I’m starting a 12 x 6 inch format Pink Pig sketchbook, 150 gsm textured Ameleie paper (their own make). I’ve started with a couple of half-hour watercolour sketches, trying to get away from my usual approach of drawing in detail first, then colouring in.
View from my window, overlooking the lower end of Coxley Valley.
I quickly drew outlines in pencil for my first sketch (top) but started straight off in watercolour with the second.
Yesterday I’d made a start: I’ve drawn this view (below) from the garden centre at Shelley several times over the years but I draw it as if I’m recording the shapes of fields and woodland for a sketch map. Yesterday, fortified with latte and an elderflower and blueberry flapjack, I dived straight in with the Pentel Aquash water brush.
A watercolour workshop led by Neil Pittaway at the Rich & Fancy Cafe in Horbury on Sunday was an opportunity for me to try some alternative techniques to my regular tried-and-tested approach.
Masking tape experiment.
I remember one piece of advice that I’d heard years ago which was that you should never paint with watercolour straight from the tube (or, in my case, the tray). Always mix the colour you need.
Wet-on-wet and graduated washes.
In the first exercise (top) we ignored that advice and painted swatches of the traditional primary colours – cadmium yellow, ultramarine and cadmium red – directly on the watercolour paper. When they’d dried off for a while we mixed secondary colours by painting another primary colour over each of them, so blue over the yellow gave us green and so on.
Further washes resulted in brownish or greyish tertiary colours.
Wet-on-wet.
We experimented with masking tape – Neil isn’t a great fan of masking fluid – then wet-on-wet washes and graduated washes.
For a final piece, predictably for an illustrator like me, I decided against the more spontaneous techniques – which included running the tap over your work! – and instead I went for a fairly controlled set of overlapping swatches, inspired by some Paul Klee abstract and semi-abstract watercolours we’d been looking at.
Please pick me up next, urged the book on the shelf, You must know that reading is good for your health: To be lost in a book is like getting a hug And isn't dependent on battery or plug.
You might think me pushy but I've waited ages For any kind reader to riffle my pages. You may feel you'd hate me but might be a lover: Remember you can't judge a book by its cover.
Folk not using bookmarks are one of my fears, They fold down my pages and give me dog ears. Now that I'm older, I'm weak in my spine But handle me gently and I'll be just fine.
On this shelf I've rubbed shoulders with books thick and thin But we found 'War and Peace' a bit hard to fit in. We had one of those library books come here to stay - It stayed one extra week, now there's four pounds to pay!
I was dazzled by sunlight when I was unboxed, So please pull down that blind or I'll be slightly foxed. I hope classic reading comes into your plans: I'm set in Times Roman and not Comic Sans!
This was my effort for prompt 47 (of 100) in John Gillard’s ‘Coffee Break Writing’.
My recycled materials made-to-measure for A5 sketchbooks drawing board is proving useful as a lightweight outdoor studio/nature table.
I wouldn’t normally pick anything on a woodland trail to draw it but I don’t think anyone would object to me taking a closer look at this honey fungus, provided I don’t go spreading the spores around.
I’ve passed this old honey fungus a couple of times, deciding that I’d prefer to draw a fungus that isn’t so overgrown with dead grass stems and starting to get buried in fallen leaves.
But that’s really the story of what’s going on here. The honey fungus are returning these birch logs at the edge of the path in New Hall Wood into the leaf mould of the woodland floor.
Time for the autumn cut-back in the garden, starting at the top end trimming back bay and oregano, hawthorn hedge and the long grass around the pond.
It’s tough on my thumb joints but also on the Fiskar’s hedge shears that I’m using. They have a gear mechanism but – especially when I’m cutting thicker stems – it springs out of gear, with the result that one of the blades flaps about uselessly.
It doesn’t taken long to loosen the bolts amd put it back togetheer but I’m evidently not there yet with judging how much I should tighten the three bolts: too much and the shears are too stiff to use, too slack and they pop out of gear again.
The long-handled shears, without any gearing, are proving most reliable.
For me black Tuscany kale, Cavolo Nero, is about as drawing-friendly as I could wish for. Every line has a built-in wobble to match my default rather shaky pen. It’s got clear structure so I don’t have any problems simplifying a complex mass of foliage.
I think of the colour of black kale as being tinted with purple but I find that a cool green with just a spot of crimson is a reasonable match, with regular yellowish green where the light shines through it. The stems are cream or ivory: a very pale coolish yellow with a hint of green.
Raised Bed no.3
Raised bed no. 3: carrot, kale, lettuce and foxgloves (in the top right corner), outnumbered by spurge (petty spurge, I think). But we’ll soon weed that out . . .
A month ago in raised bed no. 3, we put in lettuce, carrots and black kale, plants from the garden centre.
Some of the lettuces are starting to bolt but the carrots haven’t done much. Carrots aren’t always successful when replanted because of the risk of damage to those delicate tap roots.
