Tag: sketch

Under The Skin: The Beauty of Bones

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I am fascinated by bones. Over at Beautiful Beasts this coming week I shall be drawing some bones, bits of those fabulous structures which support most of the beasts that Sue and I will be drawing and painting.

A couple of weeks ago Chris and I went to the Hunterian Museum in London. Located in the Royal College of Surgeons building it is an awe inspiring collection of lots of things in jars, bits of bones of people and things.. good and bad. There are teeth, surgical instruments and accounts of the history of surgery and more, more, more. It is completely fascinating.

“The Hunterian Museum houses one of the oldest collections of anatomical, pathological and zoological specimens in the UK and is based on the items assembled by John Hunter, surgeon and anatomist (1728-1793). The collection comprises more than 3,500 anatomical and pathological preparations, fossils, paintings and drawings and also includes specimens donated by Edward Jenner and Sir Joseph Banks.”
from Time Out’s description

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I am desperate to go back with my sketchbook and would love to just move in for a week or so. There are many things to wonder at but some things I particularly liked were the comparative skulls showing different teeth, the set of teeth bound together with gold, the surgical instruments and the dodo skeleton.

An Incomplete Dodo I was particularly interested in this because it is incomplete, bits of bones held together with wire. It is the incompleteness of it that appeals to me. You may not take photos in the museum and there was no time for drawing on this trip but it was on my mind all day, so made this quick memory sketch on the train on the way home.

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There are a few views of it in the Hunterian archives… more sketches from those.

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“Raphus cucullatus
Object Type
Mounted dry bone An imperfect mounted skeleton of a dodo (Raphus cucullatus). The bones are from several individuals. This mounted skeleton of a dodo is a composite from several individuals. The bones were from a large collection excavated at La Mare aux Songes in Mauritius in 1865. The first hundred or so of these bones were shipped to Richard Owen and from these he published his monograph on the osteology of the dodo in 1869. Further collections of bones were sent to England and were sold by auction. The College Conservator, William Henry Flower, purchased a series of bones for £10 from which he was able to construct this partial articulated skeleton for display.” Description from the Hunterian Catalogue

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Pencil sketches: A5 Sketchbook

The whole story of the poor Dodo is fascinating. In the autumn we went to the Natural History Museum at Tring.
They have two, a bit plumper :).
Here is my photo.

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There are lots of bones there too…another wonderful place for sketching.
I will be returning to the Hunterian and hopefully to Tring very soon.

The Watchers

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The oldest parts of the small Church of All Saints here probably date back to the Thirteenth Century, the earliest stone work in the Nave from about 1220 AD. Although it has been added to and restored it is generally a plain and simple place, but here and there are a few delightful figurative carvings, mostly headstops at the ends of the hood moulds which arch over the exterior windows and doors.

Since we first moved here I have been completely fascinated by these curious heads which have been staring out over the village for centuries. I think there are about 10 of them, some so weathered that their features are almost non-existent.
Every time I walk through the churchyard I say hello. I am not sure of the dates of them but some of them would certainly date back to the earliest stone building.

Fridays Sketches:

Carved headstops from the exterior of Grafham Church, roughly sketched in the cold churchyard with some added tones back at home.

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Six carved heads

It’s an odd thing but I feel I will have to do these again and much more accurately. The human heads will, I am sure, have been carved with a person in mind and somehow I owe it to them and their long, cold, vigil to get it right.

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One of the two creatures on the bell tower window.

What have these quiet watchers seen? Love, life, birth, death, happiness, sadness, famine, feast, sickness, health, wealth and poverty. They have survived storms and droughts and the mixed fortunes of this small village. I wonder who carved them and who else they have conversed with over the years. I am extremely fond of them.

I spent a day, in 2012, drawing in and around the church, see Another Sketchbook Day. Reading it again I see I was as curious then about what the watchers had seen.  How could you not be?

