Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
View from the first floor Barbara Hepworth sculpture gallery looking down on the weir on the River Calder. Drawn in Procreate, using Román García Mora’s set of brushes from the Domestika course, Naturalist Animal Illustration with Procreate.
Drawing on an iPad is ideal when you’re visiting the Hepworth as wet media aren’t allowed. I wanted to put into practice the tips that I’d picked up at the Procreate session at the Apple Store yesterday so I took a photograph as my starting point, not only as a guide to drawing as but also in order to extract a palette of autumnal colours from it.
The ragged shapes of willows didn’t give me much form to simplify so when I stopped for coffee I started again with a line drawing of the willow that I looked out at from the corner table by the window.
A heron stood motionless at the foot of the weir but didn’t seem to be having much luck in the middle of the foaming torrent. It evidently had an amazingly efficient heat exchange system to be able to tolerate the rush of water around its feet but it did eventually pause to lift its legs from the torrent and to briefly preen through its feathers.
An exhibit at the Hepworth Wakefield shows the method Barbara Hepworth used to cast a small bronze sculpture.
I could draw vice, mallet and hammer at home but I’m taking the opportunity to practice using my iPad Pro on location so the well-worn tools in the display here are suitably familiar subjects to get me started.
I’m sticking with Clip Studio Paint, drawing with the ‘Textured Pen’ for an occasionally blotchy varied line. The colouring is all from the ‘Lasso Fill’ tool. The possibilities for different pens, brushes and textures in Clip Studio are endless but I want to keep things simple to get into the process of drawing on location.
This is the first time that I’ve used the Sketchboard Pro iPad drawing board on location and I find that it works well. Usefully, the gallery has a supply of comfortable folding stools and the spaces are so light and airy that you can set up without getting in anyone’s way. Well except the people who particularly wanted a close-up view of stage 4 of Barbara Hepworth’s bronze casting process.
The hammer was my first drawing and you can see that I got off to a shaky start pre-coffee break (I can highly recommend the Hepworth blackberry and apple flapjack and sitting at a table by the window looking out at a foaming weir and autumnal willows on a mid-river island makes a suitably relaxing break from drawing). But the great thing about iPad drawing is that you can correct mistakes without scratching away at the paper or touching them out with white gouache.
When I was drawing the bronze casting process I discovered that I’d run out of room on the right-hand side of my virtual canvas. I simply selected the whole drawing and moved it slightly to the left.
THE RHUBARB FESTIVAL at the weekend created a great deal of interest and they sold out of my walks book in town and at the Hepworth so we’re here delivering more.
It’s so tempting when we’re calling here to stop for lunch. The tables looking out over the river and Chantry Chapel so we make for the other window where I sketch the old waterside mills.
SOMEWHERE DEEP in the vaults of the new Hepworth Gallery by the river in Wakefield, in the reserve collections, there’s one of my paintings; a 6ft 6 x 4ft acrylic on canvas of Waterton’s World, along with a sketchbook of the working drawings that I made for it. These were of South American birds collected by the naturalist Charles Waterton between 1812 and 1824. The sketchbook is handmade; a large-format section-sewn hardback filled with Saunders hot-pressed paper. It proved too cumbersome for everyday use and I only ever filled a quarter of the pages. I must pop in to the Hepworth and draw something special in it some day!
My painting has yet to make it into the public galleries but this cuddly bear and the bear tile, the work of our talented neighbour Alice, aged 6, have been exhibited at the Hepworth as part of a show of work by local children. An artist came into her school to work with them.
Alice tells us that her favourite modelling clay creation is this cheerful hedghog (right) but she explains that as it was made more recently it wasn’t included in the show.
Finding a battered butterfly in the garden, she used her watercolours for this large painting which she kindly presented to us.