The Cavolo Nero was beginning to outgrow the mesh tunnel cloche we’d covered it with to protect it from egg-laying cabbage whites and our ever-hungry wood pigeons.
In my opinion, our pitifully small carrots tasted more wholesome than the shop-bought variety. The freshly-picked leaves of Cavolo Nero were excellent: ‘rich, mellow and autumnal’ would be my attempt to describe the flavour.
The Amethyst cover of the sketchbook includes strands of banana fibre.
This A6 Pink Pig is my current sketchbook for when we’re off on day to day errands, so it starts, on the basis that you’ve got to start somewhere, with a very quick sketch of a block of flats in Wakefield (below, left).
A6 is a perfect size for when you haven’t got the time to do anything more ambitious.
I had a little more time for panorama from the Shelley Garden Centre.
If I haven’t got a wider view I’ll draw a close up of a plant . . .
Chinese Taro
Chinese Taro (right).
I drew Chinese Taro at another garden centre, Carr Gate. Also known as Chinese ape, Buddha’s hand and hooded dwarf elephant ear, Alocasia cuccullata, I’m surprised to learn in Wikipedia that it’s a member of the Arum family. I would have guessed at a Ficus, a relative of the rubber plant.
If nothing else is available, I’ll draw a chair. I’ve drawn them hundreds of times but I still struggle with them.
I always find myself looking for the negative shapes between the legs as a way of checking proportions. This goes right back to my grammar school art teacher Reginald Preston, who in one of his art lessons challenged us to draw a teetering pile of school chairs.
On any appointment in Horbury I can usually find an interesting architectural detail if I’m looking out on the High Street or Queen Street. It will usually be a Victorian chimney pot but this buttress above the Spice Kitchen takeaway could be much older. Some buildings in Horbury date from medieval times but the original timber is usually hidden behind later stone or brick facing.
My hand: a go-to subject when nothing else is available.
This final page, so far, includes a weeping willow in the back garden of the Quaker Meeting House on Thornhill Street, Wakefield, drawn at last week’s Naturalists’ Society meeting.
I didn’t attempt to identify the succulent in the little pot on the table at Sainsbury’s. It’s plastic.
The man of the moment: I was delighted to get the chance to interview him for an article in this month’s Dalesman.
No, not Elon Musk, who addressed the Unite the Kingdom rally in Trafalgar Square via a video link yesterday, but Wakefield comic artist and New York Times bestselling author Darryl Cunningham, who has just launched his latest book Elon Musk, American Oligarch, described by Alan Moore as “an exceptional piece of work, right when we need it most.”
September’s Dalesman also includes my regular Wild Yorkshire nature diary which focuses on Addingford Cutting, a surprisingly well hidden local landmark.
I like to rest my hand on my sketchbook as I’m drawing, which I find awkward as I get near the edge of the page so, inspired by the Sketchboard Pro, which has a rebate that precisely fits my iPad Pro, I’ve made myself a board to snugly fit my A5 Pink Pig sketchbook, with a 4 inch surround, that I can use in either landscape or portrait format.
It’s built up from a corrugated cardboard, so it was useful having a guillotine to cut out the matching pieces. I left a rebate at either end of the slot to accommodate the spiral binding of the sketchbook. It’s not shown in this photo because I hadn’t realised until I tried it for size that I’d need one on the outer edge. I draw on both sides of the page, so I need to flip the sketchbook over to draw on the right-hand page.
I discovered that it was best to glue every layer, rather than rely on masking tape to hold it all together.
I had an offcut of foamboard that I used for the top layer.
Finally I covered the whole thing with the tail end of a roll of hessian wallpaper that I’d used back in the 1970s when making a noticeboard (later rejigged as a couple of hinged pairs of display boards for craft fairs).
Everything I used was recycled apart from a 250ml bottle of ArtStudio Matte Glue, £1.29 from The Range.
We’ve got an Ordnance Survey map centred on your house and I’ve always wanted to try creating a series of circular walks, so that if I drew them on the map they’d look like a bunch of balloons with our home base in the centre.
Wheat near Bullcliff North Wood.
We’re lucky in being able to set off in any direction and find walks, alongside the river or canal, through woods and across farmland.
Hollinhurst, Netherton
As part of my go-down-one-waist-size challenge I’ve been setting out on 7-mile circular walks on Thursday mornings when Barbara goes to a sewing group. I even managed ten miles on one morning but that was on exceptionally good paths alongside the canal and following a cycle path along a former railway.
Bullcliff Wood North, on a footpath that gets overgrown with bracken and brambles in summer.
When I’m walking with Barbara we manage a little over 2½ miles an hour, when I’m on my own, on decent paths, I can get to a little over 3 miles per hour, if I’m making the effort to get to a brisk walking pace (still able to talk in short sentences but not sing, no not even a short burst of I go to the Hills, from The Sound of Music).
But on some overgrown paths this summer I had to slow down as I negotiated brambles and nettles.
