The Wanderers

Bear with me while I work through some stuff out loud here... I've been wanting to draw more of the urban landscape in which I live, ie. the city and its structures, as well as the people - my main focus and the subject I'm naturally drawn to ('scuse the pun). But, frankly, sketching buildings is an ordeal, and am not very good at it, and trying to do so makes me irritable.
On Thursday, BFG (my husband, whose initials happen to be those, but who is in fact, quite Big, Friendly, and if not a Giant.... but I digress) and I went to the cricket match between Australia and South Africa at the Wanderers Stadium*. Thinking I'd combine watching the game with a sketching opportunity, I started off trying to draw the whole scene, with all the buildings and spectator's stands surrounding the field. I missed a lot of the cricket and had nothing but a rather bad scratchy drawing to show for it (and a bad scratchy attitude!)So I abandoned that and sketched some of the people around us - mostly during the tea and lunch breaks - so I could watch some of the days play, and decided that that would do for my next Urban Sketchers posting. (see more here)Today I thought I'd have another go at drawing the Bullring (*aka), purely with the aim of enjoying it. I've seen some glorious loose, joyful sketches on USk, such as this and this and thought that if I could get anywhere near that abandonment, I would enjoy at least the process, and possibly also the result. So I put down some reasonably accurate pencil guidelines, and then sloshed on some watercolours, dibbled some felt tip pens and white gel pen, and finished off with dip pen and Higgins black ink - and did in fact, very much enjoy the process - and "Viola!" (as my daughter used to say at six-ish) I am much happier with the result. I think I'm on my way to finding a method, though I can't schlepp all those materials around with me...

Doctor's rooms

Sitting with my daughter in the doctor's waiting room, I sketched surreptitiously - as I wrote on the page, the head with the hat isn't real, it's a painted bust on the counter. Not a very South African scene - this must be typical of anywhere in the world - but a necessary part of life, to those of us lucky enough to have good medical facilities and care.
My daughter had sudden extreme vertigo, for which we had to go off to a specialist, who tossed her head around to dislodge a crystal that had wandered into the wrong bit of ear bone loops. A couple of days later, she was fine!

A hibiscus and an award

Our next-door neighbour's daughter had her engagement party on Sunday and I painted this hibiscus for her card. It grows in their garden, but overflows, happily, into ours. Hibiscus do not like being put in vases, and start to droop before your eyes. The next day it looked like this-> still very beautiful, but definitely after the ball was over (I remember Laurelines painting these and likening them to discarded ballgowns - very apt!)

I have been awarded some awards! I was tagged by Mona back in December I'm afraid - to disclose 7 inconsequential things about myself and in the last couple of days I was awarded <-this by Rhonda and Joan for which I am to list 7 things I love and pass it on to 7 more bloggers - thank you very much, it is so kind of you and gratifying that you are enjoying what I put up here, hotchpotch that it is!

Seven things I love...besides the major and obvious of husband, children, sisters, nieces, nephews and friends...

• the constant comforting presence of my pets - dog Gucci and cat Kenzo, and the way they follow me to hang up the washing, peer into the hole I'm digging or attend the creation of a new masterpiece

• swimming in the sea - on the warm Indian Ocean side of SA

• paint, paper, pens, ink, brushes, crayons - you all know what I mean

• book shops

• babies - thankfully no longer my own these days, I'm happy to borrow others now - for a while

• dancing in the kitchen to Golden Oldies on the radio - great exercise and makes mopping fun

• dozing in a sunspot in winter and the first smell of jasmine in spring and walking in leaves in autumn (that's cheating, hey? - three in one ;)

• ooh - and cricket! To watch, not to play

I think that covers the inconsequential things too, as I've gone over the seven. As to passing it on - um - I think I'm going to mull over that for a little while, and might cop out, 'cos lots of my regular reads have had one already... I'll let you know!

The Basket Ladies

Another of my Urban Sketchers posts - a corner near a friend's house in the villagey little suburb of Melville - where these basket ladies display their wares when the weather is good, which it hasn't been for a while now. I don't know how they sell their baskets when it rains and rains! While I was sketching the scene around them, they suddenly got up, loaded themselves with pots, mats and baskets, and took off down the road, where there are lots of restaurants with tables out on the pavements. They left most of their goods behind - very trusting in this city! I had to sketch fast to get the back of one of them before they vanished.
After 15 minutes or so they returned, the woman in the red hat going straight back to sleep again!
There were also some paintings out on display - I'm not sure if that guy with the dreads was the artist, but most of the time nobody was watching them either.

