Can you do the Canna, can!

Is anyone still out there? It's been another long time since I've been here on the blog, and no excuses, but back with an intention to post more regularly, even if just for my own documentation.

I've been trying to find the pure pleasure of drawing and painting again - after far too long of producing work to order, that seems to have gone by the wayside a bit. I think less writing, which takes me longer and longer, and more artwork is the key to keeping up.

These drawings I made when I had a problem with my left eye recently, which was frightening to say the least. After months of fussing about what to draw, what to paint, when, how and why... when faced with an actual threat to my ability to do so, I just sat down and drew what was in front of me, a desiccated canna flower on my studio windowsill. I resisted doing Inktober again, as a pressure I wasn't feeling up to, but got out my Indian ink, watercolours, and the dregs of my morning coffee to make these. My eye is OK again, thankfully, after a small op, but a lesson was quickly learnt - less pondering, more action. Seems obvious doesn't it!?

A Farm in Franschhoek

As promised, more watercolour sketches from Franschhoek - done in my large w/c moleskine, which is getting a bit old and the paper sucking up paint around the edges (to make excuses for some of the murkier bits). I'm looking forward to when I can call them paintings, but have a long way to go finding the best palette for these landscapes, and in which order to put the paint down, it's all a bit random! The old La Cotte mill is in a dilapidated state, but due for restoration. A friend from Cape Town joined me for this one (and the stoop view) - we sat in long grass, lightly 'tickled' around the ankles by spiders, which erupted later into madly itchy, swollen, angry lumps, will be much more careful next time.
The flower is a tibouchina, of which there are several big bushes around the guesthouse, as well as lavender, proteas and what I think is Lantana montevidensis - it smells exactly like baby powder. Such beauty everywhere you look in this valley, what a privilege to be there!

Jozi Food Market

The Jozi Food Market is held every Saturday at Pirates sports club near my home. It was very quiet this last week when our sketching group visited, as was Johannesburg with everyone still returning from their holidays away - not many customers for the lovely fresh produce. But when I woke up early this morning I heard the familiar background drone of traffic which has been missing for the last three or four weeks - everyone getting back to work and in a day or two, school.

Happy 2014!

Happy New Year to everybody! With the hot colours of the zinnias now flowering in my garden, at last we're getting some proper summer after a cool, drizzly Christmas. I've been pondering where to, what and why for this blog. Posts have been becoming decidedly fewer and farther between - although I've been doing stuff, I just don't seem to have the time I used to to scan, edit images, write (which always takes me forever) and post. So as useless as I am at keeping new year resolutions, I think I'll make a list of Mores and Lesses to guide me through the year, and I hope it will mean more updates, with less time spent on this chair...so!...

More:

• drawing and sketching - of course
• painting (am doing another year long Greg Kerr course to keep me under the pump)
• moving - I think my hips are seizing up from long hours sitting, got to get back to regular walking, swimming, maybe dancing, which I love - as long as nobody's watching.
• gardening - I've planted a wisteria in front of my studio and it brings such a welcoming, fresh feeling I just want to spend more time there - lots more empty outdoor space to fill.
• playing, thinking, daydreaming

Less:

• words - you may get just pictures here sometimes
• computering, facebooking - much as I love seeing what everyone's up to and following hundreds of fascinating links and stories, it eats up hours, days and weeks!
• sitting
• housework - sorry family and friends who might pop in but I'm running out of time (not that I've ever done vast amounts of it but honestly as Joan Rivers says, "You make the beds, you wash the dishes, and six months later you have to start all over again.")

I'll probably think of other things but that'll do for now, as I've been sitting here too long already. Wishing YOU a very productive and creatively fulfilling 2014!

Autumn show

We're having glorious autumn weather at the moment - I took time yesterday to sketch these cymbidiums that come up every year without fuss or gardening attention in the shade at the bottom of the garden. You hardly see them unless the sun catches some of the yellow and rust-coloured blooms and you go a bit closer.

Happy Christmas!

