Tag: Di Bosco

Coffee Shop Sketches

Scouring Mill, Horbury Bridge
The Old Scouring Mill, Horbury Bridge, from Di Bosco Coffee, Christmas Eve.

It’s such a pleasure to return to pen and watercolour after all the iPad drawing. However natural the feel of virtual pen, however nuanced the wash produced by virtual watercolour, they’ll never have quite the variety that is possible with real-world media. I can respond to the feel of the grain of the cartridge paper as I draw.

Besides, my iPad is A4 size and sometimes I only want to take a pocket-sized A5 sketchbook with me. This is my new Cremede Art, landscape A5 sketchbook, drawn with the B nib Lamy Safari pen and the most compact of my water brushes. But I’m fascinated by iPad drawing, so I’ll definitely continue with that.

sketching at Costa Coffee

Beat the Barrista

Barbara bought the coffees at Costa in Wakefield this morning, which gave me the challenge, as I waited at the table, of drawing the rather uninspiring view of Cineworld while she waited to be served. I added the colour after I’d eaten my chocolate tiffin. No-one ever claimed that drawing from cafe tables would be a good way to get back into shape after the excesses of Christmas. Fun though.

Cineworld, Wakefield
Cineworld, Wakefield. They’ll soon have competition; Reel Cinema have plans to open a five-screen cinema in the Ridings Centre in May.

The Old Scouring Mill, Horbury Bridge

After sorting and blending, the first stage in preparing raw wool is scouring: washing in hot water. The old scouring mill at Horbury Bridge is a reminder of the Victorian heyday of the West Riding woollen industry, when there were several large woollen mills at Horbury Bridge.

The mill closed long ago and is divided into units, some of them workshops with the one facing the road housing an antiques and second-hand furniture store.

Di Bosco coffee & champagne bar

I drew it from a table in the conservatory in Di Bosco, the coffee and champagne bar, which opened yesterday. Workers from the scouring mill must have drunk here often but at that time it would have been ale and porter, as this building was originally The Ship Inn, which dated back to at least the time that Sabine Baring Gould wrote Onward Christian Soldiers at Horbury Bridge. In 1865 he set up his mission headquarters in a terraced house, which still exists, midway between the Ship and the Horse & Jockey.

He certainly entertained decidedly un-Christian thoughts towards these two public houses, in particular the Horse & Jockey which, in his novel Through Fire and Flood, he has washed away in flash flood of epic proportions which cascades down the Calder Valley like a CGI sequence from  a disaster movie.

In reality it survived and it now has a good reputation for resident chef Michael Oldroyd’s traditional Yorkshire food and, sorry about this Sabine, the landlord’s traditional Yorkshire beers.

Link

Di Bosco coffee and champagne bar

Michael Oldroyd’s Nostalgic Kitchen at the Horse & Jockey