Iris

MY EXHIBITION at the local library gives me the chance to chat with some familiar faces, while I paint the irises I've bought at the greengrocers.

'I've known you since you were so high,' asserts one man. When he explains it was on Matty Marsden, the lane that skirts Storrs Hill, I immediately remember; my brother and I, aged seven and nine, and our two friends, asked if we could leave our trolley with him, this would be almost forty years ago. We left it on the stone flags of a low lean-to outhouse roof. The cottages are gone now.

My training and work have meant I've spent periods in London, and felt the pull of the highlands and islands, but, loathe it or ignore it, I feel I have my roots here in the Calder Valley.

Cherry blossom in a hedge alongside the ginnel (as local footpaths behind houses are called) by the Convent. The council estate cats are wary, but, with one every two gardens, they seem to have the territory all wrapped up.
By special request I give two local girls a few tips on drawing horses. To be honest Megan could teach me, her horse's head drawn from memory is extraordinary in its observation, particularly the way she models the shape of the mouth;

'I've decided I'm going to draw nothing but horses,' she tells me, 'unless I really have to draw something else..'

I show them how to think about the underlying skeleton when drawing an animal, and about the way a horse will confuse you while you're drawing because next time you look up it will have transferred the weight of its hindquarters to the other back leg, completely altering the angle of its rear end.

'People think that horses are innocent because they see them standing around in fields all day,' says Megan's Mum, 'but they've got characters of their own, they're mischievous, I think they spend the day planning the next trick they're going to play on you. They're working out how to get what they want by doing the least possible amount of work!'

Richard Bell,
wildlife illustrator
E-mail;'richard@daelnet.co.uk'