The Thing

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Sketch Week: Day 4

I try to walk most days and have only missed two since Christmas. Yesterday it was dull with misty drizzle. The sweet woodsmoke from the houses lay heavy in the lanes. In these dark afternoons the woods smell warm, peaty and mossy. It is somehow comforting.  Colours are subdued and monochrome, so the old white spiral tree protectors shine out.
They are mostly split now as the trees have expanded.  Some blow about in the undergrowth or like this one have been assimilated into the tree structure. In this case two trunks have grown very close together trapping the protector as it split. I have a few pieces of these curled shapes, they are lovely to draw.
A trick of perspective gave this one a wan face, a poor trapped thing, its grasping arms never again to meet, as the tree relentlessly expands.

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A5 sketchbook

Pony sketches

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Sketch week: Day 3.

A couple of sketches today to celebrate the Chinese Year of the Horse This black and white pony grazes in a field down the lane. It is the same field that had the lost gloves on the posts. There is only one glove now and I think possibly the other one is inside the pony. It would have been tempting to nibble at the waving fingers.

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Shetland Pony sketches It is very black and white with a sprinkling of mud too. In the half light of late afternoon it is almost lost in the far hedge.

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Pony at Dusk A5 sketchbook  And a pen and ink sketch from the initial drawing

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Happy Year of the Horse to you all…

Sketch Week: Bouncing Jack Russells

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Sketch week: Tuesday’s sketch

There is a lot of dog walking here and in this cold weather dogs need coats. This man and his two little terriers were walking in front of me yesterday. I meet them quite often. I might draw them again and add a bit of colour as they both have red tartan coats.
We had two bright and sparky little Jack Russells in our family, so the way they move is familiar to me, especially that unmistakable terrier bounce. Sometimes they seem to have all four feet off the ground.

Ours used to race about on three legs. There never seemed to be enough time in their busy lives to get that fourth paw on the ground.

Pencil sketch in the A5 sketchbook …

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Here they are enlarged a bit…

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Fracking, Fires & Burning Tyres: Project 2104

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A day in the life of a drawing.. or two


Today is my day to contribute  to Project Two Thousand and Fourteen. It’s a great visual online project set up by Nicola Fitzsimmons. Each day a different artist makes a piece of work in response to a news item. It’s a tight schedule which I always rather like. The work to date is great, very varied and fascinating.

See all the images at http://twothousandandfourteen.com/ I started early listening to the news with my sketchbook by my side. There have been so many dreary things on this week but I was struck by all the mentions of fires from all over the world. A pile of tyres in the UK whose smoke could be seen from space, wild fires in Australia and California. Then there was the fracking debate, a further report about gastric band surgery to cure our ever growing obesity problems… Hmmm. I wondered about the Earth, trying to rid itself of the burdens of pollution and an increasingly heavy population.

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By about 11am I had got this far.. Earth blowing smoke rings, thinking about the burning tyres and the weight. Michelin man can stand for both 🙂 By 2 pm  I had two images. One more or less monochrome and one colour

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I like both but must decide by 5.30… Then at 2.30 I started thinking about the NSA and the collection of data etc. so sketched these American Eagle claws loosening their grip on the net. But on reflection we don’t think that Obama’s reforms will really address the main concerns that such overarching and deep surveillance brings, particularly to non US citizens…so there would have to be question mark against this image. I had hoped to make a print of this but just ran out of time. However I do have other plans for this image.

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It was a really interesting project to do and I may do some more, just for my own pleasure. It’s good brain work, forcing you to consider images that you perhaps would not normally tackle, and the deadline is great. And I went for the monochrome one eventually… 🙂

Wild Weather and A Blog Make Over

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It’s been wild here, wet and windy. On Friday, in the darkening late afternoon I slipped and slid my way up to the track behind the reservoir. To the west the sky was smouldering with remnants of the sun. I had cleaned out the fire earlier that morning and was struck by how brilliantly the dying embers glowed amongst the black ash. This sky was the same.

