| Christine | Farmer |

As I wrote in my earlier post on the hedgehog, he has settled into his new home right outside my back door. While there were a few nights last week when I didn’t see the little fellow and thought he may have gone for his big winter sleep, he has been up and about as much as usual this past weekend. He’s still eating well, and taking new leaves and hay into his home after he has a meal, water, and a bit of a scratch. He takes in the leaves and hay with his mouth and it is fascinating to see him so determined to make his nest so comfortable. Here are a couple of new pictures taken this week:

This is the time of year when all over the country hedgehogs are looking for a cosy pile of wood and leaves in which to rest and hibernate. This unfortunately coincides with Bonfire Night and general garden fires, meaning that there is a great danger every year that hedgehogs are killed and injured in bonfires. But you can take steps to prevent this! If you are building a bonfire in your garden, please remember to stack material in a separate place beforehand, and only build the bonfire on the night you intend to light it. This way any animals who are sheltering in the dry material can escape elsewhere.

If you have time, you could also contact places you know who are organising fires and ask them to take care to preserve these wonderful little creatures. Here’s one example of some of the campaigns to help hedgehogs on bonfire night, which can be replicated at your local bonfire: Guards hired to protect hedgehogs and video here.

If you are interested in creating a hedgehog home in your garden, it’s still not too late, and you will find information on how to do this at the British Hedgehog Preservation Society, and on other websites such as this one I discovered yesterday: Ron’s Hedgehogs, with details here on creating a hedgehog house.

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Yesterday evening I went to hear Richard Hamblyn talking about his book Extraordinary Clouds, in which he presents photographs and descriptions of unusual natural and man-made cloud formations: the ones which did not make his earlier book on cloud classification, The Cloud Book. The talk was part of the Birmingham Book Festival and was introduced by Edward Morris whose book Constable’s Clouds, which examines clouds in art, is unfortunately out of print. Types of cloud covered included enormous lenticular clouds and sonic boom clouds, and the talk was illustrated with some amazing photographs from Hamblyn’s book, including ones taken from inside the eye of Hurricane Katrina, and satellite images of thousands of contrails over areas of the USA, and indeed the theme of man’s impact on the skies was returned to several times during the evening.

Another theme of discussion was that of the depiction of clouds in art, and whether artists such as Turner and Monet painted the actual skies that they ’saw’, and could their works therefore be used as accurate record of past skies. This was very interesting when considered alongside the decisions Hamblyn told us he had to take regarding the exclusion from the book of photographs which may have been ‘photoshopped’ or with otherwise dubious provenance. Of course anyone who has tried either to draw or photograph clouds will know that what we see up there often doesn’t appear in the same way when it is ‘captured’.

Many interesting visual and other phenomena were discussed alongside clouds during the question-and-answer session, including the Brocken Spectre, in which one sees a solitary figure envelpoped in a kind of rainbow-halo suspended in the air. The phenomena gave rise to a legend mentioned in Confessions of an Opium Eater and elsewhere, and is said to be peculiarly eerie since even if one is standing within a group of people one only sees one ’spectre’. This is because, as was explained to us, each person creates one’s own spectre in the mind, in the same way as ‘we all create our own rainbows’. At which point Edward Morris pointed out that the entire daytime sky is one large ‘optical effect’ and that we only return to ‘reality’ at night-time, which I found to be a very interesting statement and has had me pondering ever since he said it.

The whole evening was very thought-provoking and interesting and in the absence of photographs of any ‘extraordinary’ clouds, I’m going to illustrate this post with photographs of some of the skies I’ve seen from my studio this past summer, which has been a wonderful one for cloud-watchers like me:

Cloud Appreciation Society 

Clouds in my drawings and photographs

Twenty years ago, when I first started doing the stipple drawings, I didn’t use a magnifier at all, and yet when I began again this year after such a long time, I found myself picking up a magnifying glass: not only had I a greater desire for finer detail, but no doubt my eyes are not what they were. So the first part of my current drawing was done using a hand-held magnifying glass in my left hand, while holding the pen in my right hand. Looking back now I wonder whether this hunching up over detail didn’t contribute to my painful frozen shoulder, but it felt comfortable enough at the time.

