Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
More unusual visitors at our garden pond and although my cut-out characters now bear little resemblance to the Patrick Stewart and Richard Tolan as Joby and his dad in the Yorkshire Television version of Stan Barstow’s Joby, they have the folksy quality that I was after for my Redbox Gallery show.
They’ll be sitting on a riverbank, a folding screen of two A1 sheets of foamboard. Time to get out my largest brush, a varnish brush, to add the indigo blue of the Calder.
I’ve started on the main characters for my Redbox Gallery, with a cloth-capped Patrick Stewart as Joby’s father and Joby himself, played by Richard Tolan.
I’ve gridded up my A3 drawing, ready to transfer to A1-size foamboard.
My little rough yesterday was sketchy enough to suggest the figures but now I’ve started defining them more, I’m going to have to tidy things up a bit, hopefully without losing the liveliness of the rough.
And what’s this, down at our garden pond? These foamboard cut-out storks might seem too big for a phone box-sized gallery but I’ve checked that out with my little scale-model mock-up and they should fit in nicely. Being white, they should show up well in what can be a rather dimly-lit space.
This morning we took a look at a gardening display in the old telephone box at Horbury Bridge, which included a small selection of items – a tomato plant, a pair of gardening gloves and a trowel – to tell its story. It made me realise that the simpler and bolder my display for the Redbox Gallery, the better.
My main characters were always going to be Joby and his dad from Stan Barstow’s novel and I realise that including historical characters, such as railway and canal engineers, will overload the display.
Watching the closing scene of Yorkshire Television’s 1975 production of Joby on YouTube, I’ve found a perfect exchange of dialogue which will work as the keynote for my show. I’d been thinking of phrases to sum up Addingford such as ‘just ten minutes walk from this phone box’ and ‘Horbury’s unofficial nature park’, which would be fine but I don’t want too many text boxes. People often skip reading labels but dialogue is more compelling.
As we’re trying to get people to stop briefly and peer into the box, we need something eye-catching – like the pocket cartoon amongst the articles in a newspaper – to hook passers by.