launch of the RSPB’s Young Ornithologists’ Club. I was a joint first prize winner and received not only a welcome postal order but also a red feather and a personal letter from Big Chief I-Spy himself.
During the corona virus lockdown, I’m missing out on drawing in coffee shops – which sometimes seems to be the main theme in my sketchbooks, so I tried drawing the hosts today’s Adobe Live session with Katy Cowan of creativeboom.com
Behance: Adobe Live
I’ve enjoyed trying out the ‘Rough Wash’ brush in Clip Studio Paint’s ‘Realistic Watercolour’ section but, as Barbara commented, this is looking like something that you might see on a birthday card so, good-looking as these two guys are, this frame doesn’t express a gesture. There’s nothing to prompt readers to think ‘What happens next?’
Much as I like the ponies we see on our regular walks, I need to develop their characters to tell a story. I don’t need the full cast, and, in order for them to interact, characters that are, in reality, in fields quarter of mile away from each other are going to have to be together. So sorry pinto pony, you’re going to be cut: it’s going to be the elegant chestnut and the dark brown Shetland in the grubby mac.
Here’s my rough for a more cartoony approach:
While some of the ponies on Middlestown Hill are still wearing their winter coats, there are three nearer the village that are now roaming about unencumbered. They’re enjoying the freedom of being able to groom each other and to roll on the ground to hit that hard-to-reach itchy spot on their backs.
But yesterday morning the wind was from the north and all three of them had gathered in the lowest corner of the field, sheltering close to the hedges.
Yesterday at 9.30, we could see the cold front moving in from the north across the Calder Valley. Ten minutes later it had reached us and we had a very light shower of rain. Cool breeze.
Fifteen minutes later, this faint rainbow appeared over Thornhill Edge.
Sandstone for drystone walls and local buildings was available in blocks and small flagstones from the same small quarry near the small hamlet of Smithy Brook between Middlestown and Thornhill.
At first sight this chevron pattern in the rockface looks as if it might be the result of the layers being folded sharply over, like a half-closed book. The Smithy Brook valley follows a fault-line but the earth movements associated with that wouldn’t have folded the rocks over like that.
What I think happened is something like this:
Another approach to recording our morning walk around our local patch: I took a photograph of this old roadside quarry with my iPhone and, back in the studio this afternoon, I’ve drawn it in dip pen and De Atramentis Document Ink from my iPad.
Just the watercolour to add now. I’m so unfamiliar with using this larger Winsor & Newton Professional Watercolours box that I’ve got out my swatches as a reminder. As I was getting out my watercolours I was interrupted by a beeping: Barbara’s brother John, currently, like most of the rest of us, sitting things out at home, was giving us a video call on the iPad, something he’d never tried until last weekend. I get a lot of use from that iPad.
British summertime starts today and we’re making a start exploring our local patch. Rather than sketch or take photographs I’m drawing my comic strip from remembered details.
To try some unfamiliar features of Clip Studio Paint, I’ve followed a tutorial for drawing a black and white comic strip, adding tone, patterns and a sunburst effect to the frames. I drew using a graphics pad and desktop iMac, so my lines are wobbling about all over the place but I should now be able to do a final version on my iPad Pro.
I’m pleased to regularly come across earthworms as I dig the veg beds. This is a juvenile, as it hasn’t developed a clitellum: the swollen band around its body, which makes it difficult to identify: in Britain we have 27 species of earthworm.
These wrinkled Bards with their spiky topknots remind me of a line from a Simon & Garfunkel song:
“Talking to a raisin that occasionally plays L.A.,
Casually glancing at his toupee.”
I’ve just finished reading Walt Stanchfield’s Drawn to Life, so I was thinking of his advice, when drawing figures to draw gestures rather than anatomy, so in this case I went for the laid-back poses of this little group, rather than the botanical detail.
Last year we nearly forgot what kind of potato we’d planted, so for the two varieties that we’ve gone for this year, I’ve cut labels from margarine cartons and written the nameS with a Sharpie. That should last for the two or three months until the potatoes are ready for harvest.