Salvage Yard



I used my water-soluble Berol Karisma Graphite Aquarelle pencil for this sketch, with a touch of watercolour. I've had it for years and neglected it, lovely for quick tonal values but I need to get looser with it.



After a long break a small group of sketchers met up at Protector Build salvage yard in Honeydew - which used to be out in the sticks when I first came to Johannesburg, but is now a continuation of housing and industrial estates all along the long road North. We were a bit dismayed at first at the ugliness of our subject, but I soon got absorbed in the shapes and shadows of the piles of tiles and wood  - deconstructed homes presumably to be recycled into other people's houses by the men who were loading stuff into trucks and bakkies. I was really enjoying myself by the time I was on the last sketch - such a typical Joburg scene of dry wintry sun, long grass turned to gold (before the inevitable winter veld fires strike) and dusty road - and we were told they were locking up. I'll be happy to go back sometime to tackle the other piles of debris I didn't get to!

Puppets and Drums

Joburg Sketchers went to the Alliance Francaise on Saturday, where they were having a children's day with stories, marionettes, drumming workshops and more. We tucked ourselves into corners of the room and enjoyed with the kids the expert manipulations of Alida van Deventer, the puppeteer, who made her characters come completely to life. I rather wished I was watching her more attentively, as I missed some of the wonderful show while recording some of the puppets and the children's reactions. It can't be easy to entertain children who've grown up on a diet of exciting, amazingly illustrated and 3 dimensional movies, computer and TV games, but they were enthralled.

Then came the drums and tales to go with them, each child joining in with the rhythm and chorus of the drumbeats - I felt like doing that too! But sketching them was a good second option. One dad who was looking over my shoulder asked if I'd sketch his two children, which I did very quickly, trying to remain calm as I worried more about likenesses - I got the little boy's eyes a bit squiffy as they darted from the storyteller to me, but Dad was happy and invited me to his restaurant in exchange after I gave him the sketch. You never know where sketching will take you next!

The Art of Urban Sketching is here!

 I'm not sure if I was absolutely the last Urban Sketchers correspondent to receive my copy of The Art of Urban Sketching, but I was getting very worried watching them arrive everywhere from the Caribbean to Turkey to New Zealand and no little white slip in my postbox... but at last on Monday there it was and I rushed off to fetch it, racing home again to open the box and turn the pages from the first to the last. As I say in my sidebar, it is a treasure trove - of sketches, sketching experiences, stories, tips and inspiration from all around the world - and is going to keep me enthralled and engrossed for many hours, over and over again.

I am so proud to be included in this collection with the talented, varied and versatile artists who have contributed to the book, and am ever grateful to Gabi Campanario aka The Seattle Sketcher. First of all for starting this global community, then inviting me to represent my city and country in sketches, expanding my horizons beyond what I ever imagined - through discovering my own city more deeply and intimately, online sharing, the Lisbon symposium that made some of my virtual friends three dimensional and real and introduced me to the new experience of tutoring - and now this wonderful book, which entailed many, many long hours of planning, design, emailing, downloading, curating, compilation and editing for Gabi and his family.

I had to show off my pages here, just a fraction of what this fat, generous book holds in store. I would encourage anyone at all interested in urban sketching or travel to get a copy, ASAP!

Railways and Bridges

 Joburg Sketchers ventured into the city on Saturday - well, the gateway to the city - where the fairly new Nelson Mandela bridge spans the railway lines, connecting Braamfontein and the Northern suburbs to Newtown, Johannesburg central and the South. We parked in the grounds of the Holy Trinity Catholic church, which Barbara and I tried sketching while waiting for everyone to arrive (right), which was the start of a challenging few hours drawing architecture and lots and lots of lines!

We worked our way towards the bridge, some of us getting very successful sketches along the way. I had a huge truck obstruct my first view of the bridge so only really got to work again once we were on it. Looking down, the converging and swerving lines of the railways and trains, the bridges and highways, the verticals, diagonals, horizontals and criss-crosses were so intricate it was almost impossible to see what was what and I kept swopping implements to try and capture it all. Then a quick look up and a half-hearted, not very hopeful attempt to get that soaring perspective above me (left).