Then one of the readers of this blog wrote to me and asked why I didn’t use a magnifying light, and in fact I did have one, but unfortunately it wasn’t suitable for use with this drawing table and in this position in the room as there is no space to the left of the table. Although I used to use the lamp itself way back when I used to do these drawings, I could never get the magnifier into the correct position, even with a special bracket on my old drawing table. Here’s the lamp, which is not only really beautiful, but sits accurately in any position you care to put it in; truly a lovely piece of design and it’s a real shame I can’t use it at the moment. The only real downside to the lamp is that it’s terribly awkward to move around when not in use, and is quite nippy on the fingers! But despite that, I love it and have kept it for many years even when I was not drawing. These days it has a daylight bulb in it and is used for additional lighting at the table:

Recently I decided to purchase a new anglepoise lamp so that I could have my left hand free, and I decided on this one from the ‘daylight’ lamp company. The advantages over my old lamp are that it has a longer reach, which is really what I need, and has a clamp to attach it to the board, making it far more versatile in terms of positioning. The downside is that it’s not as easy to get it to actually stay in position, as it’s head seems a touch too heavy for the rest of it, and so positioning of the clamp is important, and I spend quite a bit of time moving my drawing around rather than the lamp. It did take a few sessions to get used to such a contraption in between me and my drawing, but once I got used to where to position everything, and the alarming size of my fingers under the magnifier, everything became a lot easier:

To follow the progress of this drawing, follow the tag for pen and ink drawings. 

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Last summer (2008) I was very surprised to see a young hedgehog quite happily bumbling around my garden in broad daylight. I was so surprised the first time it happened I didn’t even have time to reach for my camera, but the second time I managed to take a video of him eating some cat food, which I’ll try to post very soon! I saw him once or twice over that summer, and this prompted the purchase of a hedgehog house from the local garden centre (click on pics for larger image):

The instructions said to place some leaves inside the house, but to put plenty of leaves outside, as hedgehogs like to take them inside and arrange things for themselves! The wood didn’t appear to offer much protection against the rain, and so after positioning it, I added some roof slates and bricks. As far as I know the hedgehog spent last winter in this house, but as the branches grew down and it became quite inaccessible to me, I could only judge by the beaten-down appearance of the ground in front of the house, glimpsed by the light of a torch.

Over this past summer I caught sight of the hedgehog a few times; once memorably at dawn when I was again startled by the little fellow rushing out of the gloom and straight towards me. In recent weeks, as the nights have started to draw in, I have again seen him more often, and bought some hedgehog food which he seemed to eat once or twice. But then I started to see him now and then eating the dried cat food that I had left for Tigs, and it became a habit for me to leave him out a little bowl of food near the back door. As a result, he began to make nightly visits and I was able to take these pictures through the cat-flap:

He doesn’t seem to mind the flash, but I try not to take too many in case he gets upset.

Just about a week ago now I noticed that whatever time I was up and about in the middle of the night he would either be eating, or napping in a pile of leaves under the fence not far from the back door. I couldn’t believe my eyes at first, but yes, there he was all snuggled up and having a bit of a rest before coming back for a bit of a wander round the bowls of food and water, and the occasional scratch. In fact it became almost guaranteed that I would see him up to something any time I looked out of the window. He now enjoys a slightly more varied diet of dried hedgehog food, dried cat food, peanuts, sunflower seeds (which he’s not keen on) and his favourite: raisins.

One night last week I sneaked outside while he was napping and managed to get this shot of him, in which you can see him amongst the leaves, with the little shelter of slate I had put up in case he got dripped on:

This past weekend I decided to put up a proper little house for him there, as he seemed to love the spot, and so I bought a slightly different model of house which is igloo-shaped, and of a kind of brushwood on a frame. It seemed to me that this would be cosier for him than the wooden house type. However, the construction is only meant to be a shelter I think, and it advises covering. So as you can see from the pictures below I placed the structure on a little pallet, then surrounded it with bricks and covered it with roofing felt, packing the space between with plenty of straw. I then put a few handfuls of dry leaves inside, and left piles outside for him to take in himself. Then I waited and hoped that he wasn’t too disgusted at what I’d done to his little napping shelter!

Before I went to bed that night I saw him furtling around in the area of the new house, but it wasn’t til the next morning, around half past six, that he was seen taking some leaves into his new home. As usual he was bustling really fast, and it was amazing to see him carrying the leaves in his mouth and rushing inside his igloo! Since then I’ve put several more fresh piles of dry leaves outside, and he’s taken lots inside, so I think he is probably going to make this his winter retreat. I will make sure he’s nice and cosy by adding some fleece to the top once I can get hold of some.

I’ve been trying to get a picture of him carrying leaves, but it’s terribly difficult without disturbing him, even though he’s only about six feet from my back door! I have to poke my little camera through the cat flap, which isn’t the best position to photograph anything. These are the best one’s I’ve managed to date, taken last night while he was carrying leaves into the nest, although admittedly he could be doing anything from the photos (click on them for a slightly better image):

I’ll try to get some better pictures if I can. In the meantime here are some links to places you can find out more information on saving hedgehogs, and buy hedgehog houses:

British Hedgehog Preservation Society including page on making hedgehog houses and lots of other information.

Wiggly Wigglers hedgehog house, although many garden centres have plenty of wildlife habitats for sale, which is where we bought ours.

