Afternoon in Newtown

Yesterday was the second gathering of our new Joburg Sketchers group - only two of us turned up this time, but we had an absolutely lovely afternoon in Newtown, in Johannesburg's inner city, a hub of city life and industry in the early 1900's, revived as a home for artists, musicians and actors with the establishment of the Market Theatre in the 1970's, and has once again been rejuvenated with the building of the new Nelson Mandela bridge making access easier. I absolutely loved it - I'd chosen it as a place to practice some building sketching on, with some of our oldest and newest architecture visible from there, but was so attracted by the colour and people that I didn't end up fitting many buildings in (nothing to do with the fact that I find them so hard to draw of course!) After sitting outside the Market Theatre drinking coffee, me drawing the stalls, John my sketching companion (very competently!) some buildings - we moved across the square to another small market in the shade of enormous old trees, which I can't find any information about, but which, if they could talk, would surely tell tales of much of the areas tumultuous history.

I haven't captured the scale of them, the palm tree is much taller, the far one much broader - I'm sure children could slide down the base of its trunk which is probably the area of the average -um, I don't know- bathroom? I added colour to this one afterwards, leaving the background 'sunbleached', well that's my story anyway!

Everybody moved around a lot so the centre figure got really muddled, but these two women sussed out that I was drawing them and kindly sat still under their gorgeous rainbow umbrella - I've emailed a copy of it to Ntosh on the right. This tree scene I felt could be almost anywhere in Africa, it was reassuring and relaxing to find it right in the middle of the biggest centre of commerce on the continent - can't wait to go back and sketch some more.

Shells

Back to oil paints, I'm really switching around mediums in my eternal quest to find my forté and my style. This was admittedly also a practical choice - I painted it for everyONEcounts, an iniative for artists to raise funds for the care of abandoned babies in South Africa by donating artworks to be exhibited and sold - and oil on a gallery wrap canvas doesn't need framing and is, I hope, sturdier to be sent to Kwazulu Natal where the exhibition is to be held. All paintings are 12"x12" or 30x30cm. I spent ages thinking about how to interpret the theme 'every one counts', and scrummaging around my shelves for inspiration came upon a bag of seashells collected over beach holidays over the years. They seemed to speak to me, of multitudes and aloneness... of fragility and strength, difference and similiarity, intricacy and simplicity, abundance and preciousness, shelter and vulnerability. If you think too much about shells you can hardly bear to crush one underfoot.

Winter garden

I've had a small flurry of impulsive painting in the last couple of days - I revisited an oil painting that I decided was deadly boring, now not sure if I've stuffed it up completely or improved it, so I'm taking a while to look at it and decide which. I may share that later... or not! I then thought I'd do a watercolour on one of my stash of big sheets (65x48cm) with wet drippy paint, masking out highlights so the brushstrokes could be loose... just looking out of my studio door at the bare plum tree and bits of foliage down the side of the wall for subject matter, I started splashing... As soon as the paint went on I found, once again, that this paper has got too old, too hot and cold, or dry... and lost its sizing so just sucked up the moisture. Nevertheless, I carried on painting with rather murky colours, and when it was dry, went in with my Caran d'Ache Neocolor crayons, as the watercolour wasn't behaving as it should - happily a grey lourie came and sunned himself in the branches and provided a needed focal point. Still painting too fast and without forethought, this is really a big sketch, but I think that's the way my life is right now - catching the chance to do what I can and when.

SketchCrawl - with company!

Yesterday was a great day!... the 28th World Wide SketchCrawl and, at last, there was a group of us instead of just me! I'd heard from John Philip through this blog, and he being of an age and mind to know how to do these things, started a Facebook Event to invite interested people to come along to the Emmarentia botanical gardens to meet and sketch. We had about ten sketchers and a couple more to provide encouragement and model material, and we had a lovely afternoon, in spite of rather chilly weather and dry, sparse wintry gardens to inspire us. When there are more resulting sketches posted, I'll put a link here to the others that were done on the day. I tried to record the occasion by putting as many of my fellow sketchers in mine as possible. We are planning to make it a regular gathering, with many others who couldn't make it keen to join in when they can. Another reason to celebrate, the third anniversary of A Sketch in Time was also yesterday - who would have thought I'd keep anything going that long!?