Resolving to get more drawing done even if I’m not doing studio artwork. Life drawing the  ideal kick start.  Initial intentions to use loose sheets for making series of notes rather than a ‘finished picture’.

At the end of the LLeyn scratchy hedgehog’d gorse coloured with deep raspberry patches of bell heather that seems to come up through the gorse, maybe grazed off elsewhere by the sheep.
Ravens & choughs around most of the time. Ravens tilting and grunting. One flipping upside down at low level during a shower… seeming determined to get rain on its belly and only righting itself when virtually touching the gorse. The choughs in probably family groups with the youngsters looking darker billed and  weedier around the head. Much allopreening. Probing into sheep dunged tussocks, never seeing what it is they are digging after.
Stonechats everywhere, well grown young handsome, a rocky, dunnocky grey with apricot on chest. Barring and streaking reminiscent of a more lively alpine accentor.  Mainly watching the adult males, constantly on the go, bobbing sawn off tails, straining into breeze from spiky perch.
Linnets are the other most obvious passerine, the male I sketched with red forehead and chest the colour you get when washing off blood from a wound, where it has got diluted.
Kestrels giving great opportunities for concentrated watching, shoulders like the olympic swimmers. Poised with tension riding from tips of spatula tail feathers, arcing up over back and then spreading across those deep shoulders, the head hanging from here… all focus. Feet as anchor below, clenching in readiness for plummet. Wind is caught under armpits, fanning out with a net of streaked overlapping feathers. The shadow of eyebrow and minimal moustache act as pointers.
On one dive a female (I think) picking up a bank vole and taking it to a fenceline perch. Then dropping down to the ground beneath a gorse tussock. I was cursing that I wouldn’t get to watch its feeding but then saw it drag the vole to another cached position and then fly off.
I went to have a look at the prey, wondering if there might be a ground nest. But it seems that she was just saving it for later, not that well hidden, so some other creature could easily have had a bonus meal.
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Finally painting on site. Clay based paints working well on the virgin white wall.

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Gaining momentum with my mural project… finally getting to the painting part. I’m making up stencils, first trialling them on hardboard screwed to  the wall to check that they would work OK when used vertically… now I’m using them on paper as colour proofs so that I can stick them up on site to see how they look in reality compared to my sketch up model (see earlier post). Then it will be the direct wall painting.

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I’ve put a cage round our bird feeders mainly to stop squirrels and pigeons gobbling the food… first time I’ve seen the sparrowhawk with prey since early spring and sat on top of the cage. By the time I spotted it, it had already eaten most of the head of the young sparrow before going on to pluck the body.

Very lucky with weather for the field course. Rain elsewhere, and both sides of the w/e but we mostly got sun, tempered with blustery wind. Attentions focussed  on the meadow at Colmers view and the big vista topped by Colmers hill. Insects seemed to have been clobbered by the weather, I only saw single meadow brown. There were decent numbers of grasshoppers but mostly staying near the ground and I think they were mainly the common ones, meadow and field.
The swallow nest under the gable end had five well grown,cream gaped babies. Magpies trying to get at them were seen off vigorously by the tireless adults.
Hobby, sparrowhawk and kestrel seen in passing. Down on the coast young peregrines were hassling the herring gulls.
Little bird song but I did think I heard a snatch of lesser whitethroat dry rattle from the garden.
The course was more art than nature I think. Using the (uncut) booklet approach again (as on the seabird cliffs), not an easy ride for the students but I was really pleased with the way they tackled it.

On Sunday we played a couple of rounds of David Measures ‘game’ which seems to explain so much about ways of filling sheets of paper (which is what we’re doing when sketching).
I didn’t get to taking photos or doing any sketching of my own, the tutoring fairly all consuming.

There are still spaces on a ‘loosen up field sketching course‘ this coming w/e 30th June/1st July based near Bridport,  Dorset. The course will largely be focussing on insects and flora along with suggested approaches to freeing up sketching.  Click on the link for more details.

Very lucky last day with fine weather for most of the day at St Abbs. Torrential downpours and flooding elsewhere. I concentrated on making more little booklets, revisiting this way of working… only time for this one larger drawing where I used stencils and masks to apply the crayon block… somehow freeing up the shapes, finding that the use of a paper shape used as one edge of a block with the other free crayon ‘scribbling’ gave quick rock forms in a slightly unpredictable way.

Below are the 2 little booklets…
First booklet-

Second booklet-

Again the sketches seem a thin thing compared to the reality… air full of sound, the endless kittiwake calls and gargling growl of the auks. The grassy tops of the slopes in best flower I’ve seen them with the lollipops of thrift, sizzling yellow of birdsfoot trefoil, tiny spring vetch and thyme. The colour carried on in the lichens and the rock faces themselves.
Always challenging to work alongside others and hold a path…
There were numerous heavy showers, maybe these helped refresh the colours and added to the sense of constant clamouring change.

One of those times when the sketches really don’t do any kind of justice to the experience… maybe more of a goad to trying to make something retrospectively. Just mind boggling to be in the midst of them….I knew that I wanted more concrete studies of their forms than I’ve done in the past. Need to write some notes as a memory jogger for another day.