 On another jacaranda-painting expedition a few weeks ago with our sketching group, I ended the session with a couple of sketches of  the thousands of fallen bougainvillea blossoms at my feet. I found the brush shaped petals and forms so enjoyable to paint, even roughly and quickly as I did them then (below), that I collected a hatful to take home. Yesterday I got to spend another happy hour or so painting them, now dried, more carefully, but still trying to keep them carefree. I think they'll do to wish every one of you a wonderful, joyous and peaceful festive season, however you celebrate it, wherever you are.

Splashy flowers

I've been walking and driving past clouds of agapanthus for weeks now on everybody's pavement and curb - in this second half of summer they are starting to go to seed so I finally put idle thought into action and tried to sketch them. I started by dropping blobs of paint from a height onto the paper (I had to work on two at the same time as I've got so impatient with waiting for paint to dry - one in a sketchbook and the other on Fabriano). The drops give a good round shape and a nice sparkly look, but not enough variation of tone. I added some more highlights with a Tippex pen, definitely not good watercolour practice!

Happy, Bright New Year!

Just as I suspected... I sketched these day lilies in our garden for New Year last year too - they're about all that are flowering at this green, green time of year. Painted very messily and feeling out of watercolour practice, they do come with my very best wishes for a 2011 that brings you everything that you'd wish for yourselves and your loved ones. May it be a richly satisfying creative year!
I haven't made any hard and fast plans, I am doing an oil painting course that spans the year in four sessions, though I don't think I'll be blogging about it, because of copyright clauses on the course material, but also because I want to just do the work without talking too much about it or seeking advice or your valued comments this time - maybe at the end of it I'll show the results. It may mean fewer (even less!) blog posts, but I want to try and keep the blog true to it's name, just sketching, when I can. One plan that did come about in 2010 was finding a couple of like-minded sketchers to join me on expeditions, which will help me get out of my comfy cocoon and into the world.
Thank you to all my visitors, and the lovely friends I've made here, for your feedback and time. As with some other bloggers, I have been posting and commenting less, not due to lack of interest but just trying to juggle a way to spend less time on the computer and more in the studio, or out sketching. For some reason it takes me an inordinately long time to compose blog posts and comments - my muddled brain battling to sort thoughts and words into a legible state, so I might be writing less to go with the pictures... if I remember... I can also babble on regardless, which I'm doing right now. So without further ado, HAPPY NEW YEAR, let's get going!!!

A little wisteria

That sounds like a cross between wistfulness and hysteria, kind of how I'm feeling!... life full of distractions and obligations, so little time for painting - last weekend I was supposed to join our fledgling sketchers group and go sketching at a big gardening centre, but was slain by a stomach bug that started on Wednesday and carried on wracking my innards for the next five days. Ugh - anyway, better now but only have this sketch of my lovely new wisteria that I planted last year and which greeted us with scented blossom and bumble bees when we got home from our trip away. I have been warned and reminded by friends that they can run rampant and take over garden, eaves and countryside, but I'm hoping to train this beauty to just shade and decorate my studio doorway.

Another bit of garden

I painted this after I'd done the jacaranda tree on Sunday. It's a tangle of elder, plumbago and jasmine - which has died down now. The brown bit at the top is our shingle roof. As you can see, the garden is not very well tended, but I rather like tangles and under- and overgrowth (luckily!) We had a huge hailstorm the other day so all this is looking a bit bedraggled and the jacaranda flowers are mostly on the ground.

I've just found this old watercolour I did of a plumbago flower, one of our indigenous and drought resistant plants, that I painted for a friend, who uses it on her business (called Plumbago Blu) card. That's what the blueish smudges in my Sunday sketch are!

Quick scribble

A scribble I did from the lilies a while ago, using the crayons I had lying around on my table - just to say I haven't disappeared. I'm still ploughing through loads of textbook drawings - keep thinking I'm almost at the end, then another lot arrives in my inbox. Hope to resurface soon!

Ginger flower

I hadn't had a look around my garden for weeks as it had been raining endlessly and everywhere was squelchy up to the ankles. But the sun has been out, and so have these gloriously messy ginger flowers - they've been having a private display to themselves between a big old cypress tree and our back wall.
I took my paints and watercolour pad out there, and had to stand up to paint this enormous flower - it's about a foot from top to bottom - if I sat down it was hidden behind the leaves, so my painting is even messier than the shaggy bloom. I think that ginger is an alien plant species (it certainly likes a lot of water!) and I suppose we should pull this out, really.

