Penguin Dance

I’ve often seen great-crested grebes go through their head-shaking, ritualised preening display, but at last this morning at RSPB St Aidan’s, we got to see the presentation of beakfuls of water-weed and the penguin dance where the male and female rise from the water, breast to breast, paddling furiously and swaying heads. They appeared to drop the weed as they started this routine. They then returned to head-bobbing display.

We’ve yet to see the ‘ghostly penguin’ and the ‘cat display’ which apparently start off the whole routine.

Were-Wolf Walking

My first experiments for part of a longer animation celebrating Baring-Gould’s Centenary, using Procreate and the new animation program, Procreate Dreams.

Flame, Flood and Were-Wolves

Baring-Gould in Horbury

In 2024, the Baring-Gould Centenary year, we’re celebrating – in artwork and animation – his work inspired by the time he spent as a young curate in Horbury: the hymn ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, his folklore study ’The Book of Were-Wolves’ and his semi-autobiographical novel, set in a thinly disguised version of Horbury, ’Through Flood and Flame’. Cue thwarted love, dramatic disasters and the villainous Richard Grover, man-monkey and firebrand preacher.

Special thanks to local historian Keith Lister, author of ‘Half My Life’, the Story of Sabine Baring-Gould and Grace, my main reference for this Redbox Gallery show.

Characters from the novel

3D cut-outs of Annis, the Nightwatchman, Richard Grover the ‘Man-Monkey’ and our hero, Hugh Arkwright, should make a dramatic centrepiece for my Baring-Gould Centenary display.

I was hoping to squeeze in a few were-wolves too but Baring-Gould’s lively research into folklore but they’ll be stars of the short animation that I’m starting work on today.

Hugh Arkwright, ‘Through Flood . . .’

Hugh

Meet our hero, Hugh Arkwright of Arkwright’s Mill in Sabine Baring-Gould’s thinly disguised version of Horbury in his semi-autobiographical novel of 1868, Through Flood and Flame. I’ve gone for him encountering peril number one, the flood.

I based the action-hero pose on an Indiana Jones movie poster but as Indy is holding his trademark bullwhip and our hero Hugh was negotiating the flood walking along a garden wall clinging onto a clothes line to keep his balance, I’ve shown him in a later scene which involves a rescue by boat (although in that case Hugh is catching the lifeline rather than throwing it).

Hat, frock coat and necktie, along with the character himself, based on Timothée Chalamet’s version of Willy Wonka.

Annis Greenwell, Mill Worker

Annis

Despite the melodrama and the larger-than-life characters, Baring-Gould’s novel Through Flood and Flame was semi-autobiographical. Annis Greenwell was closely modelled on Grace Taylor, a young worker at Baines’s Mill, who – in real life – he met, fell in love with and, a few years later, in May 1868, married at St Peter’s, Horbury.

The Wizard of Ozzett

wizard

Have a magical Christmas . . .

family panto

This year we’re remembering Barbara’s brother John, who died last April, a newsagent of Ossett (hence the ‘Star’, ‘Sun’ and ‘Mirror’). He had a starring role in the Ellis family pantomime on New Year’s Eve 1986.

John was born on a snowy March day at Manygates Maternity Hospital in 1941. Just after he was born the air raid siren went so he spent his first night in the shelter. Not with his mum though: Betty had to stay in bed.

Also appearing in The Wizard of Ozzett: Joane (Tin Man), Susan (Dorothy), Andrew (Scarecrow) and Betty (Cowardly Lion). Karen was a suitably malevolent Wicked Witch of the West. She does a great cackle but in real life she’s really nice.

And no, that wasn’t me as Belinda the Good Fairy. That was my late brother-in-law Carl, who made his own tutu. The Wizard repaired Belinda’s wand with a Star.

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Categorized as Drawing