Going to the zoo, how about you?

Our first Spring sketchday was to the zoo again, where I've sketched here, here and here... You'd think I'd get tired of it, but once there I get thoroughly engrossed in trying to capture the animals, even while my heart is aching for their imprisonment. It is really the only place you can get close enough for long enough to study and draw them. I've tried in the wild and believe me, they move and disappear in seconds, even the biggest ones.

The elephants were wandering around their large enclosure and I captured them as I could - and couldn't resist including a briefly paused onlooker with remarkably similar trousers on!

Next door to the ellies was a bored and lonely looking rhino, though he seemed popular with the birds - a peacock, a rooster, plus a dozen little chirpers hung around him as he lolled around in the shade.

I wasn't sure what the pale, elegant looking antelope were in the distance - later identified by my husband as gemsbok - I haven't seen such light coloured ones before.

Lastly, after meeting the rest of our group for lunch and sketchbook chat, Leonora and I found some pelicans - one optimistically fishing in a rather filthy khaki pool - and became entranced by trying to reproduce their sculptural feathers, their nursery pastel-coloured faces and their elastic movements, and once again I thought the time at the zoo was too short, I'll have to come back another day, just for the birds.

“A wonderful bird is the Pelican.
His beak can hold more than his belly can.
He can hold in his beak
Enough food for a week!
But I'll be darned if I know how the hellican?” 

Dixon Lanier Merritt

10x10 Workshop 6: Watching, waiting, walking - People of Gandhi Square

I'm finally getting down to a report of the second workshop I presented in the series to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Urban Sketchers, on the 29th of April. (I missed out on workshops 3, 4 and 5 presented by Anni Wakerley and Lisa Martens, having been away from Joburg).

Photo by Leonora Venter

My focus was on sketching the people, and Gandhi Square being a main bus terminal in the city, was hoping for fairly stationary subjects waiting or slowly moving around there. We met at Joziburg Lane, which is in easy walking distance of Gandhi Square. Once again we warmed up with quick portraits of each other, but this time doing 'blind contour' drawings without looking down at the page - a little cheating went on but it produced lots of laughter and surprising, lively results.

Photo by Leonora Venter

After a short explanation and demo of 'contact points' and relating sections of the face or figure to each other and to the background - which in this case was to be minimal - and encouragement to just go for it - not to worry about results but to enjoy letting loose with line, we set off down to the square.




Of course such a large expanse of public space is overwhelming and intimidating to begin with, but it's surprising how quickly one feels right at home, once you've chosen a viewpoint and a perch, and concentrating on the task at hand helps to push curious onlookers into soft focus.

Photographs by Liesl Percy Lancaster of House of Lancaster 

 I was thrilled with the results (not all shown here) and varied attempts to capture figures who really never do stay still for more than a second or two. The act of looking hard and trying to put down some essence of them incrementally improves the ability to do so, most especially when you do it regularly and don't let the efforts of the previous day grow dim in the conscious and muscle memory. As I try to remind myself!

Here are are images from my handout booklet for the session. It covers rather a wide range of figure-sketching tips and approaches as my group consisted of a large range of sketching experience and skills.

 We also took the opportunity to record Urban Sketchers Johannesburg's happy 10th birthday message to Gabi Campanario and USk at this gathering, which was shown to him as a big surprise and tribute at the Symposium in Chicago in July. We're at 1:22 minutes in...

What a Mess!

We are lucky to live in a leafy suburb with a wonderful green space in the middle of it - the Johannesburg Botanical Gardens, fondly known as Emmarentia Dam - but boy, do we have a lot of events arranged around us - many with loudspeakers booming across the valley from 6 am onwards.
Last Sunday morning, thankfully not as early, was the Color Run, "the happiest 5K on the planet", starting and ending at a nearby school; so I took my Koh-i-Noor Magic rainbow pencil (unfortunately not the sharpener) over there and started sketching the shenanigans.
It was a hot, hot morning... why anyone would want to run through arches where kilos of coloured powders are chucked over you, sticking to your sweaty brows and limbs and no doubt getting in your eyes, nose and ears, I don't know. I was much happier perched on a small grandstand observing and drawing than down there getting colourfully doused - even so I caught a few splashes on my hat and jeans.

Is too much colour a bad thing? I preferred my simple line sketches before I filled some of the shapes in later - the colours all blended together to make nondescript dusty shades, which in fact is what most of the runners ended up looking like too - red and yellow and orange and purple and blue and green make - mud.

But the real messy sketching came when my pencil was down to the wood and I turned to my new Sailor pen, which is perfect on its own with its variable line possibilities... I got way too creative trying to get coloured powders from the event to stick to my sketch, using candle wax first and later fixative, neither of which worked, the powder fell off with the gentlest blow or shake.

But did I stop there? Oh no, I persevered with watercolour splashes, ink brushes, more spray and white crayon until it was a total shambles and those pages fit only to be glued closed together. Ah well, a lesson to keep it simple and remember my sharpener next time!

The Randburg Shuffle

Not my finest sketching five hours, standing up mostly and in a soft-cover sketchbook, but I was very glad to have it with me to help pass the interminable wait in the queue to get my driver's licence renewed at Randburg Licencing Centre last week. It was my fourth trip there, having been turned away on previous mornings as only 200 people per day are accepted into the line, making sure there's no chance that anyone might have to work a minute over the 3 o'clock closing time. 

 This time I made sure I got there early, was relieved to have No.146 scribbled onto my application form, resigned myself to a long wait and pulled out my sketchbook. I noted times as I sketched in the upper left corners...
8:45 - outside the magical doorway to legal driving.
9:30 - just inside the entrance and peering through the window at the expectant faces outside

10:15 - we'd inched around the corner and a fortunate few grabbed a seat on the windowsill
10:45 - shuffled round to the back of the reception desk, where there was a bit of a show to watch. First a group who had successfully completed their applications or collections were locked into the building while a cash-in-transit vehicle collected the previous day's takings; then a series of hopefuls came to ask at the desk if they could have an application form and upon hearing the answer, responded in various outraged/desperate/crestfallen ways. [Note to self: Never throw a hissy wobbly wailing fit before this desk, it provides huge entertainment to the bored audience in the dingy background and has no effect.]

11:00 Shuffle, shuffle, shuffle, I reached the bottom of the stairway, a mere 10 metres (I would think) from the front door
11:30 Halfway up. What would we do without our phones?

11:45 Up on the first floor and looking down...
12:30 At last a row of seats that we had to shift up on every few minutes...within tantalising sight of the final stage - the queue for the Cashiers. After this seat-shifting came The Room, the utopia of activity, technology and red tape, where we submitted our many documents, had eye tests, biometrics and fingerprints (of which I have none, apparently) taken - where I paid close attention and stopped sketching for fear I got sent to the back of the queue for some misdemeanor.
By 1:45 pm I was out, blinking in the sunshine, good for another five years before I have to do it all over again.