Afternoon Sky over the Reservoir Jan 3rd

The wind was tremendous and deafening. Rooks and crows hung motionless, facing into the wind then were tossed away and intermittent blasts of icy rain splattered my cold cheeks.
I thought I should turn back lest I get blown away, shredded by flailing thorny brambles, snatched up by dark forces or just sucked into some slippery and bottomless clay bog. But this type of weather has its own seductive beauty. It is exhilarating and elemental and dangerous. It makes you imagine that you too are wild and free. I am getting back to sketching and carry a small sketchbook in my pocket, so in the shelter of the wood I made these quick sketch notes.

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Dark clouds rolling away over to the horizon. The bare stems of cow parsley are light against the dark land.

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Wind tossed birds.

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Choppy waters with bouncing ducks.

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Swampy inland pools with ducks, just like the mangroves in FLA.
A5 sketchbook, Pilot Vpoint and a waterbrush.


Let in the light
After 6 years of patching up, adding on and dabbling with HTML it was time to shake up Pencil and Leaf to go hand in hand with (hopefully) a new website. I had looked at the blog recently and thought this is all way too cosy.

So it is a little different now, and what a relief. It’s like cutting your hair or pruning an old shrub, letting in the air, the light and space for new development. I could not part with the Lizard so it was just a redraw and redesign. However I am no web designer so it’s an excruciatingly slow process and still in progress. The website, simple though it is, will be some time yet.

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But I like having the different blogs and sites… They are like starting new and exciting sketchbooks and are far more organised then my hellish piles of notes and sketches.

“you could draw us – the small dragon – on your church spire …”

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Yes I could…with pleasure. This comment was left on my blog after my last post: Puppets and Dragons. I wrote:

“It makes you wonder about the “real sightings” of dragons.
On this black windy night we have just been for a walk. Fast dark clouds race across the face of the moon, twisted branches of bare trees flicker in the intermittent light. It’s easy to stumble, to lose your way, to misinterpret the wind shearing through the branches for something else.  In a flash of moonlight did I see a small dragon twisting itself around the spire of our village church?…Who knows.”

Diana commented:

“you could draw us – the small dragon – on your church spire….”

I am not one to shrink from a challenge. This is for you Diana, my faithful blog reader!

Initial thumbnails….

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The pencil sketch

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The ink sketch.

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Ahh black and white heaven. There is nothing this girl likes better than getting out the black ink and the old dip pen Dragon on the Spire of All Saints Grafham …. almost done…

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I was just going to post this when I realised the small dragon seemed to be looking for something. But there is nothing there. To land on an unknown church spire on a dark winter night seemed a lonely prospect, so I added a welcoming figure.

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That’s better.

A Small Dragon seen on the the spire of All Saints Grafham Cambs.
Recorded faithfully by Val Littlewood on the 15th Dec 2013

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Happy Solstice to you all….

Broken Bottle

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Number Three of my Lost and Found Treasures.

I tend to pick things up from my walks round the reservoir, as I am sure many people do. Together they form a particular idea of what I see and what interests me. Other’s would choose different things.
The shore line of a reservoir is not quite as exciting as the sea shore so perhaps we reservoir dwellers have to regard ordinary things as extraordinary.

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The muddy broken bottle and the sketches.

This is a very ordinary bottle but still capable of throwing some great shapes!
See other still lifes at #stilldecember on Twitter.

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Found Treasure 3:  Broken Bottle

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Small Gouache Sketch 3 x 2 inches

Small Dragon

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This month is #stilldecember (still life) for the Twitter group of artists. So I am taking the opportunity to make some more sketches based on some of my lost, and some, found, treasures. This small ceramic dragon was a companion to Pig in Jacket and both pigs and dragons are going to feature in a future project so they fit in well with general plans.

Lost and Found Treasure 2:  The Small Dragon

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……..with a little added fire and yes, print to come …