Coastal Delights

Continuing with our trip to the Cape, our next stop was the seaside town of Hermanus, where my family spent many happy holidays when my grandparents lived there, long long ago. If there's anywhere I'd love to paint in perfect sunshiny vividness, it would be Hermanus - to try and convey the way my heartstrings tugged around every corner, changed though it is from the village my sisters and I roamed freely as small girls. But the only sketch I did during a languorous fresh-fish lunch on the rocks (how this restaurant got permission to build themselves right ON the rocks I don't know!) was the feeble attempt below. I was too busy enjoying watching the whales frollicking in Walker Bay and chatting to one of those sisters and her husband as we reunited from our separate continents for a couple of days. The sketch is of the Whale Crier - a man whose job it is to alert tourists to the presence of whales in the bay by blowing his kelp horn. The whale tail wasn't quite that big, though they were very close... somebody said there were 40, don't know who counts them, but the sea was alive - tails and blowholes and fins flipping and rolling as they played out their primal rituals, oblivious to the oohs and ahs of us onlookers.

Then to Elgin where I sketched the vineyards and the day after the birthday party, off to Cape Town. For once we didn't try to fit everything in, but spoilt ourselves by being tourists, cruising along the coastline and taking in the breathtaking scenery on a sparkling spring day. The top sketch is in the old naval village of Simon's Town, where I sat in the car and sketched the main road while my husband looked for a pharmacy - can't remember what he was after, it couldn't have been serious!

Two more sketches of that trip along the coast to come... my busiest sketching day for a long time.