With snow on the ground today it’s been good to think about May time for a my next Dalesman nature diary.
Hedgerow
Snowy Morning
Snow, rapidly melting, at the hospice this morning.
Office Chair
Another exercise in not lifting the pen from the paper as I draw. Colour and negative colour added in Photoshop.
Oova Matique
On our walk via the canal and river to the Coffee Stop this morning: one drake goldeneye, 42 grazing wigeon, a pair of oystercatchers and, by the Navigation Inn, Rachel Modest – The Voice semi-finalist and leader of the Wakefield Community Gospel Choir – making a music video, assisted by vocalist and former roadie (to, amongst many others, The Smiths, David Bowie and Russell Watson) Oova Matique.
Links
Rachel Modest on Facebook
Anonymous Groove Live Sessions on YouTube
Hospice Cherry Trees
Flowering cherry (or some other kind of Prunus?) at the hospice this morning.
Blackbirds are singing, wood pigeons occasionally perch in the branches but the most remarkable bird was a red kite, seen from the car park.
Crystal Dendrite
In a flagstone just outside John’s patio windows, these dendritic crystals look like the fossil of a tree but they’re actually crystals – perhaps of manganese as they’re black – that have grow across the layers of this flagstone, in a similar from to the ice crystals in a snowflake.
Street Kitchen
The fast food at the Falafel Street Kitchen was a tad too fast for me and this was as far as I was able to get in sketching the customers.
Luckily the pace at the Nats’ AGM was a little more sedate. Even so, these days we get through the business side of the evening in a little over fifteen minutes.
Harewood Grand Lodge
Rather than go for regular architectural drawings I’ve used the exercise of drawing without lifting the pen from the paper for this facade of Harewood’s Grand Lodge for next month’s John Carr anniversary show in Horbury’s Redbox Gallery.
The split complementary colour scheme comes from my experiments with Procreate.
I’m going to experiment with 3D versions, building up the facade in card.
The Veg Shed
Like a scene from Peter Rabbit, a woman walks up the garden path to Hilary’s cafe with a large bunch of fresh carrots, holding them by the lush ferny foliage of the carrot tops.
She’s soon back down the shed, returning again with three Petanque boule-size beetroots, again with fresh-looking foliage.
“I only came here for a cup of coffee!” she explains.
Library Letterhead
Some possibilities for using the library logo in a letterhead. Hopefully the secretary won’t be misquoting Cicero’s Latin as in the placeholder text of my mocked-up example.
Coot
At Newmillerdam most of the black-headed gulls now have their chocolate brown masks but they all seem remarkably laid back this morning with no noisy disputes. Soon they’ll be gathering at their nesting colony at St Aidan’s.
Another reason for it seeming so peaceful is that there are no Canada geese around. Last week I saw a flock of more than a hundred by the canal opposite the Strands and a similar flock on the Wyke.
By the outlet at Newmillerdam a lone coot was diving for freshwater mussels. In the few minutes as we passed by it apparently finished feeding on one and then dived for another. The mussel was the size of a small grape.