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Yesterday I went to look at some of the finds from the recently-discovered ‘Staffordshire Hoard’, which are currently on display at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. The hoard is Anglo-Saxon in date, around 700 AD., and was discovered just a few months ago on farmland by Terry Herbert, a man using a metal detector. One of the most important archaeological finds of recent years, it is on display for just a few weeks at the museum, so despite a three-hour queue I really felt I had to go and see the exhibition.

Pages from the brief exhibition guide:

The hoard weighed over 5Kg., and comprises over 1,500 gold items mainly related to weaponry, including sword hilts and dagger pommels. However, the five cases of finds on display give more of an impression of a fine jeweller’s than an armoury. Each tiny sparkling item is lit with small spotlights, and some are viewable through magnifying glasses. The workmanship displayed is quite breathtaking, with the finest filigree, inlay work and amazingly detailed zoomorphic and abstract designs. The work is so fine that it is not readily appreciable unless you are really quite up close, which makes one think of the admiration the original owners must have had for this detailed work. The tiny scale of the pieces is not obvious in any of the published photographs I had seen before I made the visit, which are of course enlarged in order to illustrate the designs. However, I’ve now seen some of the videos of the recovery taking place and the scale is much more apparent in these (see link below).

The finds on display, while including some of the well-publicised items - the cross, the Biblical inscription - are only a small percentage of the whole, and I can quite understand the emotional reaction of those who first came into contact with the find. I can only imagine the impact of the entirety, and wonder how it will all look once it is properly cleaned of the Staffordshire earth which clings to most of the pieces. The display continues at the Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery until the 13th October, with special late openings (see previous link for details). I would imagine that the queues are shorter during the week, or if you get there early on a weekend (I arrived after lunch on Sunday).

The Staffordshire Hoard website, which has lots of pictures, information and videos, including this amazing video of pieces being recovered from the soil: BUFAU video.

Staffordshire Hoard Appeal just launched, to help pay for acquisition and care for the hoard.

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Another two weeks has gone by since I last posted an update, and as you may imagine, my feelings at the moment are that the progress is slow and painful. I spend most days with a magnifying glass in my left hand as I work gradually across the paper, going back and back again over clouds, deepening the shadow each time. I haven’t kept an exact tally on the hours I’m at the drawing board, or even the weeks now. Here are scans of the progress so far (click on images for detail).

The first section of the drawing was the quickest and easiest: the sky through the window (below) was based on some evening clouds I photographed out of my bedroom window, which for some reason became twisted up and not how I’d really imagined them. I knew I wanted them to be threatening, distorted and unusual, but they came out even more surprising. They remind me of something seen through a microscope, or telescope.

I’m still not certain what I want to have through the bottom half of the window. My initial ideas were of hands pushing against the panes, and even to use real fingerprints to form clouds. I have left them blank for the time being and it will become clearer to me later in the process what needs to go there.

The skies around the window (below) are a different matter. They’re made up of clouds I photographed on several days this summer, some on Clee Hills where I took the initial photographs of the dining chair, some from my garden. The process with these clouds, as they are so detailed, is very slow and quite agonising some days. The good news is that my headaches have actually reduced over the past months, and so I’m fairly certain they’re not down to eye strain, which was a concern of mine initially. Anyway, here are some closer details of these clouds, none of which are anywhere near completion yet.

Here’s an idea of what I see when I’m drawing (below). Some days I do wonder why I’ve set myself such a task: why I don’t just pick up a pencil and do things that way. It’s quite difficult to give an impression of what it’s like sitting here and being absorbed into a world of clouds upon clouds. It’s irritating, and compulsive. And sometimes it’s even satisfying… but I haven’t got to that stage with this drawing yet. There’s still far to far to go, and what I mainly see is white paper and things that need fixing.

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A little bee activity today for the first time in a while - they haven’t been enjoying the wet weather.

Here we see a leaf-cutter bee backing out of the tube she’s been working on (two pictures on the left), turning round (center right), and backing back into the tube (far right) in order to lay an egg. Click on the thumbnails for larger images.

The other things you can see: tubes with a small black mark above them are tubes which she has already laid eggs into and sealed, this year. Sealed tubes with no black mark are ones which were laid into last year and did not hatch. Tubes with a hole in the leaves are where bees hatched earlier in the summer.

Click here to find more posts on the leaf-cutter bees.

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A week after my previous post and the top two panes of the window are now more or less complete - I won’t know whether more inking is needed on that area until I’ve completed the skies outside the window, the early stages of which you can see in today’s pictures.

The two images on the left show the development of the summer skies: far more shading is needed at the moment, especially within the cloud which needs a lot more depth. The picture on the right shows a close-up of the stipples in this area. Click on the thumbnails for a closer look.

