When will my May come?

Sunday, 30th May 2004, page 1 of 2
Wild West Yorkshire nature diary

I've always had an ambition that, when it comes to May, I'm going to be out every day, drawing while the hedgerows and woods are at their freshest. Somehow, I've never quite made it. Always some job has cropped up. Surely this year I had a chance of getting out there; now that I've made up my mind to concentrate on drawing from nature instead of taking on miscellaneous commissions?

To an extent I've managed it: earlier this month we spent a week in Norfolk and I produced 20 or 30 drawings which I will put into one of my Sketchbook Sushi booklets.

The trouble is that after this month's trip to Norfolk, the Dalesway Walk in April and the Normanton Chronicles in March I've now got a backlog of three Sushi sketchbooks to compile. Along with the usual chores that have loomed up it's taken a lot determination to finish writing The Normanton Chronicles this week but I've done it at last.

The drawings in the booklet tell the story, the text is minimal, and yet writing has taken as long, or longer, as it did to do the drawings in the first place.

Richard Bell, richard@willowisland.co.uk