We then decided to look for a more distant viewpoint, eventually landing up on the 4th floor of a parking garage, where we had a panoramic view of the bridge, the railways and part of the city. I managed to stick to just one drawing tool this time - my aquabrush filled with Ecoline watercolour.

You can see everyone else's sketches here on Facebook, and Cathy, Barbara and John's posts on their blogs.

Here are five versions of the same scene, from slightly different angles on the bridge, from left to right, Barbara, John, Anni, me and Cathy Giordini-Bricka - I love seeing the different treatments!

Looking back

What a year, what a sketching, painting, writing, thinking, planning, travelling year! It may not have looked like it to you here, as I didn't quite keep up reporting on it all but when I look back... whew...
It was the year of:
  The incredible Lisbon Symposium
  The Postcard from my Walk exchange

The Art of Urban Sketching book - due to be launched world-wide in February, and in which Johannesburg, and I feature!

  The Dark Cloud - a fully-packed year long painting course

  A Don Andrews workshop

  Giving my own first workshops - first a sketching one here at home to practice for the symposium, and after much needless anxiety, the 'Urban Portraits' in Lisbon

  Trips all in a row to Zambia, Portugal and France

  The flourishing of the Joburg Sketchers group, which has gathered lots more participants and is in need of more efficient organisation and - dare I whisper it - another blog

While many would have taken all this in their stride and hardly blinked at all this activity, I have to admit to feeling wrung out towards the end of 2011. All the new experiences, commitments and schedules so different from my normal laid-back and pretty secluded lifestyle were a shock to my introverted system - happy and exciting, but still a shock. Keeping up my own postings, and with everybody elses on the art blogs, Flickr, Urban Sketchers and Facebook just got too much and I apologise again to everyone I neglected.

Looking back at the year in pictures from the postcard project is very satisfying. A record of the seasons turning in Joburg (apart from one done on holiday in Zambia), memories of who I was sketching for, when and where - after all the insecurities that we all seemed to share about producing cards 'good enough' to send - I approach the end of it with mixed feelings. The eagerly awaited postcards plopping through the letterbox took forever to arrive, while time to make another one to send, seemed to come round as soon as the last one was stamped and sent off. With three to go, I've stumbled and fallen behind with this too, but will catch up soon and show you my wonderful collection of cards from a lovely bunch of artists and friends from Sketchercise. In the meantime you can follow them all arriving to and from around the world here at Postcards from My Walk.
I'll be back with wishes for the New Year!

Fast lines

On Saturday our Joburg sketching group went to Brightwater Commons, a shopping complex with a big open air area with markets, exhibitions, children's playgrounds and a skateboard park. We decided to try and sketch the acrobatics of the skateboarders - what a challenge that turned out to be! These two sketches took me all afternoon - most of the time was spent staring at the flying figures, trying to work out which limbs went where, a mental 'snapshot' and then the quickest of lines to pin them down on paper.

I used my Lamy fountain pen, filled with the precious Noodlers Bulletproof black ink that Liz Steel very kindly brought all the way from Sydney to Lisbon for me, which allows watercolour washes over it without running into black and grey mess (though sometimes I enjoy that effect, so have other watersoluble pens in my kit). In the bottom sketch I added a second layer of figures over the black line ones, with another treasure bought in a Lisbon art shop - Prussian Blue Ecoline Liquid watercolour in my thin waterbrush - voila, no clogging! - its such a lovely drawing tool, especially for these fast flowing lines.

Interludes and Airports

I'm still depositing sketches from my trip while I'm catching up on other things at home, my neglected painting course and a little spring cleaning included...

We had to leave the Zambezi River a little earlier than the rest of our group so I could catch my flight to Paris and Lisbon. We first spent a night in Lusaka in the Ridgeway hotel which is managed by an old friend.

