I've
finished writing and illustrating my Addingford walk
and my next Walk around Horbury is over to
the fringes Lupset, a suburb of Wakefield.
As you can see from this sketch there's a surprising
amount of open country squeezed in between Lupset and
Horbury.
Once
again I'm drawing from photographs, taken as I walked
along dictating notes to myself on my Sanyo
Talkbook (it's probably time I updated to a
little mp3 device). I'm trying to keep a light touch
with these drawings. I think I've got it just as I want
it with the view of Lupset (left) but the Ordnance
Survey trig point (right) might be
a little too sketchy. We'll see when I drop it into
the page design.
Digital
Notes
Unfortunately my digital camera ran out
of power after I'd taken the photograph of the trig
point so when it came to a scrubby/grassy embankment
of the M1 motorway that I pass on this walk I searched
my hard disk for these wild flowers which I photographed
there a few years ago.
Traveller's Joy and Yellow-wort
are unusual plants to find in coal measures countryside
and I suspect that they're growing where magnesian limestone
chippings have been incorporated into the embankment,
probably in land drains. Both these plants prefer lime
rich soils.
Monumental
Blunder
I also had a photograph of this urn,
carved in pink granite which once stood in the Baptist
Cemetery on Baptist Lane, Ossett. Unfortunately
the cemetery was bulldozed by developers, which upset
local families who had relatives buried there. And it's
a blow for genealogists who might wish to track down
their ancestors.
The skill in this carving is remarkable;
the urn is beautifully polished but the carved drapes
have been left with a matt, chiselled surface as a contrast.
Motorway Bridge
As
I say, I've been using photographs for reference, but
I don't like tracing them as I feel that restricts my
drawing so I thought, even with a complicated subject
like this bridge across the motorway (left),
I should be able to get it all convincingly symmetrical
and in perspective by treating each section of the bridge
like a piece of a jigsaw and building up the picture,
piece by piece, from left to right.
I
realised when I'd finished that the arch looked saggy
so I started again (right), this time with
the two posts in the middle. I added some indication
of the landscape then I put in the arch as one shape.
That's in better shape. 