At this stage the early worries about whether or not I’m putting too much ink on and destroying everything are gone, and the biggest issues are different. The main thing to deal with is the eye strain, looking at something so small through a magnifying glass, and the frustration of slow progress while every stipple needs to be in almost exactly the right place. It has been a long time since I drew anything quite so detailed, and I had forgotten just how demanding it is. Still, it’s begun now and I am anxious to find out how it’s going to look.

The one thing I’m fairly pleased with at this stage is the overall composition, and I’m glad I spent so long getting that right. At the moment I’m uncertain exactly what I’m going to put in the foreground, but my early idea is to put in floorboards and perhaps mosses. I will have to take more photographs for that stage. What I’m doing at the moment is continuing across the top part of the summer skies, while darkening the clouds on the left, but not too much, as I want there to be a complete contrast between what is through the window, and what is around the window.

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As you may have seen in this earlier post on the dolls house window drawing, I’ve been working on the ideas for a new set of pen and ink drawings for some time now. I’m now at the stage where the first composition I have in mind for this project has been sketched out in pencil, and I’m beginning to ink things in. The essential thing for me at this point is to get the values right - since the appearance of everything will depend on contrast with it’s neighbour. The main issue is that with this drawing technique everything takes so long, and it is so intense a process, the fear is that I will put too much ink on and destroy everything so far. Unlike working with paint, there is no real way to remove the ink, or to lighten anything once it is inked. As time goes on, I will see whether these clouds through the window are ‘right’ or whether they’re not.

Here is a small section of the window, so that you can see some of the process (click on the images for a closer look):

I thought I’d also include a couple of shots of the studio. As you can see, I like to work in quite low lighting conditions, even closing the blinds during the day at times. I also love to ink by night. I think it is the combination of the quiet and lack of distraction, with the tiny pool of light which concentrates my mind onto the small worlds I am creating.

In the shot on the left you can also see some of the photographs I’m working from. These include those I took on Clee Hill the other week, as well as ones taken in my house, and skies from the decking outside my studio, which has proven to be a great place to photograph clouds!

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Today I’ll be posting pictures taken of my leaf-cutter bees live at the bee tubes, which are right outside my artist’s studio. Take a look at these earlier posts to find out all about these solitary bees.

1) And here are the first pictures of the day, a leaf-cutter clearing out paper from inside one of the tubes (click on the thumbnails for a closer look):

Above left: here you can see many empty (so far unused) tubes, plus ones with brown leaf debris around the outside where bees hatched last month. There are two tubes which have already been filled with eggs and ‘bee bread’ (rather than honey, which these bees do not make) - these are the tubes with fresh leaves sealing them. Towards the top left of the picture a bee can be seen clearing a new tube of paper (which is put there by the tube manufacturers) ready to begin making her nest of leaves in which she will lay eggs.

Above right: a close-up of this bee clearing the tube.

2) A second bee arrives.

Above left: The first bee is still clearing a tube, when this bee arrives at the nest site. Although leaf-cutters are ’solitary’ bees, and do not form colonies or hives like other bees, they do not mind nesting in adjoining tubes, and do not seem to fight. They are also very safe bees to have in the garden as you can see - the site of the nest is right outside my studio and next to garden chairs!

Above right: She checks out several tubes, going in and out, and nibbling around the edges, deciding whether to nest.

3) A few pictures from the end of last month, when the bees were sealing the tubes you see closed above:

Above left: Two bees at work at the tubes.

Above, centre: The leaves used to seal the tubes may be cut to shape on-site. Here the bee has gone in search of more leaves, as they build with many layers. You can see the marks where she’s forming the leaf into the correct shape, and at the same time sealing the tube.

Above, right: She returns to finish off the job.

4) Meanwhile, down in the bamboo bee nest…

Above left and centre: bees arrive with circles of leaf to line and seal the cells into which they lay eggs.

Above right: two of the bamboo canes fully sealed. As you can see the bees use rose petals at times as well as leaves.

Well the occasional showers have now turned into what looks like more prolonged rain… and I don’t think there will be any further activity from the bees today. Thanks for visiting, and perhaps try encouraging these fascinating creatures to your garden.

Some links:

Buy the cylinders yourself and encourage solitary bees to your garden, they’re available from WigglyWigglers, CJ Wildbird Foods, and other places online (search ‘Oxford Bee Company’).

Also, check out these articles on solitary bees, the best plants to grow for bees, and the Co-Op site on saving bees.

Learn more about helping bees by following the tweets of @JordansBigBuzz and @HelpSaveBees who post lots of bee news and information every day. And follow @Tweehive. Find out about the #tweehive here: Tweehive.com

Follow me on Twitter.

Follow this link to see all posts on leaf-cutter bees.

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