 He kindly arranged for his driver to take us into town for the afternoon so we could look for some colourful local chitenge cloth to take to our daughter in France. Patrick waited patiently while I scribbled down a sketch of a little street scene, and then again at the curio village - after having been persuaded to buy some of their wares - a group of women who bead and sew and hope against hope that someone will come along to shop.

 Early the next morning we caught our flight back to Johannesburg, where I had a swop of suitcases and a long wait for my flight to Paris.

Nothing like sketching to while away the time, I started on a long line of people sitting and waiting for our flight to be called, and came upon a woman who was... sketching me!! I thought she had to be going to the same symposium that I was, and when I finished, went over to ask her, but no, she was just passing the time.

One last airport scene in transit in Paris before the adventure in Lisbon began.

After the Symposium

With all the tantalising glimpses of everyone's sketchbooks and the huge array of styles from other fascinating sounding workshops milling around in my head - and my husband and son having joined me as the symposium drew to a close - we caught a train a little way down the coast to Estoril. We had no idea what to expect, just that it was close enough to Lisbon to go back and wander around some more if we liked (which we did). It turned out to be a very popular beach resort, as we started to suspect on the train ride with all the beach bags, umbrellas and brightly dressed co-passengers travelling with us.

I sketched this from our hotel window, with a mind on Melanie's workshop, not putting in all the details of the surroundings, but the simple story of a couple, on holiday at this seaside town where an old castle overlooks the bay

The next day we joined the throngs on the beach and I tried out my 'unschooled' version of Richard Camara's 'Lining over Colour' workshop. I think I overdid the random blobs of colour underpainting trying to portray the masses of bright umbrellas!

Then an interesting mixed media sketch - inadvertently including sunscreen and sand with the watercolour...

 We caught the train back to Lisbon to do some more sight-seeing and tram-riding. Walking, trying to see as much as possible didn't leave much time for sketching, apart from a quickie of this brilliant green tiled building in the Rua do Secula, where we took a short break in the shade. The beautifully tiled buildings in Lisbon have to be seen to be believed - my daughter later asked if these tiles are really that colour... yes, as far as I can match it with paint, they are!

We came across a few stray symposium sketchers still scattered around the streets of Lisbon, working away at their sketchbooks and easels, including Marc Holmes. I had the chance to look over his shoulder at the wonderfully loose pencil linework he does before applying watercolour washes to his buildings - which inspired me to do this one when we were back on the beach the following day. I was really pleased and felt - just as it was time to move on - that I'd just begun to get into my sketching stride.

The Urban Portraits workshops

The beautiful Miradoura de S. Pedro de Alcântara where our workshop was based

Every morning and afternoon, each group gathered at the Faculty of Arts before walking to our designated sketching areas. Isabel and I had the one very furthest away from the school, up long hills on narrow pavements - talk about sketchercise! Our miradoura (viewing point) was magnificent, but tricky for our chosen theme of Urban Portraits - you could not ignore that view - so we asked our students to place their figures in Lisbon, by finding a way to simply indicate the surroundings, contrasting the bulk of the figures with the light and intricacy of the rooftops and details, and to experiment with a different method from their usual - if they always sketched in line, to use brush and wash alone, and if that was their normal medium, to try linework in as many people sketches as possible - showing a folder of sketches by well-known artists of the simple ways these could be used to indicate shape, form, movement and character.

Line drawings by Picasso and Feliks Topolski

Simple shapes describing form and movement by Degas and van Gogh

My introduction was rather bumbling on the first afternoon, a little more confident on the second day and by the third and last, I felt I almost knew what I was doing. Isabel joined in where necessary, adding and embellishing so I think the students had an idea of what we were after. Then off we went in different directions to find our subject matter, Isabel and I doing very quick sketches so we could get round to everyone and talk about what they were doing and any problems they were having. I really enjoyed this one-on-one interaction, and was where the many years of drawing, sketching, art classes, reading etc. finally came fairly effortlessly into action. As Isabel had predicted, the words came, I could see how to help, and hopefully did, for at least a few of the students. With a wide range of levels, from beginners to experts, there were many there that I would like to have taken lessons from!

