The Chessboard Fields

Sunday, 30th January 2005
Wild West Yorkshire nature diary

After taking yesterday off from scenery painting there's still some finishing off to do today.

What has held us up is the business of hanging the new backdrops with their roller blind fittings but by working late last Wednesday night David, our joiner, and his team have got us back on track.

While I was enjoying the preview in Halifax yesterday, Rita, who plays the Dormouse in this production of Alice, was busy marbling the columns in the Queen of Spades' palace (no, not Hearts, as I'd originally drawn it), distressing the frieze and painting candelabras.

We start by finishing off the Land of Chess, which we last worked on horizontally; it's quite a surprise to see it hanging in place. Rita paints the potted shrubs while I go up a ladder and extend the chessboard pattern to the distant mountains.

While that is drying we unroll the palace backdrop in front of it and paint the vaulted ceiling and the jail in which the red cards are incarcerated by the cheating Queen of Spades.

There's a pigsty to decorate too but that's it; now we're ready for opening night on Tuesday.

	Oh, 0.7! Somehow during the scenery painting session I've lost my favourite pen, the Staedtler Mars Professional - and I'd bought an 0.7 mm refill for it only yesterday! Usually I take an old fibre tip pen to the scenic sessions but I'd become so attached to the Staedtler that I picked it up without thinking this morning. For these drawings of miniature daffodils and a couple of Braeburn apples I've resorted to my original Staedtler, the one in the middle of the nib size range, the 0.35 mm. I also have the one with the finest nib, the 0.18 mm, but I haven't used that much at all.
I must replace that O.7 soon!

Richard Bell, richard@willowisland.co.uk