Tag: Wakefield

Kelly, Banger, Mizzy and Guy

market sketch, fruit stalls and penny for the guy boys
Fruit and veg stalls and Penny-for-the-Guy boys, Monday, 26 October, 1981 (which I’m guessing must have been half-term week for local schools).

My 1981 Wakefield Market acrylic on canvas painting makes a rare appearance at Wednesday’s Wakefield ArtWalk at the Gissing House, Thompson’s Yard, at the top of Westgate, along with some of the sketches I made on location.

sketchbook

I’d taken a new A5 hardback sketchbook and was drawing in fountain pen so I hoped that no-one would notice me scribbling away as I sat on the low wall in front of the Old Queen Elizabeth Gallery and started on the first page sketching the backs of the fruit and veg stalls. No such luck.

“Penny for the Guy, Mister?”

Grudgingly I agreed to make a small contribution to their firework fund on condition that they’d keep still for a few minutes while I drew them. The whole point of my market sketches was to get practice drawing a variety of figures.

I’m sure that poor old Guy didn’t last long but I wonder what creative entrepreneurs Kelly, Banger and Mizzy are up to now. Would be great to meet up with them again at the ArtWalk.

I guess that they might be about 50 years old by now.

Wakefield Market

I’m hoping that this acrylic on canvas, 5ft x 2ft painting of Wakefield Market might soon get a second showing as it was last exhibited in 1982.

market trader

I think this is my favourite corner of the painting. I can reveal that Barbara played the role of ‘old lady in striped coat’. I’d drawn a figure on location and took a Polaroid of Barbara in as near to the striped coat and dotted headscarf as I could find.

market stall

The painting is unfinished: that case should contain a random selection of 1970s/80s ladies’ shoes! I’d sketched a children’s tricycle on one of the stalls and was able to borrow a similar one from the Ebenezer Hall play group in Horbury to paint.

market

My ambition was to make it into a triptych, a wrap-around experience like the market itself, which was a bit of a maze in those days.

‘Cockney Mick’

fruit and veg stall

‘Cockney Mick’ Lawton had his fruit and veg stall at the entrance to the covered meat market. He spotted me drawing and liked the drawing, so I did a him a photocopy of it. In return he got one of his assistants to fill a small paper sack with every kind of fruit from the stall. He was going to send her around with another bag for a selection of veg too, but I told him it would take me a week to finish the fruit.

Meet the Guys

At that time the first row of stalls nearest the old Cathedral School were all fruit and veg. I sat on the wall in front of the school and thought I’d be able to work unseen. No such luck:

“Penny for the Guy, Mister?”

I made a deal, I’d give them a very small amount if they’d sit for me to draw them.

I’m guessing that Kelly, Banger and Mizzy are now successful entrepeneurs.

Wakefield on Screen

wakefield movies

The only one of these television dramas and movies that I spotted filming on location in Wakefield was Alan Plater’s ‘The Biederbecke Affair’ (1985) in a sequence where James Bolan and Barbara Flyn’s characters were driving their battered yellow Bedford van round and round County Hall.

Happy birthday last week to Sue.

Secret Walls

George Street, Wakefield: Wall-rue and Maidenhair Spleenwort on a brick wall which probably dates back to the days of the cattle market, and a mossy pool on the roots of an old flowering cherry. The ‘well kept secret’ herbs and spices are served at Kentucky Fried Chicken, Westgate Retail Park.

The View from the Car Park

Wakefield from the Ridings Centre car park

My favourite view from Wakefield’s Riding Centre multistorey?

  • To the south, to what Lawrence Butler called the ‘upturned pudding-basin’ of Sandal Castle motte?
  • To the south-west to the Emley Moor transmitter on the edge of the South Pennines?
  • Or looking back across the precinct towards the peregrine eyrie on the tower of Wakefield Cathedral?

Since the Hannah Starkey show at the Hepworth, the view that I always park facing is the one of the flats on Kirkgate.

In Starkey’s thoughtfully stage-managed take on this scene, she gives Wakefield an aura of Indie movie sophistication (which it has, especially on a morning like today’s). One of her characters leans on the parapet, like a split-hair-dyed Rapunzel, looking out over the cloud-capped towers of Wakefield.

Street Kitchen

street food stall

The fast food at the Falafel Street Kitchen was a tad too fast for me and this was as far as I was able to get in sketching the customers.

Nats meeting

Luckily the pace at the Nats’ AGM was a little more sedate. Even so, these days we get through the business side of the evening in a little over fifteen minutes.

The Gissing House

Gissing house

The George Gissing Centre, in Thompson’s Yard off the top of Westgate, opened its doors for yesterday’s Wakefield Art Walk. This was Victorian novelist George Gissing’s childhood home. His father, Thomas Gissing was a pharmacist who wrote Ferns and Fern Allies of Wakefield.

Wakefield authors display

There’s currently an exhibition of Wakefield authors at the centre in the form of a timeline, starting with ‘the Wakefield Master’, author of the town’s Medieval Mystery Plays and finishing up with Joanne Harris, Lisa Bradley and I, so I’m in good company.

Wakefield authors dispaly

Link

The Gissing Trust on the Wakefield Historical Society website

Books by Wakefield authors at the Gissing Centre

Taxi Rank

taxi rank

At first I thought that one of these top-hatted figure on the left was reaching into his inner coat pocket to pay his fare for a Hanson cab ride into town.

taxi rank

It’s a small detail in a photograph of the top end of Westgate, Wakefield, taken, I guess in late Victorian times.

cabman's shelter

They’re standing by the cabmen’s shelter. My thanks to Graham Cass for posting the photograph on the Wakefield Historical Appreciation Facebook page.

Drawn in Clip Studio Paint on my iPad Pro using the Real G-Pen, the Lasso Fill Tool and a bit of virtual Charcoal.

Plain Portraits

Liz White

After my woodcut experiment in Adobe Illustrator, l’ve gone for more of a lithographic effect for these portraits, simplifying the tones in my original pen and wash drawings into ragged-edged blocks. You don’t get the texture of the original watercolour wash but it’s implied in those irregular edges.

This is Liz White in character as Fiona Grayson in Chris Lang’s ITV crime drama Unforgotten, drawn from a photograph in the Radio Times in March.

George Stephenson

George Stephenson
George Stephenson

It can be disappointing if you’ve painted a subtle watercolour and the nuances are lost on the printed page. A reduced tonal range might make for a more successful printed image. I’ll have to try it.

George Stephenson was all set to have a walk-on part in my current Addingford show at the Redbox Gallery, Horbury, but he was upstaged by Stan Barstow’s Joby, so perhaps I can use him in a print publication, looking suitably robust in the Image Trace treatment that I’ve given him in Illustrator.

Hepworth

Barbara Hepworth
Barbara Hepworth

I’m considering printing the series I drew of Wakefield Women in History and the graphic feel would work well as I’m trying to keep the subject brisk and lively, rather than making it archival and authoritative, like an illustrated Dictionary of National Biography.

Dame Mary Bolles

Dame Mary Bolles

Another Wakefield Woman in History, Dame Mary Bolles, the formidable Stuart-era lady of Heath Old Hall, also lends herself to this treatment. It’s easy for me to go for too much detail in a historical costume but what I want in this series is to sum up remarkable lives in broad brushstrokes.