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.

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!

Down in the Valley

I'm adjusting to being back in Joburg after another blissful week in the magnificent Franschhoek valley (a small preview: you will probably be seeing many more posts from this neck of the Western Cape woods in time!) Not an entirely peaceful or quiet stay as we were on this estate where a pine forest had been cleared to make way for vineyards - the roots of which were being bulldozed and put into piles, and builders were hard at work nearby making an old cottage habitable and charming - but completely made up for by the scenery and the glittering autumn weather. I sketched this from the window of our bedroom, thinking I'd make a record of the changes taking place - landscape and mountains are new sketching and painting territory for me and I almost scrubbed through my poor sketchbook paper trying to get the colours. Much more sturdy watercolour paper required until I get this right! 

A few days later, my husband and I went up the hill to a winery where the first batch of La Cotte wine - made from grapes from the estate that we were on - was being bottled. These guys had to work like clockwork passing the bottles from pallet to washer to packer to filler... during a short break while they waited for more empty bottles to arrive, they came and had a look what I was doing and I said I'd email them a copy if they could give me an address... which caused a slight hiccup in the proceedings and suddenly there was breaking glass, red wine gushing out onto the floor and some frantic smashing and tugging to get the broken bits out of the machine! I did feel bad, but only three bottles were lost, and I was told the bottlers were happy to be drawn, and they will get their copies! I didn't capture the loud banter, laughter and repartee that started after I been drawing for a while, all in the local vernacular, which I can follow if spoken slowly and clearly, not at 900 words a minute with clinking bottles and machinery as soundtrack (I did catch "teken" = draw!)

And a photo of another attempt at the mountains and valley in my watercolour Moleskine - the urge to paint everything was strong and constant, such a change from hunting for subject matter as I seem to always be doing here - more of these in another post.

The War Museum and a Park

Skipping around from one thing to another, I returned to some urban sketching after rather a dry year... I just didn't get out much. I met up with friend and ex-Joburg Sketcher Barbara Moore at the Museum of Military History on Sunday and we sketched and nattered in the shadiest courtyard we could find on a scorching heat-wavy day - we've had too many of those! We quite logically thought the red and blue zigzags on the flag were W's and M's for War Museum, but my husband, who was a Gunner in his long ago National Service, recognised it later as the Gunner's or Artillery flag!

On Tuesday the Joburg Sketchers were supposed to meet with art counsellors from Lefika and children from Hillbrow to draw and paint together on World Aids Day in the beautifully treed Pieter Roos Park near the city. Only two of us made it there - Leonora and I looked around and listened for kid's voices but no sign of them, so we sat up at the top and started sketching the Hillbrow Tower overlooking the park, feeling out of place among rather a lot of unemployed men sitting about (actually the men with guitar in the middle sketch were from another sketch day in Newtown, but I had such a big empty page around them, I drew the park scene as if it were background, they could just as well have been there... and seeing it's confession time, I didn't fit the top of the tower onto my page so drew it alongside and photoshopped it to the top afterwards, as you can probably tell!)
As we packed up to leave in time to avoid heavy afternoon traffic, we spotted the Lefika group down at the bottom of the hill, just stopping for lunch - a pity our paths crossed too late in the day, I hope we can get together some other time.

Bassline Musicians

Our group met in Newtown for our regular First Friday date and decided to walk over to The Bassline, a live music venue which has hosted concerts for almost every major South African musician for the last 15 years. A bronze statue of late music legend Brenda Fassie (affectionately known as MaBrrr) gazes over the square, with a hospitable chair next to her for anyone who wants to pose for a photo, or in this case, a sketch. Wisdom was a willing volunteer who went and sat for us as soon as he saw what we were doing, and was very insistent that I noted down his name for posterity. 

There was a lot of activity in front of the club - a tall-hatted cleaner and a series of people who gathered and hung around until a shady looking character arrived, did some exchanges with each of them and disappeared until the next lot. I didn't investigate further, and tried not to make any eye contact! 

I started drawing some men sitting on the lawn in the square while the others finished, when the man with the guitar, Paulos, spotted me drawing him (he had also tried to pose on MaBrr's chair earlier, but too late for my sketch). He leapt up and came and stood right in front of me, launching joyfully and without restraint into a loud crackly version of "I wanna know what love is", and then, when I said I hadn't finished him yet, into a sort of rap conversation with Wisdom adding a background chorus "Johannesburg, Johannesburg"... Not sure if we were supposed to reply in kind, but it was very funny, and fun. I hope we lightened his day as much as he did ours!

Late, but Happy 2015!

We returned last week from a frosty but lovely Christmas and New Year in England where we spent a relaxed holiday with family. I didn't even try sitting outside in that cold (though everyone said what a mild winter it was) to draw, but I did this sketch from a warm living room window. Those wintry tree skeletons could provide years of inspiration with the varying veils of mist and colour, this is a very rough and inadequate quickie rendition. I only managed a few other even rougher sketches when I found myself twiddling my thumbs in a warm spot...

