Joziburg Lane

After days of unrelenting (but welcome) rain and a forecast for more we headed for cover on our monthly sketch date last week and returned to Joziburg Lane in the city. This is a food, retail and residential refurbishment of some old buildings, including what was known as Motortown, where Chrysler, Rolls Royce and other car brands were based back in the day, before inner-city decline set in and they moved north to the suburbs.

I leaned against my car bonnet and sketched from the windows of the rooftop parking lot - I loved the curves, waves, angles and textures laid out beneath me, and the window shapes helped me to place them on the pages of my concertina Moleskine. As you may know, buildings and architecture are extremely challenging for me - I found myself getting more and more irritated with drawing all the details, when I knew I didn't want details, and my hand got more impatiently scribbly as I went along... until suddenly I realised I was enjoying myself again with almost handwriting-like shortcuts to describe the background buildings.

I decided I really wanted some of the many textures of the rooftops and used white wax crayon before going over with watercolour - not such a great idea as the effects were pretty unpredictable. When I got home I also added bits onto my pages to take some of the buildings up to their proper heights - what would Johannesburg city be without the Carlton Centre, once the tallest building in Africa?

With cramped legs from standing so long, I trekked down the 'Forever Stairs' - there isn't a lift yet - to the food court at the bottom of the building where I met the rest of our group for lunch. We left just before the afternoon/evening event was about to start, a pity as some pretty funky musicians were arriving that would have made great subjects for sketching.

I've just realised I haven't posted the sketches from my other trips to Joziburg Lane here, so for the record...

...some early musicians from their Birthday Bash for Joburg's 130th anniversary, and the huge birthday cake in the food court (also unfortunately before the crowds arrived - I think I'm getting too old for the hustle and bustle of these social happenings) and the last two from a quiet weekday morning...shopkeepers and restaurant staff at a bit of a loose end waiting for customers, in front of a wall mural that those little plants are eventually going to be trained up.

People, people, everywhere

I'm in a total tizz lately, planning the series of Urban Sketchers 10x10 workshops to be held here in Joburg (that little dot on Africa) from end of March. It's really not my natural state to plan, delegate, administrate and organise but some deep perfectionist tendencies surface and I do it to the nth degree, and nothing else, causing myself terrible anxiety and heart flutterings. I know it will be a lot of fun when it happens, and I will love sharing what I know and will enjoy the people that will come along; and the sketcher friends who are also giving classes, Anni, Leonora and Lisa are right with and behind me...it will all be all right on the night!

I'm going to focus my three sessions on basic shapes and people sketching, starting with faces and quickie portraits, going on to seated and fairly static figures, and then to moving people and bustling scenes - which is why I was doing the above sketch over coffee earlier this week, trying to work out exactly what it is that I do when I do it, and how to explain it to others. If anyone reading this is in Johannesburg March - May and wants to try some urban sketching please sign up soon, the first classes are almost booked up! The full schedule is here.

People-sketching seems to be in the ether, as Marc Taro Holmes and Liz Steel are holding a week long challenge from March 6 - 10 for anyone who wants to join in, to sketch 100 people over that time (20 a day!) and post them on social media #OneWeek100People2017 

I think I might join in, if I can calm myself enough to venture out every day to find that many people to draw. Why don't you?

Chinese New Year at Nan Hua

The Worldwide Sketchcrawl where urban sketchers around the world planned to sketch their city's Chinese New Year celebrations was on Saturday 28 January. Johannesburg had at least three CNY celebrations in different venues - one that night in 'Old Chinatown' in Commissioner St in the city; one the following day at the Nan Hua Buddhist Temple near a town called Bronkhorstspruit, about an hour and a half's drive from Joburg - the one we decided to go to as a place we'd always wanted to visit; and another a week later in 'New Chinatown' in Cyrildene, east of the city. So we missed the official Crawl, but our spirit was with everybody (and as someone said, it's still the 28th somewhere!)

Our carload of five sketchers arrived just too late for the opening ceremony with Dancing Dragon, firecrackers, and other spectacles - I thought there'd be more but that was it. We gathered at the entrance - an encouragingly large group of us - just in time to see the dragon being folded away into its trailer. The first pen I grabbed out my bag flew to catch those few moments before it disappeared, and I think it's my favourite sketch of the day!

The many temples and shrines around the arena were beautiful subjects, and I had a go, but attempting the intricacies of those was going to take too long, so I tried some sketching shorthand with squiggly lines and loose washes. I wanted to capture some of the people - two sweet little girls in their New Year best, their big brother escaped before I got him on paper.

There were loads of food stalls lining the passages around the centre courtyard, and even more people trying to buy it... I didn't try hauling out a sketchbook and pen in the crush, but managed to get hold of a spring roll and settled to sketch one of the picnic groups with greasy fingers.

The Wishing Tree, where you have your name inscribed in Chinese calligraphy on a ribbon with a medallion attached, and throw it up into the tree while you make a wish. If the ribbon sticks there, your wish will come true during this Year of the Red Rooster. I didn't risk it! Nan Hua is a huge place and apparently we missed lots more interesting sights and events, but that was about all I could manage in the heat and crowds before the long drive home.