THE
LONDON PLANE tree (right) is well suited to city life; it seems to
thrive even when it grows up directly from a pavement. The way it sheds its
bark in patches helps it slough off the grime of urban life, allowing it to
'breathe' through the new, cleaner bark beneath. It has spiky-looking fruits
about an inch in diameter that hang from slender threads and remind me of the
weapons that medieval knights whirled around their heads and whacked their
opponents with. As the fruits are packed with feathery seeds you're unlikely
to experience any injury if one should drop from the tree.
This one was growing in front of JJB Sports Dewsbury and I had time to draw
it while Barbara popped inside to buy a pair of trainers. 
The roof of a stone-built
Victorian villa in South Ossett was sketched while I waited for her to buy
our fish & chips for lunch at the Barracuda.
The
trilobite head (left), was a fossil that I started to draw at the
West Yorkshire Geology Trust launch on Saturday but I didn't have time to finish
it as we had so many people to talk to that day.