Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
We set off at 8.30 or so and whisked down the M.1. to Linnie & Dave’s
Where we had lunch before going and putting my things in my room at Evelyn Gardens.
Then Shopping – Mother bought a bright Red Trouser Suit.
Trying the new Manga brushes, including the vector G pen in Adobe Fresco.
A rainy afternoon and I had an update from Fontself, so decided to give it another try. New features include an easy way to fill in outlines and to draw perfect vector shapes. I’ve gone for my usual wobbly style, although I did try out the method for drawing smooth shapes on the ‘C’.
On previous occasions I’d used Fontself to make fonts from alphabets I’d drawn on paper or in Adobe Illustrator. It’s a whole lot simpler drawing in the Fontself app on the iPad.
Look forward to experimenting with it a bit more, now that I’ve got into the way it works.
Beachcombing along the strandline at Druridge Bay, 16 September: barnacles, wartime concrete, bladder wrack, kelp, keel worm, lichen, limpet, lyme grass, septarian nodules and serrated wrack.
Happy birthday to batworker Heather last week.
Cod, Gadus morhua, washed up amongst the kelp from the strandline on Druridge Bay near Hauxley, Northumberland.
Sketches from Newmillerdam, Harrogate and Queen Street, Horbury, in my pocket-sized A6 landscape Seawhite Travel Journal. Lamy and TWSBI EcoT pens, De Atramentis ink (a mix of brown and black as both were running out).
Another sketchbook page from our short break in Northumberland and it’s another view from a table in a cafe overlooking a lagoon in a restored landscape, this time at the Lookout Café at the Hauxley Wildlife Discovery Centre at the northern end of Druridge Bay.
Red admiral and speckled wood butterflies rested on willow and bramble in the afternoon sun in a sheltered corner at the foot of the wooded slope below the Wildlife Discovery Centre.
We took a break at the RSPB Saltholme wetlands reserve on our way to, and back from, Northumberland last week. The panoramic windows of the first floor cafe look out over one of the lagoons, so we were watching dunlin, godwits and gadwall as we ate our lunch.
On the return journey the birding highlight was a pectoral sandpiper a migrant that was a long way off course as it headed south as it breeds in Arctic Canada.
To the south east Roseberry Topping makes a craggy a punctuation in the looming bulk of the North York Moors.
On our way north along the M1 near Garforth we glimpsed two roe deer standing facing each other in a large stubble field. As we drove by they clashed antlers (10.20 a.m., 15 September).
It got a bit neglected during the heatwave but now’s a good time to strim back the vegetation around the pond and trim the hawthorn hedges.
I had a near miss as I strimmed around the pond when I disturbed a large frog, but fortunately it hopped away unharmed. I’ve left a fringe of vegetation around the edges of the pond.