Italian Festival Sketchday

It may look like four different artists did these sketches, but it was all me, trying out different ways to capture the fluid but fast-moving actions of the Flag Dancers that performed at the Italian Festival at Montecasino. Our group sketched there a few weeks ago, but we decided to go again on Saturday after hearing that these guys would be there, plus fashion shows, Italian cars and food. We started off at the food court, it was a bit early to indulge in the lasagnes and pastas, but I warmed up sketching some potential customers sitting nearby. 

Then came the sound of drums beating and horns playing, so we rushed through to the Piazza in time to have sketchbooks at the ready for the colourful arrival of the Flag Throwers and Dancers.  I tried first with a brushpen, and then to get some of the colours, with wax Mon Ami crayons which I washed over with watercolour later - the intention was better than the result of this experiment below!                                                                  

 So a return to my beautiful Pentel brush pen (see Rozworks review here) to catch the last drumrolls and trumpeting, then feeling quite wiped out after all the frantic sketching, to the coffee shop to relax with a more leisurely drawing of my fellow sketchers, Cathy and her son Lino, John and Barbara - Lorna had gone home by then but I guess I couldn't have squeezed another face in there!

Life snippets

 A rather nightmarish situation for one of my family, (causing the sleepless night of the previous post) and consequently for the rest of us ended up here last week. Thankfully it was swiftly dismissed by the state prosecutor, who agreed it should never have got there in the first place. I used water-soluble fountain pen and felt-tips for this messy sketch, a reflection of the way I was feeling perhaps!

Some quick outings with my husband in his car, looking for good sketching subjects to practise on - on the left a happy gathering of men outside our favourite Portuguese grocery shop on the other side of town - why all things Portuguese I wonder!? - chatting and waiting for their turn at the pavement barbershop.

And a day or two later a trip into town searching for a spare part for our ancient pressure cooker, I sat and sketched in the car just a tiny section of one of the many crowded streets where traders sell food, old shoes, new shoes, cellphones, clothing, appliances, haircuts and braiding - you name it, you'll find it if you can negotiate the packed pavements. The woman in the green apron was donning layers and layers of clothing - icy cold on the shady side of the street. As a final touch she wrapped a bright blanket round her waist and dashed across the road into a passing taxi, causing much screeching of brakes and hooting. Ten minutes later, she hopped off another returning taxi, back to her stand and carried on selling her wares. I guess she went to pick up some salt and pepper or something.

Thinking and planning

I have been busy sketching, all the time analysing what I'm doing, how and why - to try to convey to others at the Symposium next month - but scanning and posting have fallen behind. I think from now I'm going to do less talking and hopefully more sketches! Here are some from the two Saturdays before last...

The Joburg sketchers met at Weltevreden Farm where I managed one page of elements of the Second Cup coffee shop and gardens (after a totally sleepless night and in freezing cold weather) The cuppacino, milk tart - impressively presented under a crown! - and company made the outing well worthwhile. Here are John's beautiful plein air painting from the day and Cathy's sketches, I haven't tracked down sketches from the other two participants - one all the way from Hong Kong!

The following Saturday I ventured into town to visit Walter and Albertina Sisulu's statue after MaSisulu passed away at 92 years old two days before. Someone had draped a blanket around her shoulders and placed flowers in her arms, and a little boy climbed onto Walter's lap while I drew, something the sculptor intended for her design to encourage.

I've made an insert for a bag to take to Lisbon with me - from some very lightweight 'parachute' fabric in which I sewed pockets for almost all my pens and brushes and wrapped around a thin plastic sheet (a chopping mat from the kitchen) to keep it stiff. After schlepping it around a bit, I'm thinking it's almost too much stuff to take with me. I suspect when frenetically sketching everything and everybody in sight, less may be better - but it does work well!

Another Workshop

As if I'm not far enough behind already - our internet connection has been 'down' for the last four days. I did promise to report back on the other workshop I did the week after Easter - ages ago!

This was a 3 day watercolour workshop with Don Andrews, who came all the way from Alabama with his wife Martha for a family celebration, and was persuaded by Barbara, the chairman of our watercolour society at the time, to squeeze in a couple of workshops while they were here.

I had watched one of Don's DVD's and was fascinated at the way he layers wash upon wash to create richly coloured, granulated washes to enhance his figure studies. I'm not going to go into detail about his methods and excellent good-humoured advice on how to achieve a compelling and focused figure painting - but if I'd only remembered at the end all I'd been told from the beginning I may have produced better final results. The paintings just got worse and worse as I moved on to better and better paper.

We first tried the many colour washes onto wet paper, working from photographs for reference material, exciting to see the various colours and granulations that emerged. When those were dry, we went back in with dark shapes and washes, and were raring to go back the next day to apply this to painting from live models.

We first worked on cheap sketching paper to do some shadow painting, quickly putting down the shapes we saw on the strongly lit models, first in one colour only, then adding another. These quick exercises jumped off my brush in the loose spontaneous strokes I should have strived for later... (apologies for the bad photographs, these are all large A2 or bigger sheets, and very warped and wrinkled) ...a lesson to not fuss over initial facial features and shadow shapes, the two faces below left, were my favourite results of the week, and were done so quickly then left alone!

But as I pulled out my more precious sheets of paper - some of which have lain under my bed for far too many years, and got 'foxed', or lost their sizing -

I became progressively tighter and more precious with my brushstrokes until my final painting, which should have been the culmination of all the good advice and teachings of the week was just, well, ble-urgh. I also was getting very mean with the amount of pigment I was using in the washes and in retrospect, should have painted much smaller for these experiments. Don uses a lot of paint, buying large tubes of the American Journey range from Cheap Joe's, which he generously allowed us to play with. I haven't had a chance to go back and try this all again, but it's on my to-do list After Lisbon... which is coming up at great speed and for which I need to get back to sketching in earnest.