Richard Bell's nature sketchbook since 1998
Summer is over, it's turning cool, It's time to go back to the Woodland School . . . Owl seems to be sleeping, but I've a hunch, He's dreaming of Dormouse for his lunch. Just one missing, and that's the Mole, Whoa! Here he comes now, popping up from his hole!
A birthday card for Florence (she’s the one in the woolly hat).
In a total contrast to yesterday, Storm Francis has arrived this morning and is lashing fairly gently on the studio window, so I’m settling down to some homemade birthday cards. This, as usual, will be in in pen and watercolour but I like the pencil as it is. I wouldn’t normally start with a pencil rough but it probably saves time in the long run and gives me an opportunity to have second thoughts: for instance, I decided that I’d drawn the fox too large, so I’ve rubbed him out and he’s more in scale with the other characters.
My original plan was to go for woodland invertebrates but I felt that the hedgehog should be central (she was originally going to be the teacher in a school photograph) so I stuck with woodland mammals plus a sleepy tawny owl lurking on the back row. By the way, it really is sleeping, not casually looking down at that well-fed dormouse and thinking ‘that’s lunch sorted’.