I’M BACK in Bryce 7 territory as I trek my way through the basic tutorials to re-familiarise myself with the programme after a couple of years when I couldn’t get it working on my machine. The last time I went through this tutorial, using Bryce 4 in 2004 (left), I added a few rocks to the lake shore. The rendering of the scene has improved, making the most of the capabilities of my new computer. I’m almost ready to supply the images for a National Geographic article.
Bryce 7
I’M BACK on this now rather familiar alien world, as this is the fourth time that I’ve worked through John Kennedy’s introduction to Bryce, the natural landscape-generation programme. His article, published in PC Format magazine 13 years ago this month, includes a step-by-step alien landscape tutorial. A full version of Bryce 2 was included on the cover CD.
Until now, I haven’t been able to run Bryce successfully on my computer. I went for a new machine a couple of years ago when Windows 7 came in but, despite tentative assurances that that you’d be able to run your old programmes under the new operating system, my existing 3D design programmes were never able to run successfully.
Now Daz have made a PLE version of Bryce 7, the latest version, available as a free download. PLE stands for Personal Learning Edition but this is a full version with no limitations other than it’s not for professional work. This gives me a perfect opportunity to get to know the programme and, if I do decide to use Bryce for an illustration – a historical reconstruction, for instance – in one of my books, I can easily upgrade to the professional version, which is reasonably priced.
So far, it works fine on my Windows 7 64 bit computer. The render time for the final image takes seconds rather than minutes. As you can see from this image (left) from previous occasion, back in 2005, when I went through the tutorial the results of my new set-up, using Bryce 7, are impressive.
Bryce versus Sketchup
Sketchup makes it simple and intuitive to design anything ‘from a house to a coffee pot’ but I think, looking at this chair tutorial (right) which I completed yesterday, you can see why, as an illustrator with an interest in geology, history and wildlife, I don’t find it as attractive as Bryce.
For me Bryce offers more exciting possibilities and, as it is now 13 years since I first tried it, it feels comfortingly familiar to use.
Link
Bryce 7 PLE download at CNET.
Tree Ferns
I DREW this group of tree ferns from plants in the fern house at Kew Gardens. It was a frosty winter weekend and the prospect of drawing in the shelter of a glasshouse appealed to me. Unfortunately when I got there the fern houses were closed for maintenance, so I had to stand on the frozen turf outside and draw this tropical scene through the window.
This was back in the winter of 1976-77 and I was gathering visual reference for my first book, A Sketchbook of the Natural History of the Country Round Wakefield, for a fold-out diorama of the coal forests which covered much of Britain 300 million years ago. The giant club-mosses and giant horsetails are long gone but modern tree ferns are almost identical in appearance to the tree ferns and ‘seed ferns’ (an unrelated but very similar looking group of plants) that grew in these primeval forests.
I felt that drawing from real plants would give a touch of believability to the drawing, a kind of ‘everyday’ look which can be difficult to achieve when you’re reconstructing an exotic landscape.
Today, I’ve been revisiting that landscape, part of my past as well as part of the distant past of our planet, as I’ve been asked to prepare a coloured version (coloured in Photoshop that is) for an information board for a country park on the site of a former colliery. The stored energy in the coal comes from sunlight that fell on these long vanished forests 300 million years ago.
Sketchup 8
SKETCHUP 8, the latest version of Google’s 3D design program has just been launched. As I’m still in holiday mood, I downloaded it this morning and took my time going through the tutorials. Rather like a child learning to draw, they start you off with a basic house.
Taking things a bit further, you can specify precise dimensions as you draw; for instance this second house (right) started with two rectangles of 12×30 and 20×10 feet, joined to make an L-shaped plan.
The Offset tool is useful for creating the overhang of the roof and the frames of doors and windows, while the follow-me tool was used to take the plinth along the lower edge of the house from one side of the door frame to the other.
Table
This elegant hall table has ended up rather deeper than intended but by following the tutorial through I’m beginning to grasp the principles of making components such as the legs and drawer fronts. Make modifications to one of the legs and the others update themselves to match.
Interior
To work on an interior you delete two walls of your house (you can always put them back in later) and switch to a wide angle ‘camera’ so that you can navigate into tight corners to work on your model. Those comfy armchairs are easy to download from the Sketchup website and, like every other component of the model, you can change their colour or pattern with a click from the paint bucket tool.
You’re encouraged to upload your own models for others to use. I’m going to have to improve a bit before I submit my efforts but I’ve enjoyed spending a few hours learning the basics today.
You can get a free download of Sketchup from http://sketchup.google.com/
You can find the video tutorials that I followed on Sketchup’s YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/sketchupvideo?gl=GB&user=sketchupvideo
Sam Swift
I WROTE about my great-granddad George Swift in my diary for 7 August 2010. He’s pictured here between his younger brothers Arthur and Fred in front of Joseph Rodgers, the Sheffield cutlers where all three worked.
