Greg Poole – Artist / Illustrator based in Bristol, UK

Really springy days now. I’m keeping a close watch on the small patch of grass on the allotment that I’m cultivating as a mini meadow. The yellow rattle popping up all over… leaves still minute… I like the feeling of improving my search image for these early basal leaves.  As yet the community up there is very limited and some of those basal leaves I’m still unsure about but if I keep watching and sketching they’ll reveal their identity.
Butterflies have been so scarce that the sighting of any individual really catches the eye. Today brimstone,  moving quickly through gardens. Peacocks sunning on bare soil and one feeding on dandelion. A single basking small tortoiseshell and comma.

Retrospective post from scarce field outing. Gale force winds out at local reservoir. Seems like the wind drove lots of arctic terns up the bristol channel… and some of them spilling onto the reservoir. At times good views of this large group (over 100) tacking over the choppy water.
Taking shelter later and sketching the laneside flora.

Sitting in the garden sketching to re-engage with field sketching equipment. A few bees visiting the pulmoria but not the usual frenzy of activity I’d expect at this time of year. Experimenting with oil pastels that move a bit faster than the wax crayons I had been using.

Hopeless at keeping up blog at the moment, or even doing much sketching. I have been gradually updating archives of past work (butterflies almost complete) and that deters me adding to the pile.  Until a week ago I was also relief printing but then lost confidence in it….
The scratchings here were of the common spotted orchids that have reappeared on the patch of grass on the allotment that I have started to try to cultivate as a mini meadow. Only 2 spikes as yet. Last autumn I scalped it and sowed yellow rattle. I’ve been up there searching for signs of germination without success until yesterday… and with the discovery of the orchid leaves I looked even closer and found the minute early leaves of what must be the rattle. Very late to get going, like most things after the arctic spring.

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These were the last woodcuts I was working on… enjoying direct cutting compositions based on last years watching of the kittiwakes at Dunbar and St Abbs. but then chickening out before attempting something larger.

Uploading something as a marker to remind me to do more… this sketch now a distant memory from the 17th. Trip to the somerset levels. Since then locked indoors relief printing. I’ll write up more tomorrow….

With more fine weather back out to local fields. Nowadays I try to start drawing as soon as anything holds my interest, usually the drawing then heightens the interest. Frequently other things come along once you’re sat drawing. Sense of taking the eyes for a walk. I started out with the crows & sheep again.

After heavy frost overnight I had full winter gear on in the morning, by mid afternoon it was more like summer on the sunny slopes. Very few flowers yet.. the odd celandine and only a single peacock butterfly.

Fieldfares being quite furtive in the woods…a few starlings and redwings in with them. Looked like they were flycatching some of the time, or just lazing in the ash branches. Maybe they’d already fed well in newly ploughed fields above and could afford to rest in the heat.

The highlight of the day was a strange viewing of a fox… first I saw one dashing across one of the sheep fields (I think it was the same young male as on the previous day)…. shortly afterwards 2 dogs came bounding around in the undergrowth on the slope below me…

No sooner had the dogs gone than I saw 2 roe deer a bit further along the slope. They look in very good condition glaring white rumps and slightly oily looking pelt that has a prussian blue sheen… (I’ve only ever seen that once before and doubted it afterwards but even in the last light it was there this time for sure).

The deer bounded over a fence and not far into the wood… I looked around for them with the telescope and instead of a deer the telescope was filled with a sleeping fox… a different animal to the running one… again in prime condition… unwilling to move it twitched ears and looked suspiciously in my direction but carried on dozing. Something special to share time with the animal laid out on the woodland floor…. quite different to seeing a fox on the allotments at home.

bl-001   fox   mendips   ink pen   A6 sketchbook  

After w/e away in South Devon not wanting to go back indoors so spending the day making sketches up at the gorge. Mainly trying to deal with the bigger space but birds still popping up.. some great views of a male kestrel hovering below, swooping on a buzzard in a tree down at the bottom and swallowing a shrew in a couple of mouthfuls.
A lot of the herbage had been cut back, not so good for picture making but probably necessary to stop things getting swamped. Hadn’t remembered how much polypody there is on the cliffs. Also seeing rustyback fern.. early leaves of salad burnet, rockrose, purple toadflax, lower down already a few wall flowers out.