Oh my, after a couple of weeks of slow, contemplative painting I went out this weekend for some fast on-the-spot sketching and was all at a loss as to where to begin, middle or end. Its scary how quickly the confident line escapes when not in daily practice! But for the sake of keeping the blog updated, I'll post some of my not-great sketches anyway, and hope to do some better ones soon.
I went to the Rose Gardens in the nearby park on Saturday - the early roses not quite out yet but lots of springily dressed young women, with many photos being taken on mobile phones of poses amongst the fountains and trees.
Yesterday I drove into the city, to
Main Street Life, an 70's industrial building that is under refurbishment and together with
Arts on Main down the road, is an island of art, good accomodation and cultural activity in an otherwise rather grubby, ugly part of Joburg. The rooftop of the building was the venue for a charity event,
1000 Drawings, where people are invited to draw or doodle on A5 paper to be sold on one night in November for R100 each regardless of artist or artwork. Excited to see the city so close, I had to try a cityscape sketch, and then turned to the other drawers - no one that I noticed was sketching the surroundings or people, most were bent over their own creations of doodles and illustrations. I continued to struggle to get down a flowing, happy line, but by the last sketch, thought it was slowly returning to my faltering pen. Must not leave it in my bag for so long again!!
Sketches from Saturday's Worldwide Sketchcrawl - our merry group of four went to Parkview, a suburb with a lovely villagey shopping area. We started with the very intricate newly renovated building at the top. The metal fretwork is called 'broekielace' here, referring to the lace on undies! - and is found on old buildings all over South Africa. We moved on to the fruit & veg shop, where we had to sketch fast as the sun came over and started to bake us and our watercolours - and then to the Anglican church of St Francis which had some welcome shade, a lovely garden to sit in, and music as a choir practised inside the building! On the left, a regular artist in Parkview, painting the buildings on canvases which he sells to passers by.
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