Portrait Party

Julie Oakley led me to this at The Portrait Party, where this Valentine's month it's self-portraits and 'learning to love yourself' that are the challenge! I was tempted, like Julie, to use an older, gentler photo to draw from but decided I'd get to grips, as she did later too, with my 53 year old face. My first attempt, that I was quite pleased with even though I overdid the wrinkles rather - I felt it showed a wicked-witchy, mischievous side that I don't think many people know about me...but I knew the proportions were 'off' and I couldn't work out where, so I traced the reference photo in Coreldraw and laid the tracing over my drawing - ! - below the eyes, it was way, way off. I really didn't like the way the tracing looked! (I think I saw this method of self-correction used by Jeannette Jobson on her blog a while ago but can't find the exact link now)Adding tone, line and wash - with Karisma very soft Graphite Aquarelle - improved matters and it does look more accurately like me, but is that the total point? I think I prefer the witchy one.

(Now I feel like I've hung all my laundry up on a very public line to dry!!)

A Bash at a Building

Ooh-er! I've changed the look of my blog a bit... was really trying to make the pictures bigger - I see on Urban Sketchers some of the drawings are nice and big on the page layout, but I can't get mine to do that. Not sure that I like having a background colour - I really like plain white - if anyone has an opinion, please express it!

I was determined to sketch a building for US this morning, and as I've driven past this one innumerable times thinking I should try it, I chose this rather ugglesome one - the Old Gasworks, a Joburg landmark on the way into town. A mixture of brick and corrugated iron structures, its abandoned now, except for a pottery down in the basement, but apparently there are plans to develop it in the future. Ugly as it is, I hope they preserve it and renovate it sensitively. Joburg has a reputation for demolishing its historical old buildings to erect whatever is considered up-to-date at the time.

I also scribbled down this man pulling his hugely laden trolley through our suburb. He's one of many who collect plastic, cardboard and tins from household rubbish put out on the pavements, and take them to recycling centres. Good for the planet and some money for his pocket.

I used a Pilot fineliner to draw with, blending it with the waterbrush to make darks (and fuzzy up my inaccurate lines on the buildings!) and adding watercolour afterwards.

Hats hats hats

I was planning to go out and sketch - perhaps try my hand at some buildings - eek! - when my attention was diverted (this happens a lot) by the Opening of Parliament ceremony on TV, and especially by the Fabulous Hats milling around in the Cape Town sunshine -
I would have liked to be there. I sketched these while the President was talking and the cameras were roaming around - sometimes putting the TV on 'pause' to capture a particularly fetching creation. I would like to wear one of these hats - but where? And would I have the gumption? I know at least one of my sisters does... ;-)

Helen Zille, leader of one of the opposition parties - referred to in some circles as 'Godzilla' because of her tenacious and fearsome qualities - didn't wear a hat. This was her being interviewed after proceedings. It would have been difficult to be as forthright from underneath a big
confection.

City streets

I've posted these with a story on the Urban Sketcher's blog and repeated them here - still not sure if this will be my usual practice, but for now, well you wouldn't want to miss anything, now would you? Would you?!!

They are local scenes from my neighbourhood streets and shopping centres - pavement (sidewalk?) salesmen and a woman hailing a taxi. Suzanne wanted to know more about the hand signals - all I can say is that its confusing! These are a few that I've identified, though in some circumstances they can mean somewhere else entirely! There are others, and I suspect more are invented all the time.

On the road again

Before I get irretrievably back into city life, I wanted to carry on with the small (moleskine watercolour notebook) record of our trip to the coast that I was exploring. I don't know if it is a good idea - it may become tedious, but it can only improve my landscape painting - something I've never really taken to, but think I ought! My original plan, to paint as I travelled, was quickly ditched as lurches and bumps and speeding scenery made that effort laughable!
I sketched this tiny cottage with it's lollipop trees lightly in pencil in the car, and painted it later.
Driving through the Karoo - classified semi-desert, it was really green after lots of rain - it's always been the most boring, endless stretch - miles and miles of very little.
But this time there was more colour, and loads of cloud formations all the way there and back (all that water has been dumping on Joburg the last few weeks!). Little flat-topped mountains are typical all through the Karoo. This was on the way down to the coast - I took many more photos on the way back. You're in for a long ride if I keep this up.
Coming into the little 'dorp' - really just a filling station and a shop - called Three Sisters after these three koppies - former flat-topped hills that have been eroded away until just these 'little heads', which is what koppies means - are left.

Well these are definitely not works of art, but I still like the idea of a journey in a sketchbook, and am interested to see if my painting improves or gets more interesting as I go along, and will be a nice balance to the urban sketching I hope.