Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
For my werewolves project I need one or two French peasants who claim to have encountered a loup garou, so I’ve taken a look at Courbet’s Peasants from Flagey.
For the werewolf itself, I thought that the lean look of this wolf sculpture from Chatsworth might be the way to go.
Rumours soon spread that ‘The PhantTOM Topiarist’, a.k.a. ‘The Latin Banksy’ was one of the masters at the local Academy.
Happy birthday to Richard.
When we visited Chatsworth on Thursday, it was the first time that I’d set foot in the House since I was seven years old. I remember an exhibit of old documents in a glass case which I think was in a corner opposite the main stairs in The Painted Hall. My mum explained these were the calculations made by the ‘first man to work out how weigh the Earth (because he couldn’t put it on a pair of scales, as he hadn’t one that was big enough)’.
On Thursday, I mentioned this to one of the guides and she suggested these might have been papers from the Chatsworth archives relating to Henry Cavendish, 1731-1810, who devised a way of measuring the force of gravity. I’d be about seven at the time of our visit, so this would have been connected with International Geophysical Year, 1957-58.
Birthday card for an outdoor enthusiast.
Hope he’ll feel just as enthusiastic bright and early the next morning.
Meanwhile, on the plains of the Serengeti, a biodiverse gathering for another recent birthday.
With a possible Victorian werewolves project coming up, I soon got into the delights of the gothic decadence of the Menagerie Gardens at Nostell at the weekend.
This secluded corner beyond the Middle Lake with its gravel path, old holm oak, worn stone lion and gothic zookeeper’s lodge always reminds me of the small park on the hill top, adjacent to the Pope’s Palace in Avignon.
Turkeytail, Trametes versicolor, grew on a felled birch trunk used as path edging on the track at the lower end of the lake.
This morning I drew what remains of the old laburnum behind the aviaries at the top end of the Fish Pond (now more likely to be referred to as the Duck Pond) at Thornes Park.
This sweet chestnut stump by the Lower Lake in the Pleasure Grounds at Nostell had been cut so that it created a Tolkeinesque throne.
Starting at the top of the drawing, I drew in pen then inked in the dark crevices using a Chinese brush but as I got onto the main trunk, I brushed in the darker areas first, then added the line.
There’s an old sandstone wall, a possibly reused beam, some handmade bricks and modern brick: this old outbuilding on Station Road, South Ossett, evidently has quite a history. Part of it was formerly a small stable, later a garage.
The old fashioned toilet roll holder still fixed to the modernish brick wall on the left is another clue.
Ash roots grow over an old quarry face near the ice house at The Menagerie at Nostell.
I’m experimenting with pen and ink and Chinese ink and brush, partly to free up my drawing but also because there’s a possibility of an inky project coming up over the next few months.
It involves Victorian werewolves, so a pen with a Victorian nib would be appropriate and Chinese ink is unpredictable enough, especially in my hands, to add some gothic texture and mystery to the drawings.
I can’t work out how a werewolf could wear a top hat but I don’t think a character like the sly fox Honest John in Disney’s Pinocchio is the way to go. I’ve been reading Isabel Greenberg’s Glass Town and The One Hundred Nights of Hero and I think something more in the realm of graphic illustration and European folk tales would suit the subject but I’ve also been reading up on Nick Park’s Wallace and Gromit so I’m not discounting something more homely.
