| Magpies at Morrisons Wednesday, 12th November 2003
As we came here Barbara glimpsed a brown bird perching on a bus shelter - she thinks it was a kestrel - unnoticed by the people queuing below. I'm sorry I missed that. While Barbara and her Mum wend their way around the aisles of Morrisons' supermarket, Flanshaw, Wakefield, I take the opportunity to make a quick watercolour sketch of trees (above), sitting with the car door open as it's a warm afternoon.
A Little Teapot
This little metal teapot hardly an inspiring object to draw - not such a pleasure as drawing the Daphne leaves, for instance - but any opportunity to practice drawing ellipses and three-dimensional shapes has got to be worth it. Even something as simple as getting
the relationship of one object to another can be more difficult
than you might think: I found it tricky to get the mug the right
size in relation to the teapot. Especially as I kept moving the
mug to drink more of the tea.
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Sparrows
hop about at the edge of the car park then disappear into the dense
cover of the shrub beds.
A
crow 'caws' over the rooftops. Magpies
are hustling about as usual, taking an interest in any opportunity
that might arise.
Black-headed
gulls swoop over the cars, their neat plumage reminding
me of days by the sea.
Starlings
seem most at home in this urban world: a couple of them strut and
dodge amongst the shoppers by the entrance to the supermarket while
another perches on the big 'm'
of a MacDonald's.
After
the fuzziness painting of those masses of bare branches and twigs
I'm ready to draw something with more definition; I sketch the leaves
of an evergreen shrub (which I think it might be Daphne)
as they swish in the breeze.
As
we wait for our lunch in the café I can't miss the opportunity
to sketch another everyday object; a small stainless steel teapot.
It's a tricky thing to draw, partly because that spout seems to
me to be out of proportion to the rest of the pot. Perhaps I'm picturing
it like the head of a bird, in which case the spout would be a bit
on the small side to be a beak.
As
I'm blotting the pen and ink drawing (above left) of the
teapot with my water brush to produce the wash of tone I realise
that I'm painting a distorted, simplified view of the café:
a fish-eye lens reflection of lights and windows and of me, greatly
expanded horizontally, as if seen in a fairground mirror.