His father Samuel Bergin Swift (1814-1878) also worked there. Since I wrote that diary, a distant cousin of mine (a great-grandson of Arthur on the left) has e-mailed me and I’ve taken a photograph of Samuel’s obituary notice from The Ironmonger, March 1878 (below) for him. I’d love to have a photograph or drawing of Sam’s workshop but this word picture is the next best thing and I’m delighted that someone took the trouble to describe it and that it has survived.
Sam’s most prestigious commission was to design a set of cut-throat razors for Napoleon III, which I featured on an additional page of my diary for 7 August. I say his most prestigious commission but it’s likely that he worked on similar pieces for equally illustrious historical figures. I featured razors designed and made by George in my diary for 20 January 2011.
The Swifts were evidently well thought of in the cutlery trade but in his genealogical research my distant cousin has located a black sheep of the family from the Victorian period! I’m looking forward to hearing more.
DEATH OF A NOTED WORKMAN
(SPECIAL)
Taken from the IRONMONGER, MARCH, 1878
Many of our Sheffield friends will read with regret this announcement:—“ On Saturday, the 12th instant, Samuel Swift, cutler, of Meersbrook Heeley, aged 64 years.” The deceased was a most ingenious workman, and had been in the service of Joseph Rodgers & Sons for 40 years. He was a thoughtful, industrious workman, and inherited the skill of his father, “Billy Swift”. For many years the deceased had been a “day” worker, contrary to the usual practice of piece working in the cutlery trades. Almost all manner of curious articles taken to the show-rooms of Rodgers & Sons to be repaired were transfered to Swift, whose ingenuity was seldom overeached. He possessed tools (many of his own making) sufficient to have stocked the “Old Curiosity Shop.” Working in steel, silver, gold, or pearl, came to him most readily. He was indeed, in scriptual phrase, a “cunning workman,” and it is such men as he who have built up and sustained the reputation of Sheffield. To the young workman Swift was ever ready to give the benefit of his great experience. It was no uncommon thing for workmen in mechanical or other working emergencies to be advised to “ask Sam Swift,” as his more familiar friends usually called him. He was a genial, kindhearted man, whose days were spent in the workshop, and his leisure hours cultivating his little freehold, in which for many years, he took a laudable pride. He was a noble example of an English artisan, and his moral worth and ability will long be remembered by his relatives, friends and fellow‑workmen.
Ambleside
3.10 pm, Waterhead, Ambleside; AS I WAS quickly painting this view of Windermere as we waited for the ferry, Barbara spotted a notice recording the flood level in November 2009. I would have been standing almost waist-deep in water.
On our return journey to Bowness we pass Wray Castle, which Beatrix Potter’s parents rented for a summer holiday in 1882, giving 16 year old Beatrix her first experience of the Lake District.
Don’t go paddling at nearby Barrow Point (right); the lake plunges to 220 feet deep here. Windermere, at twelve miles long is the largest natural lake in England, is divided into two basins which were deepened by ice age glaciers.
I take a seat on the upper, open, deck of the ferry, sketching and dabbing in colour as we go.
It’s been a rainy day which is why we decided to head for Ambleside rather than setting out on a lakeside walk again.
It’s an opportunity to visit the Armitt Museum, which I haven’t visited since it moved to its new building in 1997. Amongst the exhibits are a number of watercolour studies of fungi by Beatrix Potter and a self-portrait by John Ruskin.
Bohemians in Exile
But the reason that I particularly wanted to visit today was to catch the Bohemians in Exile exhibition, which has created so much interest that it’s been extended until the new year. The Royal College of Art moved out here during World War II and, on the evidence of this exhibition they were a lively bunch, staging exhibitions and performances and getting involved with the life of the town.
I know someone who was there at the time and I can’t help thinking that there would have been many appealing aspects to being based here as a natural history student during my time at the college, 30 years later.
Hmm . . . but then I’d have missed out on the Natural History Museum, and the Geological Museum . . . and concerts in the Royal Albert Hall . . . and lunchtime walks around the Serpentine (although it hardly compares with Windermere!).
Cuckoo Brow
THE END of October marks the end of the season for many Lakeland businesses; village stores close, parking restrictions are eased and ferries start running to winter timetables so it’s an opportunity to explore a quieter countryside. From our hotel at Bowness-on-Windermere we walk to the car ferry and at Ferry House pick up the route of one of Mary Webb’s Tea Shop Walks in the Lake District. In six miles walking we don’t meet a single hiker or dog-walker, just one cyclist on a road section and two farmers auguring a pasture for soil samples. The Tea Shop closed for winter at the weekend, as did Beatrix Potter’s house at High Sawrey, which it stands close to. The Cuckoo Brow Inn at Far Sawrey makes a welcome alternative as a lunch stop.
We walk close to the shore of Windermere, from the tiny island of Ling Holme to the promontory of Rawlinson Nab. It’s quiet except for a gaggle of Canada and Pink-footed Geese. Other birds: Grey Wagtail, Robin, Great-crested Grebe, Black-headed Gull and, as we walk by a stretch of woodland cleared of conifers at Waterbarrow, Blue Tit and Nuthatches on the tall broadleaved trees that have been left standing. We see several squirrels, but all of them Grey, not Red, like the one we saw yesterday in Keswick. Perhaps the central fells act as a barrier to the spread of the Greys in Cumbria.