A hibiscus and an award

Our next-door neighbour's daughter had her engagement party on Sunday and I painted this hibiscus for her card. It grows in their garden, but overflows, happily, into ours. Hibiscus do not like being put in vases, and start to droop before your eyes. The next day it looked like this-> still very beautiful, but definitely after the ball was over (I remember Laurelines painting these and likening them to discarded ballgowns - very apt!)

I have been awarded some awards! I was tagged by Mona back in December I'm afraid - to disclose 7 inconsequential things about myself and in the last couple of days I was awarded <-this by Rhonda and Joan for which I am to list 7 things I love and pass it on to 7 more bloggers - thank you very much, it is so kind of you and gratifying that you are enjoying what I put up here, hotchpotch that it is!

Seven things I love...besides the major and obvious of husband, children, sisters, nieces, nephews and friends...

• the constant comforting presence of my pets - dog Gucci and cat Kenzo, and the way they follow me to hang up the washing, peer into the hole I'm digging or attend the creation of a new masterpiece

• swimming in the sea - on the warm Indian Ocean side of SA

• paint, paper, pens, ink, brushes, crayons - you all know what I mean

• book shops

• babies - thankfully no longer my own these days, I'm happy to borrow others now - for a while

• dancing in the kitchen to Golden Oldies on the radio - great exercise and makes mopping fun

• dozing in a sunspot in winter and the first smell of jasmine in spring and walking in leaves in autumn (that's cheating, hey? - three in one ;)

• ooh - and cricket! To watch, not to play

I think that covers the inconsequential things too, as I've gone over the seven. As to passing it on - um - I think I'm going to mull over that for a little while, and might cop out, 'cos lots of my regular reads have had one already... I'll let you know!

Forget me not

They should have reached their destination by now, in Sydney, Australia, so I think it's safe to post this little commission I was working on earlier this week. Forget-me-nots and honeysuckle to remind a friend's daughter of her gran, and her mum, when she's so far away. Hope you like them Sally, if you're reading this! Such lovely associations of weddings and family, scents, places and most of all people...
I found myself getting almost botanically illustrative with the forget-me-nots (although I could never reach that sort of perfection), which I had 'live' to work from. I think because they're so tiny, I couldn't splash them off loosely - but the honeysuckle was from a variety of photographs, as I couldn't hunt down any live models in a hurry (they had a plane to catch). They're one of my favourites too - that heavenly scent takes me straight back to childhood summers - and I think I must plant another one, after the last one we had outside our back door was destroyed by some plumbing excavations some time ago.

Congratulations USA!

We woke up to Barack Obama's acceptance speech this morning and have been moved and enthralled by the enthusiasm and joy of the crowds of people and the dignity and grace of the speeches of both the winning, and the losing candidate. Congratulations and best wishes to the new president, and all of the USA on an inspiring democratic event.

I scouted my garden for some appropriately red, white and blue flowers, and this lily (don't know it's name?) agapanthus and star jasmine obliged in joining the celebrations!

Up the Garden Path

You may think this is a very busy painting, and you'd be right, it is... but it's a very very busy bit of garden. I fit in the sweetpeas, roses, daisies, lavenders, spinach (yes!), alstroemeria, ivy, agapanthus and icanthus, but couldn't squeeze in the plumbago, lemon drops, anenomes and fuschias and one or two more things I can't think of...
I am not a very good gardener, but someone who lived in this house in years gone by certainly was. She, or he, planted a structure of shrubs and perennials and herbs that come up and blossom year after year, season in and season out, with little need for any (not very green-fingered) ministrations from me. For years after we moved into this house I was too insecure to change anything at all, from what looked like sheer expertise - except for alongside the little front garden path - I started sticking in a couple of bulbs, and that cutting, and a slip of this and a friend's gift of that, and suddenly, this spring, I looked at it, and thought - this is my bit of garden! Messy and haphazard and overplanted as it is, it is no more the intimidating bygone garden guru's garden path - it feels like home.

Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow...

...with a little sprig of jasmine. These flowers emerge from their buds a rich purple, then fade to a paler mauve and finally to pure white, hence their name 'Yesterday, today and tomorrow' - quite a mouthful! I wish I could paint the scents of these, and the jasmine and sweetpeas and wisteria that are billowing forth around the city - for a while, Joburg smells quite heavenly.
It's a good day to post this little study - Spring, new life and a precious new baby grand (or is it great?)-nephew in London, born just the day before the anniversary of his grandmother, our eldest sister's, passing away 7 years ago. A time of joy and celebration to replace a time of loss. Welcome little fellow (we don't know his name yet)!!
I've just looked up the proper name - brunfelsia pausiflora - does this grow in other places in such abundance? I associate it so much with Johannesburg - when I first came here as a 22 year old I had one outside my new bedroom window in a communal house, and it smelled fantastic, but I missed home - the Fairest Cape, so badly!

Crayons and petunias

Haven't had much time to paint as the pesky housework is screaming at me again, but dashed outside for a few minutes to try my new Aquash brush with my old Neocolor II Aquarelle crayons on the petunia bed (would anyone know why the dark purples and pinks are flourishing, while the white one had a single lonely flower then closed up shop? It looks healthy, but no blossoms.) These crayons are great for sketching, but have quite a cloudy, milky look when washed over, especially in densely coloured areas, so I don't think I'd use them on a major project. Or maybe I just haven't been patient enough with them - must stop scribbling and spend some quality time...?
I did another rather frenetic sketch, vaguely based, from memory, on the July virtual sketch date of sunquats, but when I checked the reference, it's of course nothing like it, apart from orangey orbs - and I remembered one had a shadow of a leaf on it, which just looks like a slip of the hand on mine! But the yellows and oranges of the crayons are nice and clear and bright.
Is anyone else having trouble with their blog lists? - insteading of giving me my list of updated blogs in order of most recent down, there's just the list, and the links take you to Feedburner first from where you have to click on the blog you want - so extremely annoying, and does not incline me to want to subscribe to Feedburner one little tiny bit! Does anyone know what to do about it? I have put a question on Blogger Help... He-eee-elpp!!

Toot-too-toot-toot!!

I thought these Inca lilies/alstroemeria looked a bit like trumpets blasting a little tune - it's Sketch in Time's first birthday! I'm so pleased to still be here - I really wasn't sure that I would keep it up for long, but it's been an enormous pleasure. Got me off my backside as far as drawing, painting or sketching almost daily, helped me to hone in on some of my real interests - rediscovered lovely watercolours after long years of neglect... and meeting all of you, artists, bloggers - some quite awe-inspiring in their proficiency, others fellow-travellers on the way, it's always a joy to see what's coming off your brushes, pencils and pens - and interested visitors... thanks to everyone who's dropped in to have a look and sometimes to leave a comment, I feel part of a very warm and giving community... and look!! I got a present!...

...from Ronell at African Tapestry. Coming from her, one of my blogging, sketching icons who I watched for ages before launching myself forth into the blogosphere, it's a real honour. In her reasons for passing on the award to me... "experiments with all kinds of media, who often tries new directions, new techiniques, new approaches." I think it's called ADD, Ronell, but thanks so much!
And thanks to my sisters, Gillian and Vivienne, who've joined me in this venture - blogging has been a fantastic way to keep in touch with each other's lives over great distances and peep into the little details that make you seem a lot closer - keep going, girls!
Right, onwards and upwards into the next year, whatever it may bring, I hope I'll be sketching it...

Playing fast and loose

Been away a little while... I had some Real Work to do, with money and everything!! :o) I got these flowers over two weeks ago, from my nice sister-in-law, and though they're well past their best, I had to paint them before relegating them to their next life on the compost heap. And after those eggshells, I wanted to do them fast and loose, so set myself a time limit, to be finished by lunchtime. I went a bit over, and had just begun fiddling - but firmly downed tools and took the picture 'voetstoets' as they say here in the used-car industry - as is, take it or leave it!