Tag Archives: Charlottes

North America

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ON OUR walk around Langsett Reservoir on Monday we took a break at the ruined farm marked on the map as North America. Remote farms and fields were sometimes named after remote locations. Red Grouse were calling on the moor, joining each other on some crest amongst the heather and bilberry before hurtling off elsewhere.

Several flocks of thrushes, fieldfares we think, flew over, all heading west, up the valley of the Little Don.

These days we can’t get my mum to such isolated spots but at least Charlotte’s Ice Cream Parlour, where we headed for coffee and scones, overlooks a broad curve of the Calder Valley, the tops of the Pennines dissolving into the mist in the background. Not the ideal subject for pen and ink but I don’t pack my watercolours in my ‘urban’ art bag.

In this bag for errands around town I keep a variety of pen, most of which, I now realise, need refilling. As my favourite Lamy Safari needs refill I started drawing Tilly at the bookshop in ArtPen but then, when the ink ran out, switched to Pentel BrushPen.

Sketchy Intervals

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Mirfield from Charlotte’s ice cream parlour, Tuesday.

Old butcher’s shop, now a beauty salon, drawn from the opticians when we took my mum on Thursday.

I FEEL out of practice with drawing. I’ve spent my spare time this week learning a drawing program, Manga Studio EX4, but that isn’t the same as getting out and drawing for several hours. We’ve had a couple of mornings of appointments/coffee with my mum, which effectively breaks my rhythm especially as, partly as a result, I’m getting around to tracing one of the branches of our family tree.

I’m finding that addictively interesting, like a puzzle or a detective story.

Manga Studio

My attempt at the ‘Creating Your First Manga Page: A Quick-Start Guide’ in Doug Hills’ ‘Manga Studio for Dummies’.

As I enjoy drawing in a sketchbook, why should I go through the rather technical process of learning Manga Studio, a computer assisted drawing program?

  • It’s good to have a change occasionally and work in a different medium; I want to use it with my pen tablet, although you can simply scan in your line drawings
  • There’s a possibility that it could save me a lot of time on the structural side of drawing a comic strip

I had about 100 individual panels to draw for my Walks in Robin Hood’s Yorkshire so I’m looking forward to exploring the possibilities that the program offers to draw panels around each frame. As you can see, I haven’t quite got into that; Doug Hills’ Quick-Start guide in Manga Studio for Dummies shows a figure bursting out of a frame but the explanation of how to do that must come in a later chapter. Manga Studio is also intended to mask the parts of a drawing which overlap the frame, so that you get white borders between the frames, a feature that didn’t work with the method that I used to set up this page.

Dots and Stipples

It offers a lot of help with speech and thought bubbles and comic book sound effects but the feature that really attracts me is the ability to add tones and textures, which I’ve made a start with here.

It’s going to be especially useful in print as I can produce artwork for newspapers or magazines that is pure line; even the tone will be pure black and white, made up of tiny stipples or dots. Pen lines should be crisper as they’re not converted to half tones during the printing process.

That’s probably enough technical stuff!

Links; Manga Studio, PNH Comics; Doug Hills’ website

Whitley Reservoir

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Charlotte’s Ice Cream Parlour, Whitley, 11.30 a.m. THE PENNINES are fading into the mist and the mist grades into the low cloud above. A Skylark rises high over a pasture in which donkeys and cattle are grazing.

Besides the small stocky  black cattle, which I think are Dexters, there are two young Jersey cows. One takes a break from grazing to rub her chin on the fence.

Everyday Sketchbook

CHARLOTTE’S Ice Cream Parlour  at Whitley, with its assortment of farm animals and its panoramic views across the Calder Valley, is a relaxing place to draw. It’s up on a ridge-top but on a windy day you can retreat to the shelter of the cafe . . . and perhaps sample the Real Jersey Ice Cream.

As well as a contented Jersey cow there are a couple of donkeys, some heavily pregnant nanny goats and rare breed sheep.

Peacocks are displaying to the peahens, a black hen is leading her brood of black chicks across the meadow and, adding an exotic touch, a couple of rheas (or are they young ostriches?) are strutting along in the paddock by the car park.

The donkeys wander over to meet visitors and indulge in a bit of mutual grooming.

I’m back to working in the Crawford & Black portrait format sketchbook – that’s the one with the 96 gsm acid free cartridge which I find a bit thin and absorbent for my pen and watercolour sketches but it will do for everyday. When I get the chance for some natural history drawing, I’ll go back to landscape format.

Recent snatched sketches in my ‘everyday’ sketchbook include the backs of some shops and this tubular metal chair.