As this is Wordsworth country, I found myself inspired to verse. I wasn’t going to inflict this on you, but our friends had to have this on our postcard from the Lakes so I thought I’d add it to this post, just to show that I was getting into holiday mood:
As we were walking in the Lakes,
We searched in vain for tea & cakes.
We tramped five miles then had to pause
At Far Sawrey village stores.
Alas, the sign we chanc’d to see
Said ‘CLOSED NOVEMBER’ (no more tea!).
But round the corner we said ‘Wow! –
they’re serving soup at Cuckoo Brow!’
Soup of the day was French onion, complete with crouton, made with good stock (not vegetarian, I’m guessing) and not too salty like French onion soup often is.
.
Red Squirrel
SOME DAY we’ll climb Cat Bells, one of the most popular fells for walkers in the Lake District. It sits enticingly on the western shore of Derwentwater as you look out towards it from the lakeside at Keswick. Cat Bells is 451 metres, 1480 feet high, and a three mile walk from the town but the boat house in the foreground of my drawing is on Derwent Isle, only two or three hundred yards from the shore.
4.25 pm; A Red Squirrel runs along the pavement by a roundabout near the Lakeside car Park. We’re so astonished to see it that, retracing our route back out of town, I turn the car on to the road we came on – which is one-way! Luckily I realise my mistake before we encounter any oncoming vehicles!
We’ve often come to the Lake District for several days and not seen a Red Squirrel, so this one came as a surprise.
We’ve driven here from home along the Leeds ring-road so many times that we were ready for a change; we headed up the road from home, in what seems like the wrong direction, to Grange Moor, then cut across via Brighouse and Keighley on smaller roads towards Skipton, avoiding West Yorkshire’s larger towns and cities.
Because of a road closure, we found another alternative route for part of our journey along a narrow lane across the moors and fells from Airton to Settle. A large 
flock of Fieldfares, the most we’ve seen so far, had descended on roadside hawthorns.
In Settle I drew the pillar in the Market Place as we stopped for lunch at Ye Olde Naked Man cafe. Limestone crags rise from woodland on the slopes to the east of town.
The Secret of the Unicorn
WE’D ARRIVED ten minutes early at the cinema, so, without really settling into full drawing mode, I drew my hand. The Adventures of Tintin; The Secret of the Unicorn started life as drawings by Hergé and his team and this Steven Speilberg production pays homage to the original artwork, without being too reverential about it. The opening credits show how effective a purely graphic version might have been but I feel that Hergé would have approved of this big-budget over-the-top widescreen 3D production. It’s a bit exhausting but an absolute delight for a Tintin fan like me. There have been traditional animated cartoon versions of Tintin in the past, which seemed to me rather pedestrian compared with the original comic strips and even a live action version, which I didn’t see but which I can’t imagine working successfully.
For me Hitchcock’s North by Northwest is the film that comes closest to the pacing of the original adventures. The Tintin stories are one relentless adventure, so if you used them as a storyboard for a movie you’d get something like this Speilberg version but that’s a different experience to reading a comic strip where you can always pause to take in the scenery and the artwork.
I’ll be interested to see the book The Art of the Adventures of Tintin to discover how they created the artwork for the film.
The Bittern Hide
THIS IS THE VIEW looking east from the Bittern Hide at the RSPB’s Old Moor Wetlands reserve at Wath-on-Dearne, South Yorkshire. Temperature, a balmy 24°C.
We didn’t spot the reserve’s resident but elusive Bittern. During the summer it never ‘boomed’, so it’s thought to be either a juvenile or a female.
But, thanks to a birdwatcher sitting near us in the hide we saw the equally elusive Water Rail, emerging from the reeds and crossing a grassy gap. I’m pretty sure that it’s a lifer, a first for me. Oddly, it was a bird that I was very familiar with as a child; a terrace of old stone-built cottages on our street stood empty, awaiting demolition, and my friend Stephen went rummaging there. He rescued a leatherbound copy of Cassell’s Science Popularly Explained (1856) by David A. Wells, which I still have on my shelf, and a stuffed water rail in a glass fronted cabinet, long since vanished. A little time capsule commemorating some Victorian’s fascination with natural history.
There was a flock of well over a hundred of these waders in the scrape at the other side of the reserve. I’m not good at waders and these looked far from distinctive so I took notes and consulted one of the field guides in the visitor centre.
The bird that I looked up was Golden Plover – that was my first guess – but the field guide that I consulted showed summer plumage only; a striking golden yellow bird, as the name suggests.
The warden took a look at my sketch and confirmed that was what it was, but of course in winter plumage.
Back home, looking in my current favourite field guide, the Collins Bird Guide, there are several illustrations of various plumages and, helpfully, an illustration of a winter flock, looking just like the birds that we saw.