I’ve finally had time this weekend to settle down and hatch out the final version of my Chicken Superheroes commission.
To get a crisp black and white drawing, I drew on Bristol Board, on Daler Rowney, A3 250 gsm. I was going to use a dip pen but the first time that I loaded up the nib with Nan-King Indian Ink, it dropped ink blots on the paper, which luckily was my roughs notebook, not the final artwork.
I brought my various roughs together in Photoshop, added lettering in InDesign and printed out a full size version on two sheets of A4, then traced over this onto the Bristol Board, which despite the name is more like a thick cartridge paper. I made a few changes to poses and accessories along the way.
It’s a tradition for superheroes traditionally wear primary colours, partly because of the limitations of colour printing on the poor quality paper that was used for American comics in the 1940s and 50s. I needed yellow for the lettering and red for the wattles and the mask that I’d decided to give each chicken, so I searched for ‘red and yellow colour scheme’ on Google and came up with these swatches that add two purples/violets to the mix.
Happy birthday to Richard, who’s so lucky to have such interesting Metro stations around him in Paris. We have to make do with Finsbury Park, Mornington Crescent and Crouch End. But Harry Hill, the I’m Sorry, I haven’t a Clue team and Edgar Wright/Simon Pegg have made the most of those three, although Crouch End was a fictional tube station, featuring in Shaun of the Dead.
Boathouse Cafe, Newmillerdam, 11.20am, hazy sky alto-stratus, a few small spots of drizzle in a coolish breeze
A gulls gets the better of a crow, which stops to preen on the ridge tiles of the boathouse roof.
A juvenile cormorant – brown with a light breast – splashes its wings as it makes its way down the lake in what I presume is some kind of preening routine. It then takes off, skimming low over the water to join seven adult cormorants on their favourite resting place, the boughs of a half-submerged fallen tree.
Sketchbook page, attempting to draw black-headed gulls as the wheel past the Boathouse Cafe balcony at eye level.
This afternoon on the Baines centenary walk, from his birthplace in a terraced house on Shepstye Road to his grave in Horbury Cemetery, we called at the Stan Barstow Memorial Garden on Queen Street. Just over the wire fence at the far end there’s this little patch of overgrown garden, behind Mr Pimm’s dress shop at number 17.
Gordon Pullin, who had performed William’s songs at the recital, read a letter that William had written to his pianist friend Frederick Dawson from this garden.
17 Queen Street, Horbury, Nr. Wakefield.
8.8.21
Dear Mr. Dawson,
I like writing this in a gently swinging hammock – underneath a fruit burdened apple tree – a lurid hot blue sky above.
I almost wish that it was apple blossom time . . . . I would love this tree that I am under to shed its snow on me. but, I must be careful not to get a wallop from a frisky apple on my head . . . . the trees are loaded.
I am delightfully lazy! I can smell the ripening raspberries . . . . and the delicate scent in the shade is wonderful . . . .
I might add that a hammock is certainly no the most comfortable place to write in. There is a certain amount of adventure about it . . . . . I might roll over the side before I have finished . . . If I make a blot you will know what has happened.
There is a stolid Yorkshire fly . . . . that will persist in alighting on my nose. ’Tis a bother!
You will notice by the address given on the other side . . . . that I am at my birthplace.
I am staying with an aunt just on the fringe of the village – and everything is quite primitive. No gas – and only well water . . . I almost feel like growing a beard here!! I am the returned native . . . .
As a boy I used to think that the tower of Horbury Church must almost touch the sky. There it stood with its huge finger pointing upwards . . . .
On Shrove Tues:- pancake day as we called it . . . . we were told that at 12 o’clock pancakes were thrown over the steeple. I never saw it happen . . . . . but I thought what a wonderful thing it was to be able to perform such a feat.
But I am wandering from what I intend writing about. Augers have returned my pieces – they inform me that they must wait and see the results of my “4 Poems” . . . . .
These publishers put years on to me. I have sent them to Elkins – he wants to know my terms? (I have also written to Elikins to see if there is “anything in” its £75 a year royalty story) – If not – what would you say. A royalty on every copy or sell them outright? I must have them out.
Re. “Glancing Sunshine” – my friend Wood has written a verse on it:-
Lying in an emerald glade Lying in the scented shade – (Lying, dreaming, as one must) Glancing through the Fairy Dust – Seeing a rill floating down, Dancing in his airy gown: Singing silver music there Through the dreamy, dusty air.
Do you like it?
Or does this appeal to you more:-
“In the glancing beams that streamed through the trees the dust danced and was golden”.
This is a piece of Oscar Wilde-Baines.
Last Friday afternoon I journeyed to Harrogate, to see Dan Godfrey . . . . In the train I read a most entertaining book “Set down in Malice” by Gerald Cumberland. I was particularly entertained with one chapter called “Music in Berlin” -!
I can hear someone calling me to tea . . . . tea in this boiling sun! I must away – and get off my perch.
The old Gaskell School, drawn by William Baines, c. 1907? The original is in colour but I have only a black and white photograph, so in this case I’ve colourised it in Photoshop.
The old Gaskell School next to the gates of Carr Lodge Park, Horbury, was standing empty when William Baines made this drawing. I’m guessing that he’d be 8 or 9 years old, so this would have been 1907 or 1908.
The dedication stone is now built into the wall on New Street.
The initials of Daniel and Mary Gaskell are embedded in the apex of a double garage. Daniel was a Liberal MP for Wakefield, first elected in 1832.
Van and phone lines removed in Photoshop!
William was a pupil at the Wesleyan Day School on School Lane, off Horbury High Street.
Boys entrance to the Wesleyan School.
The boys’ and girls’ entrances have been blocked up and converted into windows, but you can still see the old stone step on the girls’ side, worn by years of use.
Tower of the Ebenezer Hall (Horbury Methodist Church Hall) Primitive Methodist Sunday School, 2022
We’re hoping for a good turn out for the William Baines Centenary concert on Sunday at the Methodist Church Hall in Horbury, but we probably won’t have the numbers who attended the stone-laying ceremony on Saturday, 23rd June, 1906, which included a procession starting from the Primitive Methodist Chapel at 2.30 p.m., tea at 4.30 p.m. (capitalised as ‘TEA’ in the advertisement in the Leeds Mercury, indicating this was one of the main attractions), followed by a ‘Great PUBLIC MEETING’ in the Chapel.
Who was there? Mr Jonas Eastwood laid a stone on behalf of the Sunday School.
We’re lucky to still have the building and that it has been so successfully restored recently in connection with the rebuilding of the Wesleyan Methodist Church. The Primitive Methodist Chapel is long gone, but I’m not complaining as a Chinese Takeway and Bistro 42 now occupy the site. Bistro 42 the one place that you can still get a coffee between Horbury’s cafes closing and the pubs opening.
Entrance to the Ebenezer Hall at it is today, with the new Wesleyan Chapel on the left and the 1906 Sunday School on the right.
William Baines’ father, George William Baines, opened a music shop at what is now 37 High Street, Horbury, and the family lived here for a while. As you can see it’s just across the road from the grounds of the Wesleyan Chapel (I took this from the chapel car park) and what is now the 42 Bistro Bar, the former site of the Primitive Methodist Chapel, where George William was the organist.
I’ve been colourising old black and white photographs so I’ve gone the opposite way with these photographs taken on my iPhone on Monday. Perspective straightened up in Adobe Lightroom.
