Remember Where You Are

bird calls cartoon

For my brother-in-law John’s big birthday plus one, a cartoon of our regular walk around Newmillerdam, which would be a quiet place if it wasn’t for all that birdsong and – on her My Yorkshire show last week – Jane McDonald singing Jessie Ware’s Remember Where You Are on the slope behind the Boathouse.

Nats AGM sketches

The Wakefield Naturalists’ Society had their first AGM since the pandemic on Monday but it was a case of blink and you’ll miss it, as the main event of the evening was Ron Marshall talking about Ardnamurchan, the Outer Hebrides and the Shetlands.

sketches at John's

These sketches were drawn with a Lamy nexx with a B – bold – nib. I’m getting towards the end of my bottle of De Atramentis, an ink which soon dries, allowing me to add watercolour.

Fentiman’s Gently Sparkling Elderflower

Marigold Seeds

Drawing marigold seed heads

We bought a pack of uni ball Signo gel pens, designed specifically for writing, so naturally I had to try one out for drawing these marigold seed heads.

marigold seed heads sketch
Published
Categorized as Drawing

A Parliament of Crows

We almost gave up on this morning’s walk at RSPB Fairburn Ings as the rain seemed to be setting in but as it was so quiet there we were able to get good views of two roe deer, grazing just 50 yards from the Roy Taylor trail. This was the best of my iPhone shots, on the others they were heads down, white rumps towards us.

The reeds festooning the trees are an indication of flood levels but this morning most of the paths had dried out.

Confession time: the Parliament of Crows is a collage of four photographs. There were more crows than shown here but I couldn’t get them all to pose together for their group photograph.

VisNews

Vis News cover

I’m delighted to have made it onto the cover of this month’s Vis News, the Visual Narratives Academy Newsletter.

Vis News spread

‘This issue we interview a fine British comics maker and illustrator,’ writes editor David Haden, ‘who cleverly combines digital methods with traditional looks. It’s a long and informative interview.’

Vis News

My comic strip experiment for this month’s Dalesman didn’t make it into print – editor Dan Clare and I decided that Dalesman readers would prefer a more traditional format for the nature diary! – so I’m delighted that Vis News has featured the strip and the process that I went through in creating it.

Vis News

Link

Visual Narratives Academy

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St Paul’s, Sheffield

St Paul's

When St Paul’s was built in 1721, it overlooked open countryside on the southern edge of Sheffield. As the city expanded its congregation swelled, amongst them my grandma and grandad’s family. Grandad was a church warden here.

Slum clearance resulted in a plummeting congregation and in 1937 the church closed. It stood next to the Town Hall, on what is now the Peace Gardens.

Published
Categorized as History

Taxi Rank

taxi rank

At first I thought that one of these top-hatted figure on the left was reaching into his inner coat pocket to pay his fare for a Hanson cab ride into town.

taxi rank

It’s a small detail in a photograph of the top end of Westgate, Wakefield, taken, I guess in late Victorian times.

cabman's shelter

They’re standing by the cabmen’s shelter. My thanks to Graham Cass for posting the photograph on the Wakefield Historical Appreciation Facebook page.

Drawn in Clip Studio Paint on my iPad Pro using the Real G-Pen, the Lasso Fill Tool and a bit of virtual Charcoal.

Book Heroes in Colour

book superheroes

Book Superheroes bursting into colour. Having familiarised myself with the storytelling suggestions in Stan Lee’s How to Draw Superheroes, I can now let these characters return to their secret hideout and get on with my other projects.

Ancient History

Ancient history school exercise book

In my grammar school days, Ancient History, with it’s epic battles and larger than life characters, always had more appeal for me than the serious, grown-up Social and Economic History from 1750-1865 that we were obliged to study for our O-level with its sober politicians and reformers and its Corn Laws, Factory Acts and Reform Bills.

Hannibal

I couldn’t remember the litany of dates, I still couldn’t tell you when the Metropolitan Commissioner for Sewers was appointed and despite my enthusiasm for history in general, it turned out to be the one subject that I failed.

Battle of Salamis

In Ossett we were surrounded by the tail end of the Industrial Revolution with plenty of textile mills, steam railways and coal mines with five miles of the school but there was no hands-on element to the course it was all classroom based and all taking place elsewhere than on our local patch, which actually had its own local luddites, reformers and innovators.

Horatio and the bridge

Unfortunately, to judge from the length of my school exercise book, we got just one term of Ancient History with our class teacher Miss Eaves. I’m still enthusiastic enough about the subject to have taken the University of Reading’s FutureLearn course on Ancient Rome twice, once before our visit there three years ago and, again, to recap after.

Battle of Marathon

Olive Tree

olive

Drawing this 125 year old olive tree reminded me of our holidays in Greece and Majorca and made me think that I’d like to go drawing there again.

olive

This one grows in a large planter in Crimple Garden Centre’s Bar + Kitchen overlooking the Crimple Valley just outside Harrogate.

Window drawn at Blacker Hall Farm Shop cafe the other day.

Crow and Newt

In the formal pond at Harlow Carr a carrion crow picks a newt from amongst water plants.

Hellebores on the Winter Walk and in the woodland.