Turkey Oak

Richard Bell's Wild West Yorkshire Nature Diary, Friday, 30th July 2010

turkey oak'I'VE NEVER seen anyone sit here drawing,' said one of the nurses on the afternoon shift. To me, hospital seems the ideal place to practice drawing – assuming that you're well enough of course – as you've got large stretches of uninterrupted time. There don't seem to be as many televisions on the wards as there used to be and the single set at the end of the ward wasn't on, so there isn't that distraction.

As, for a change, we're here for the afternoon visiting, we'd parked in a quieter part of the grounds and as we walked under a Turkey oak I picked up this fallen twig to draw. This drawing was made with an ArtPen that I fill with brown Noodler's ink, which is waterproof when dry. I had time to add a watercolour wash before the 90 minutes visiting time came to an end.

For the first time, we took Barbara's mum on a short walk to the end of the ward and back. Hopefully she will be discharged on Tuesday or Wednesday.