Figure of Three

Figure of Three locks stonework

I think that you can see that John Smeaton, engineer on this stretch of the Calder & Hebble Navigation, had previously worked on lighthouses. This 250 year-old stonework withstood the ravages of the Storm Ciara floods in February last year, but the spillway and the island were scoured away. A £3 million repair project took a year to complete, delayed by the coronavirus outbreak.

High security compound at the Figure of Three locks.
underpass

On our school cross country, my friend John and I used to jog – or more probably saunter – through this echoey underpass beneath the railway. As we were wearing our football kit we could imagine that it would be something like this in the tunnel at Wembley on Cup Final day. Not that we were keen on football: for me 90 minutes wandering along the school cross country route was preferable to running up and down the pitch. We knew all the short cuts, so we didn’t have to run all the way.

Healey Mills footbridge over the Calder

We cross the Calder here, at Healey Mills, but at that time there was a riveted steel footbridge, now replaced by this box girder bridge.

Healey Mills

Our cross country route took us down the hill behind the gasworks and through the hamlet of Healey Mills. At that time people lived in this small terrace at the entrance to the mill yard.

Former end-terrace house at Healey Mills.

We sometimes had a bit extra to our route because the school playing fields were another quarter of a mile from the school in South Ossett.

playing fields

Bird Ballet

bird sketches

“Are they keeping still for you?” asks a passing dog-walker.

“Whenever you draw a duck, if you start when it’s facing that way, it turns the other way.”

Down at the duck pond in Thornes Park and what I really need to draw are Canada geese and swans but there are none about so I draw these balletic gulls and preening ducks.

bird sketches

All the work that I’ve been doing on animated cartoons makes me more aware of character and movement in birds, particularly ducks, but I realise that black-headed gulls and town pigeons could equally well have a cartoon to themselves.

Common Darter

common darter

It’s cool and cloudy this morning, which gives me a chance to get steadily closer to this common darter, Sympetrum striolatum, with my iPhone when it lands at the side of the track at RSPB St Aidan’s.

Beech Backdrop

scene from cartoon

This morning at Newmillerdam I drew the fishing platform for the opening frame of my Ode to a Duck cartoon and photographed a beech tree for this background for the squirrel/wood pigeon duo. You can already sense the natural chemistry between them.

Beech roots
Beech roots backdrop

Wood Pigeon Screen Test

wood pigeon cartoons

For his waddle-on cameo in my Ode to a Duck cartoon, the wood pigeon is supposed to be empathic and concerned rather than ranting and irate, but, if you’re familiar with wood pigeons you’ll know that they have a limited repertoire.

wood pigeon roughs

The line work was drawn in Lamy fountain pen in my sketchbook. I’ve combined two of my sketches and coloured them in Photoshop. I kept testing the Photoshop PSD file in Adobe Character Animator, to make sure things were turning out more or less as intended.

I haven’t added the blink yet, as I did for the squirrel this morning, but this character is evidently the unblinking sort.

Next up, a foraging moorhen . . .

Wood pigeon mouth positions
Wood pigeon mouth movements – and yes, I know that they don’t really have teeth! – drawn same size as my original sketch.

Squirrel Screen Test

squirrel cartoons

My latest sketchbook-to-screen character is the beech mast-gathering squirrel, partially inspired by seeing enthusiastic gardener and seed-collector Carol Klein on last night’s Gardeners’ World. I’d love to get her to do the voice-over.

Fox Cam

Fox cam still

The last time we caught the fox on the trail cam was at 10.30, two nights ago, in the back garden.

sketches from last night's trail cam footage
Sketches from last night’s trail cam footage.

Last night it didn’t show but wood pigeon, magpie and Boris, a neighbour’s cat, triggered it between six and eight this morning.

fox scat and pigeon feathers

Apparently all the action was in our front garden. This morning a cluster of wood pigeon breast feathers and a pile of fox scats were all the evidence left by whatever drama took place under the rowan tree between dusk and dawn.