Holiday sketchbook.

August. Bats. Exhibitions

I like August. I try and like whatever month I’m in (give or take January) but August is particularly good. I like the hot savannah sunsets, and I like the cool misty ones with a misty moon rising after a good thunderstorm. I like the combine harvesters creeping along, filling the sky with golden chaff that tints everything yellow like a nostalgic memory from childhood, a faded photo snapshot. I like the susurration of wind through the gold of barley, and the faded yellow of wheat.

I like I like the birds. So many birds, skies full of martins and swallows gathering for a long flight home, the yellow corn stubbled fields all speckled with corvids flocking together again. All in all, August is actually one of the better summer months, the weather seems more stable, and with the business of growing babies over, nature seems to rest awhile.

The writers are busy knocking out poetic descriptions of August being the frayed edge of summer, a faded memory of sultry days ( I actually just made that up but you know the sort of thing), but in Britain summer didn’t even start until mid July, so August is actually peak summer. In fact, due to the delay in starting, I feel that summer should continue well into October. Sadly September is autumning pretty hard, and not in a poetic mellow way, but in a torrential rain way, so I am back at work, as much as I ever am.

Workings

As I said, I have (unintentionally) devoted my summer to indolence; as such my only progress has been recording my various holidays in my terrible sketchbook.

First I have this speed sketch of a welsh mountain that I drew while the boys were having lunch, mostly to illustrate how far away the walkers that I could hear were. They were right on the far peak and were very loud. I didn’t think this one was too terrible really.

Next up is a record of some things I saw snorkelling in stackpole quay. Watercolour doesn’t work underwater so I drew this after the fact. I do love to snork.

This is a painting of a stork and a cormorant I saw steadfastly ignoring each other on a dead tree on the stackpole estate. What is it with cormorants and dead trees? I did paint this in situ but I forgot to take a picture of me holding the sketchbook with the birds in the background (blurry, so you don’t realise what a bad job I’ve done). Sorry.

This is a truly horrific sketch of possibly the best sunset I’ve ever seen. All sketches of sunsets are disappointing, because the sky glows, and paints do not, but this one was particularly bad. Again, I did not take the appropriate photo of me holding the sketchbook in front of the sunset because the sky was a lot better than my painting.

Finally I present to you this very old yew tree near Avebury. I’m quite obsessed with very old yew trees and the first time we visited I’d forgotten my sketchbook so I returned a few days later. I was quite invested in the bottom part of the drawing and then ran out of steam going upwards. This was mostly because my son was getting bored and starting to harass me.

Bats

Last year, there were no bats in the woods. The year before that there were no bats in the woods, nor the year before that. I have never known there to be bats in to woods, so why have I kept checking?

Because this year there were bats in the woods. A massive swarm of them. Do bats normally swarm? Even at the lake, where there are an awful lot of various types of bat, it’s more of a diffuse bat party than the orgy the ones at the woods were having. We (my son and I) went back to the same spot at dusk repeatedly and though we subsequently found bats, they were always batting about in the normal manner along the tree lines on all the other occasions.

Their presence is no doubt due to an absolutely massive bat box being put up. The trees in the woods are old, but coppiced with small trunks that are not suitable, but now homes have been provided a new colony of pipistrelles (probably) are thriving.

The sound in the video is their echolocation calls through a heterodyne bat detector.

The noctules also returned for a while, bringing with them new noctules. They are doing very well, I think, though it makes listening for new types of bat hard with thier techno rave going on.

A word of thanks

Thank you to those that donated some funds for my writing via KoFi, or by buying a little something from the shop. It raised my spirits regarding the amount of effort it takes to write every week, and I feel very bad I immediately rewarded you by failing to write for two months. It still seems a better option than monthly subscriptions though.

News

If you are near Ironbridge, two prints of mine are in a printmaking exhibition there. It looks really good, and I’m excited to be part of such a talented bunch. Sadly I won’t be able to attend because it’s a four hour journey on public transport (I did not investigate the costs) which makes for an 8 hour round trip bit if you go let me know I’d love to see more pictures. The exhibition runs till November the 16th at Ironbridge fine arts, merrythought Village, TF8 7NJ