Another spell in the waiting room, another hand sketch.
In the Auditorium
How do you get that great feeling of being part of a winning team; of striving against the odds and getting to the top of your game?
According to the commercials screened as we waited to see the new Star Trek movie, all you need to do is subscribe to a particular broadband service or choose the right brand of fizzy drink. I couldn’t quite follow the logic but then I was drawing my hand . . . and foot. Colour added later in Bella Italia.
Sorting Sketchbooks
Looking back over sketchbooks from the last ten or twenty years, I liked some of my bolder, simpler drawings, so I took a break and, using my Lamy Safari with the bold nib, drew the pile of A6 sketchbooks that I was going through.
Hiking Boots
These Trezeta hiking boots have stood up to a lot of wear, mainly in Yorkshire but they’ve been as far afield as Switzerland and Corfu.
I’ve drawn this in my A4 sketchbook to make it easier to include the details. The full size of the drawing is 8 x 5½ inches.
Link: Trezeta
Feet
I was drawing sandals yesterday so this evening I’ve moved on to feet. I often draw my hand if I’m stuck somewhere waiting but what I can’t do is draw one of my hands clasped in the other (how would I move my pen?!), so I tried different ways of drawing my two feet together.
These feet look elongated but that’s the shape my feet are. Greg Davies, who is 6 feet 8 inches tall and has size 13 feet was grumbling in this week’s Radio Times that the author of his Wikipedia article had increased that to size 17: ‘I’d be a human right angle.’
I’m only 6ft 4in but I’ve got size 13 feet, so I guess that I’m on my way to being a human right angle.
These four sketches took 70 minutes and 54 seconds to draw. I know that because we were listening to Abba Gold. I needed music that would help keep my pen moving and most CDs have a slow number in them somewhere: not Abba Gold!
Walking Sandals
Yesterday was the hottest of the year so far, a chance to wear sandals again.
Drawn with my Lamy Safari fountain pen with the broad nib, as I wanted a bold inky line. I went for an A4 sketchbook, larger than the sketchbooks that I normally take on location because I didn’t want to start putting in detail, and consequently tending to work larger, and then find that I was running off the edge of the page.
I was going to add colour but then decided that I like the line just as it is. The everyday but for me rather challenging subject brings back memories of art homework from school days: going back to the rudiments of drawing.
Hot Day
It’s the first day for over two weeks that we haven’t made the 10,000 paces target that Barbara has set herself on her FitBit. We’re hoping for thunderstorm to freshen things up. Even here in the studio with a through draught it’s got to 80 Fahrenheit.
To prevent the tomato plants flagging I’ve been damping down in the greenhouse.
Two skippers are settling on plants in the pond. On a day like this I guess that even butterflies need a drink. A wood pigeon comes down to the shallow end of the pond taking advantage of the access that I’ve made by cutting back the vegetation.
The ants on the patio are still active but the flying ants are appearing only in dribs and drabs.
A dunnock perches with a beak-full of insects on the beech hedge. I think that it must have a nest in there.
Self-heal
3 p.m., 70°F, 22°C, 75% white cumulus, slight breeze: Where it grows on a well mown lawn, self-heal can put out tiny flower heads that stay low and escape the blades of the mower. My mother-in-law Betty objected to the self-heal dotted about her lawn. She said the little purple flower heads reminded her of pieces of ground beef sprinkled on a pizza. Amongst the tall grasses of my patch of meadow self-heal is growing to two feet, to the same height as the knapweed growing alongside it.
The same is true of the bird’s-foot trefoil which is scrambling amongst the grasses rather than forming a low cushion of brilliant yellow flower as it might on rabbit-nibbled turf.
A bumble bee with ‘fur’ that resembles a brown bear in moult visits one of the flowers.
Blackbird Anting
5 p.m.: The workers of the ants’ nest under the paving slabs of our patio are getting rather excited but it’s not going to be perfect weather for the winged queens and males to take off on their nuptial flight as although it has been warm and humid we’re now getting flurries of breeze and fine, misty drizzle.
At first it was the song thrush that started anting – encouraging ants to run over its plumage – while the female blackbird hopped up the lawn and started pecking up the scurrying ants to eat them.
Now she has taken to anting too, picking up the ants and letting them run about on her feathers. She does this at first from under the cover of the leaves of the peony that overhang the corner of the patio then comes out and continues by the bird bath.
The sparrows are more interested in eating the ants. One male hops under the plastic bird bath which is supported by bricks, a space that the blackbird, which later reverts to simply eating the ants, cannot reach.
Townclose Hills
Pyramidal, common spotted and a hybrid orchid were in flower on the plateau at Townclose Hills Nature Reserve, also known as Billy Woods.
Despite the breeze we saw ringlet, meadow brown, small tortoiseshell, small skipper and a few marbled white butterflies. Six-spot burnet moths were also active and a hebrew character moth lurked amongst the grasses.
One of the smallest orb-web spiders, Araniella curcurbitina, was making its way across a grassy path. It’s Latin name, curcurbitina, means ‘a little member of the gourd family’; its bright green and yellow striped abdomen looks like a water melon or gourd. It has a scarlet patch on its underside.
We spotted a brown hare in a field in the valley of Kippax Brook to the west of the reserve.
Townclose Hills, Kippax is a Leeds City Council Local Nature Reserve managed by the Yorkshire Wildlife Trust.