Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
For the still life module from my photography course I’ve taken my sketchbook as the ‘hero’ object with pen and watercolour box as secondary props.
My wallet was the first thing that I had to hand, so I set up my desktop ‘studio’ – a curved sheet of watercolour for ‘infinity curve’ background.
Also making an appearance, centre stage, my 1950 Bedford delivery van Dinky Toy.
The light was fading when we arrived at the hospice so this evening it was still life rather than landscape in my pocket sketchbook.
Treacle tins, and a Jackson’s of Piccadilly tin, again drawn with a Lamy Safari and coloured in Clip Studio Paint.
Drawn at Diana’s this afternoon, sadly P.C. the black cat is no longer with us, as I usually drew him when we visited.
Don’t get me wrong, I like slow drawing. I love to follow a contour at the speed that an ant would trundle along it. I find cross-hatching, bracelet shading and stippling mindlessly absorbing – or should that be mindfully?
But, as I’ve recently been taking a close look at the work of Quentin Blake, I can also see that it can be liberating to have a change of pace and to lighten up a bit, so each of these little details was completed in a minute or so. No shading, just outline.
As we reach a milestone on what we hope might be a steady return to some kind of normality, I should explain that I’m drawing these on location only because we’re in my brother-in-law John’s support bubble, on our regular socially-distanced visit. Monday morning walking around Illingworth Park with John is the social highlight of our week.