Richard Bell: Rough Patch - Sketching Nature and the Garden

Richard Bell's 'Rough Patch' explores the wilder side of the garden, in an appropriately informal sketchbook / journal format. Bell's sketches are a delight - robust, confident, sometimes casual, sometimes keenly observant. He shares tips on topics as diverse as keeping hedgehogs safe, composting and making Nettle soup, sketches birds visiting the garden, studies a dead bee. An ideal gift for the garden-loving artist, or the art-loving gardener.

I adore this book. Perhaps its my nostalgia for the British countryside, but Richard Bell's sketchbook ramblings through the wilder side of his garden take me back to the landscape of my childhood imagination, peopled by authors like Rosemary Sutcliff and Monica Dickens.

If you enjoy gardens and nature, you'll find plenty of interest in 'Rough Patch'. I imagine that experienced gardeners will share some of Bell's experiences, smiling as they recollect their own adventures in the garden. I don't have much of a garden, but hope to one day, and immensely enjoyed the imaginary visit to his little corner of England.

As an artist, I found the exploratory drawings, the sustained life studies of plants and sketches of wildlife inspiring. Too often we struggle to find 'Big Things' to draw, when wonderful subjects are right under our noses. 'Rough Patch' shows us that not only can we find worthwhile subjects in the everyday, but also that sometimes, its the small things that really matter. The philosophy that infuses 'Rough Patch' is captured, I think, by a quote that Bell makes of John Ruskin, from 'Elements of Drawing':

'I believe that the sight is a more important thing than the drawing, and I would rather teach drawing that my pupils learn to love nature, than teach the looking at nature that they might learn to draw.'