Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
I’ve been scanning my Wakefield Market sketchbook for a fanzine-style publication and came across these fountain pen self-portraits.
I was trying to improve drawing figures and I set out several times a week in late autumn 1981 to draw on markets, in cafes and even on the bus there and back.
In some of the sketches of Barbara from that time she’s busy knitting but I’m not sure if this Aran sweater is one of hers or one my sister knitted for me.
If portraits were postcard size, you’d be able to fit the shortlist of the BP Portrait Award into Horbury’s telephone box art gallery. This self portrait, from forty years ago, is from one of the ‘Bushey’ 7 x 4½ inch landscape sketchbooks that I used in the late 1970s, as are all but one of the fourteen sketches in this post.
The red pullover was knitted for me by my old friend John Blackburn’s mum, Barbara. Mrs Blackburn was a thrifty knitter and, when you’d grown out of a jumper, she could unravel the wool and use it again. In this way, a batch of wool could be recycled through several generations of jumpers.
In the background, you can see my home-made bookshelves in the alcove. When I drew the portrait, I sat at my work bench on a utility Windsor kitchen chair, which is why I look as if I’m leaning on a gate.
