Strong winds have pruned branches from the plantation conifers on the slopes around Langsett reservoir including this branch of Corsican Pine.
Larch Cones
These larch cones from Langsett have opened up since I brought them back to the studio.
I’m pleased at how my habitual set up for natural history drawing is working: a Lamy Safari filled with Noodler’s brown ink plus Winsor & Newton professional watercolours (formerly known as artists’ watercolours) applied with a water-brush. In my early days I’d always carry a dip pen and a bottle of brown Indian ink with me but this gives very much the same effect and is so much more convenient and reliable.
There’s not much colour in this though; I started with yellow ochre, as I so often do, then added neutral tint to get the darker brown. There might be the slightest hint of raw umber and burnt sienna which I’d been using earlier in the palette lid of my W&N bijou watercolour box.
Golden Hornet
It’s been a good year for apples, including the Golden Hornet crab by the pond which is covered in them. Last winter I didn’t get around to trimming off the long shoots growing up from the crown and, like the rest of the tree, they’re festooned in yellow apples. I’d normally try and prune it in the autumn but, as the tree is looking so spectacular, I’m leaving that task until the spring. The blackbirds and the mistle thrush will appreciate that.
Bracket Fungus
This bracket fungus, Trametes veriscolor (formerly Coriolus versicolor), is growing on a stump at the Denby Dale Road end of the carriage drive in Clarence Park, Wakefield. When Clarence, Holmfield and Thornes Park were laid out as a public park by the Victorians, horse chestnuts were planted along this drive.
A Rain-lashed Weekend
The rain was lashing in with such force yesterday afternoon that it smashed out an already broken pain of glass in the greenhouse, leaving shards of glass on the ground. A short storm in the afternoon drove lashings of spray down our road.
This afternoon, I painted directly in watercolour as the fading light added a touch of drama at the end of a dull November day.
Punto
Perhaps the reason that I find cars so difficult to draw is that they’re almost human. Headlights can be like eyes, so, as when drawing a portrait of a human, if you don’t get the shapes or proportions right, you can lose the likeness. If I drew cars often enough, I might get to the stage where I could take liberties and come up with a caricature.
The first car got driven off just before I got a chance to add colour. As I added colour to the second, a Fiat Punto, I realised that because a car is so shiny it mirrors its environment with a reflection of the sky highlighting the roof and the reflection of the tarmac adding to the shadows below.
Pens, Pencils & Rulers
The knife, fork and spoon slots of a cutlery drawer divider are ideal for pens, pencils and rulers. The section where you’d store your corkscrew and corn-on-the-cob skewers comes in for compass, Pritt sticks and pencil sharpener.
This A2 sized drawer is one from a six drawer unit from Ikea but every one of these drawers had sagged over the past three years. Last weekend I dismantled them and glued all the grooves that support the hardboard base. While I was at it, I sprayed some WD40 on the metal runners. And I even went to the effort of testing each pen on scrap paper to whittle down my collection.
There was no lead in this propelling pencil, but it’s definitely one to keep. It was either given to me, or I claimed it from my mum in my school or student days, so my guess is that it could date from the 1930s.
The Book Cupboard
I’ve been familiar with these books since childhood and I even read one of them during my student days; John Earle’s Microcosmography, first published in 1628. I’m not sure that I’ll ever read The Wigwam and the Warpath, Alpha of the Plough or Ballads and Ballad Poems but I couldn’t bring myself to leave them in the book cupboard when we had house clearance in before handing over the keys to my mum’s house at the end of September.
Mountain Vue
Back in mountain country and that lone plum tree looks familiar as I’m on a return visit to the first tutorial in Create 3D Like a Superhero; Chipp Walters’ introduction to the landscape design program Vue.
With tree, foreground and mountain in place, I try a full-screen test render. After half an hour my computer estimates that it will take another 27 hours to complete the image! Luckily smaller images take just a few minutes to process. If I ever need a larger image, I’ll leave it rendering overnight.
The clear blue sky is the default atmosphere but you can load alternatives, such as a ‘Lead & Gold’ sunset.
Chipp Walters points out that awkward transitions between objects can create an unreal point of focus in the landscape, so I experiment by introducing a cloud, which I scale down and drop into the valley to try and give the effect of rising mist. It looks more like a giant sheep.
I really don’t know clouds at all. But I’ll only learn by playing around with the program.
Links: Cornucopia 3D where you can download a full version of Vue Pioneer (the only limitation is that it stamps ‘Created in Vue’ on every render)
Book End
A carving that I made in the woodwork class at grammar school has come in useful for stopping my current reading collapsing over onto the modem on my bookshelf.
A windy day disrupted the railways when we went into Leeds yesterday. On the return journey I drew bare trackside trees, a birch hanging on to the last of its ochre leaves and a gull weaving its way into the headwind.