Drawing in Green Pastures

Richard Bell’s Wild West Yorkshire nature diary,  Wednesday,  15th July 2009

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“I HOPE HEAVEN is like this!” enthuses one of my students on my first Drawing on Reserves workshop. On a day like today this gritstone-walled pasture overlooking a wooded valley at Stocksmoor near Huddersfield is a nature drawing journaler’s paradise.

We start with a few warm-up sketches. I give us 5 minutes for each subject - a capstone from the gritstone wall, a foxglove, a tree and a cloud - interspersed with a five minute session of writing down the sounds around us. (I added the colour to my five minute sketches later).

After a mid-morning break, when I briefly show them the drawings I’ve been doing recently, they tackle a more detailed drawing and after lunch the emphasis is on colour.

Thank you to Simon Pedley of Kirklees Countryside Service for organising the event and for taking these photographs of the workshop. The students enjoyed the day so there’s a possibility of a second workshop - perhaps this time on an allotment, the kind of subject matter I explored in my garden wildlife sketchbook Rough Patch. Hope we’ll be as lucky with the weather!

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Adding colour

Link: Drawing on Reserves, Rough Patch