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.
On the Bonnie Banks of Loch Bogle
Menagerie
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.
Laburnum Stump
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.
Chestnut Stump
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.
Old Ossett Wall
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
Ash roots grow over an old quarry face near the ice house at The Menagerie at Nostell.
Inky Workings Out
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.
The Boulevards of Harrogate
With summer temperatures and autumn colour, there’s a feeling of being in a continental city today in Harrogate. There are the now-redundant grand gates of Harlow Carr, which remind me of the walk from the top of the Spanish Steps to the Villa Medici in Rome and some solid stone-built arches near the station which reminded me of the ruins around the Forum but, as you can see from my photograph of the street guide with his tour group by the Pump Room, it was mainly Paris that came to mind. To add to the resemblance, there are several Paris-style Morris Column advertising pillars dotted around the town centre.
The giant rhubarb leaves of gunnera add a tropical feel to the Valley Gardens.
A male blackbird bathes enthusiastically in a small puddle in The Pinewoods as we walk down from Harlow Carr. On our return walk a black spaniel pauses to lap up water from the puddle.
Draw from the Shoulder
‘Always draw with movement from the elbow or shoulder, never from the wrist’ was the advice that I read in a book on illustrating graphic novels recently. So that’s where I’ve been going wrong all these years. I’ve always had shaky hands so drawing from the wrist rather than the fingers is usually about as free as I get. For this geranium I made a point of moving my whole arm, so it helped that we were sitting in a cafe table and I could steady my arm by resting it on the table.
I didn’t find it so easy when I was kneeling, clutching my little A6 Hahnemuhle Watercolour Book, beside one of the beds in the walled garden at Sewerby Hall, drawing a red admiral on what I think was Hylotelephium telephium, a relative of the sedums. I find it impossible to sit in a crosslegged yoga pose, so kneeling is the best I can do.
Hoverflies were also attracted to the flowers and basked in the sun on the surrounding box edging.
Apostle Spoon
Reading up on comic strips and graphic novels makes me more aware of the stylisation that we’re familiar with in everyday life. Looking closely at this apostle teaspoon, part of the mismatched cutlery and crockery at Hilary’s in Cawthorne, I could see that someone had designed him with the sort of stylish simplification that you’d put into designing a character in a manga or comic strip story. He could appear as the ‘wise old man’ mentor for some hero, like Alec Guinness’s Obi-Wan Canobi in Star Wars.
‘You have much to learn, Grasshopper!’ would be a suitable aphorism for the Apostle-spoon character if he was admonishing me for my inability to adopt the lotus position, but it was actually Master Po’s line to David Carridine’s trainee monk in the 1970s television series, Kung Fu.
My mum had some teaspoons with Egyptian characters on them and I hope that I managed to keep one when we cleared her house. Now I’m thinking could they have come back with my dad from Egypt after the war. I don’t ever remember asking my mum about the story behind them.
Autumn Migration
Latest card, for Alistair, who we’re hoping to meet up with at the London Wetlands Centre sometime soon. Of failing that Beckton Sewage Works is a bit of a biodiversity hotspot these day.