Marimba Band

Here are sketches I did a few days ago that I've been hestitating to post because they are just so rough and scribbly - a quality I really like in a lot of other people's sketches, but to me it just emphasises the agitation I was feeling at the time - trying to be inconspicuous, annoyed that what I was trying to achieve and show wasn't happening... maybe I'm just too shy to sketch in public... or maybe it's that I need to do it more... I was happier with the second sketch on the right than the first one, and maybe if I'd done a third...? Anyway! Enough with this introspection and the constant self-criticism (I truly am not fishing for compliments, which my blogging friends are always so generous with, it must be getting quite painful - will get over it soon. Maybe.) This was a lovely sunny happy group called the Soweto Marimba Youth League playing outside the African Market in upmarket Rosebank, one of the entertainments put on for World Cup visitors, who were actually the subjects I was after at the time. There were a few foreign languages and accents around and beaming faces thrust into the band for photographs, but they didn't look too different from any other shoppers. I'm going to have to daringly go into one of the fan parks or towards one of the stadiums before a match to catch them fully decked out in supporter's gear and filled with the Fever. This event is changing Johannesburg and South Africa in that most of us middle-class, middle-of-the-road citizens who don't venture anywhere unless it's in the seclusion of our own cars into a secure parking lot, are suddenly taking buses, trains and walking, walking! If the services continue and the 'gees' continues (you have to say that with a guttural gghhh and to rhyme with fierce, it means spirit, goodwill, vibe), I sure hope it does.