 The self-imposed pressure to produce 'good' sketches as examples, was slightly daunting, and I was definitely shaky, but everyone else was relaxed and didn't seem to expect masterpieces from me, luckily.

I was most happy with this one of a couple recovering from a night out, probably in Biarro Alto where the revelry carries on all night - they posed like this for a good long while!

...and Home Again

I hardly know where to start telling you about the Symposium - from flying into Lisbon, metres above the terracotta rooftops, to the final farewell party in the by then familiar square of the Faculdade de Belas Artes -three and a half days of amazing, pinch me experiences. 

Tia gave me an A++ for my sketch of her lecture
'From sketching together to a Group Exhibition'!

The first sighting of the legendary Tia and her husband Albert at the luggage carousel; being greeted by the enthusiastic waves and warm smiles of the Lisbon team come to meet us and take us to the Hotel Borges in the heart of old, historic, colourful, vibrant, bustling Lisbon... whoever would have thought mere sketches would have brought me to such a place and time, with so many people with a shared passion, so excited to meet each other?



The entrance to the Faculdade de Bel Artes of the University of Lisbon, the base of the Symposium

Photos I've seen around the internet - Asnee, Ea, Nina, Simonetta, Marc... more and more surreally familiar faces came into three-dimensional, animated life and the reality of this dream started to dawn.

I soon met my workshop partner and fellow African Urban Sketchers correspondent, Isabel Fiadeiro, who took me under her competent wing, explaining, encouraging, translating, calming my jitters about teaching for the first time, "when the time comes, the words will come, you will know what to say" - and so it proved to be.

And Gabi Campanario, the originator and powerhouse of it all, dealing graciously with every question and situation that arose, and the team of Portuguese hosts and volunteers, who must have worked themselves to a standstill to plan and organise the mammoth production of displays, lectures, workshop venues, every little detail thought of and taken care of for this enormous event, with unending good humour and hospitality.

Listening to Matt Brehm's lecture - one Liz Steel - at last we've
met for real!

I, like many of the instructors, didn't have time to do as many sketches as you'd think, as our focus was on guiding and teaching, which turned out be a richly rewarding experience. As Matthew Brehm said in one of the excellent lectures that were delivered every day after lunch, "teaching is a very aggressive form of learning", as I discovered both in the preparations leading up to the trip, and during the one-on-one sessions with the participants, of which more later.

These watercolour sketches were done on the first morning at the 'Waterscapes' workshop - more about it on the Symposium website - as my first teaching session was in the afternoon, a pleasant and relaxing way to lead into the packed days ahead.

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!

Sketchy People

Thought it's time I practice some fast people-sketching, while trying to take note of how I do it, so that I can pass on some tips to those who will be joining me in Lisbon at the Urban Sketcher's Symposium. I was very happy to hear that we will be paired with a Portuguese speaking person who knows Lisbon well - and that my person is Isabel Fiadeiro, the other out-of-Africa (though far away from here) USk correspondent, who already feels like a friend, and who also knows the ropes of a symposium from last year's in Portland.

Yesterday four of us went to Rosebank's Zone II, a new pedestrian mall to find some shoppers and al fresco action. I decided to restrict myself to a black water-soluble Pentel Signpen with waterbrush for quick tonal values and to try and fit in lots of loose-ish sketches.

I attracted two chatty onlookers, both very interested and interesting, so I ended up not doing as many sketches as I'd planned to, but had good practice in trying to talk and draw at the same time, something my left and right brains don't usually co-operate on too well.

I must say when I look back at when I started urban sketching and how nervous, to the point of shaking, I got at the prospect of being spotted while trying to sketch people 'live', I've come a long way! There are still some who are patently uncomfortable being observed and sketched, and others who are delighted and even pose, but I've learnt to remove myself from their reactions, unless I suppose they come over and ask me to stop, I carry on regardless...

At times, while I was drawing these sunny carefree scenes, I tried to imagine an enormous, catastrophic, unspeakable event descending over our lives as has happened in Japan - beyond imagination and my thoughts and prayers go out constantly to everyone affected.