Down on the Corner, Out in the Street

 Nothing like a visit from an ardent urban sketching friend to bump you out of your ennui and out into the streets. For various reasons I was in a bit of a sketching slump, but when Jane, my friend of 50 years (we were neighbours at 11/12 years old - does anyone remember the song in the title? It's about the same vintage as this friendship), who has fairly recently taken up urban sketching with a passion, arrived from Cape Town and declared her intentions earlier this year, I dusted off my sketchbook and filled my pens.

Our first date was in Sandton, where buildings are going up almost overnight it seems. We found a restaurant with a view of cranes and builders at work across the road. (I drove past a few weeks later and it was all finished, clad and functioning!) Jane likes to draw cranes, I like to draw people, so we had something of each with this interior/exterior view. Just as well we were inside as first there was blazing heat, and then later a mighty thunderstorm outside.

On another hot Wednesday morning, we found a spot under a shady plane tree in pretty Parkview. As we sat peacefully figuring out perspective and how to cope with the cars parking in front of us, I remembered again what is so appealing to me about this pastime... getting out from behind your four walls and insulated life, experiencing the weather, the sights and smells, (the bugs falling from the trees!) and especially the delightful exchanges with passers by and fellow pavement roamers - the car guard, the businessman after his breakfast with laptop, the street artist selling his canvases on the opposite corner, the waiter who thoughtfully offered to bring us refreshments from his restaurant, even the quizzical mystified looks, and shouted comments from a car at the unusual sight of us sitting on the sidewalk. Yes, maybe we are crazy!

[After this was the trip to Soweto, described in the previous post - I'm so behind with blogging, I'm just posting whatever occurs to me - I blame it on Instagram which is too quick and easy with a phone and its camera, and makes me think it's all been done!]