...and now here we are back in warm if not quite sunny South Africa and our jungly green garden that needs some serious taming.
Wishing everyone who looks in, a wonderful, productive and creative new year!

Sky High in Jozi

I'm sorry Blog for neglecting you so long - one of the reasons I started here was to motivate myself to do more drawing and art - right now I'm doing so much I find no time to report back!

On the painting course that has just come to an end, was a lovely person who works for the company who built the student apartments that I've been drawing as it progressed. Jill got us an invitation to come and sketch at the top of the newly finished block, bringing to a pinnacle (I won't say end - I hope to go back) a serendipitous urban series that I had no idea was happening when I started. Mill Junction has the most astonishing 360° view of Johannesburg and its southern/western suburbs - at last was the perfect time and place to dust off my Japanese fold Moleskine that we excitingly found in our goodie bags at the Lisbon Urban Sketchers Symposium three years ago.
I sketched fast, trying not to get bogged down in details and get as much done as possible in the time, but it was the first Suddenly Summer day after winter (blink and you miss Spring) and extremely hot up there, so after only about 90° and four hours I had to call it a day. And I did do details - it was fascinating to see how streets that I've driven on and around for years connect and intertwine with landmarks, familiar buildings and each other.
Students started drifting up to start fires for their Friday evening braais (barbeques) in the beautifully designed recreation area up there, and the sketchers reluctantly returned to earth and the more familiar street level view of this ugly/beautiful city, and its high-walled suburbs.

Changing Newtown

These are admittedly pretty ugly sketches of a hard-to-love section of town (I'm learning to!) but it has been fascinating to watch it change.

I didn't know at the time I started sketching in this street last year how much those old grain silos in the background were going to be transformed over the next nine months. I noticed that they'd started cutting windows in them once I started drawing them in this first sketch (below) that I posted last August.

I went back there to sketch a couple of months later to find that more windows had appeared, and shipping containers were piled on top of the silos...

...and last Saturday when my sketching friend John and I returned - in the top sketch - curtains are up, pot plants and paint... a whole new block of accommodation called Mill Junction for nearby Wits and University of Johannesburg students! I'm not sure what the green circles on top are, maybe something to do with its green and energy-efficient claims.

Market Theatre

Just two of us on our First Friday of the month sketch date last week in Newtown - we walked around to the other side of Mary Fitzgerald Square to sit in front of the Market Theatre to draw. When I sketched here a couple of years ago, it was the up and coming, vibey Market Precinct with art galleries, restaurants and street markets, but it's taken a bit of a backward step with nothing much happening besides being a thoroughfare. Lots of building going on though (hence the construction workers in top sketch), so perhaps it will rise again as a hub of activity and enterprise.

Rocks, Pools, Waves

I'm back from a wonderful, relaxed ten days down in the Eastern Cape - in the little hamlet of Kidds Beach where my family have been spending holidays for generations and which holds many happy memories.

It was quiet after all the holiday-makers had returned to work - we are rejoicing in no longer having to stick to school holidays to take our breaks!

As you can see, I had time to sketch, as well as walk, read, swim, sleep... I found a great watercolour book at our extended family's home, 'Mastering Color & Design in Watercolor' by Christopher Schink, which I studied and took copious notes from, and tried to use some of his exercises in these sketches (using mostly watercolour, with some Inktense crayons). The colours in that rock pool are exaggerated, but when you stare at them for ages, they seem so brilliant! There were beautiful long white beaches too, where we walked and swam, but my husband and son fished from the rocks so that is where I sat too. Trying to paint the sea and rocks is completely absorbing, time flies and I felt I'd just begun when it was time to leave. I can see why some artists spend a lifetime trying to capture it.

Too much purple?

 You might be getting sick of these trees by now, but on Saturday we went up a high hill - to where the University of Johannesburg's (UJ) soccer fields are - and the jacarandas were just everywhere. I'm always puzzling as to how to paint them, this time I used a small sea sponge to try and capture their light, airy quality.

It seems a waste to designate these sweeping views of the city and suburbs to playing fields, but I guess if there were hotels and private homes up there, it would be a lot harder to access them. As it was we had to get permission from the university - luckily one of our regular sketchers is a professor there, so no problem.

We sat just below one of Joburg's two iconic towers, the Sentech (previously Brixton) Tower, and looked out towards the other one, the Hillbrow Tower, in the middle of about the densest, diciest area of town. Brixton Tower (left) used to have a restaurant at the base, and a viewing deck, and Hillbrow had a revolving restaurant at the top, but both were closed down in the turbulent Eighties, in case they became a target for guerilla attacks. Those were the days when we were searched or scanned going into any public space or shopping centre, afraid of our own shadows and sure that calamity and civil war were around the corner. Hard to remember that, sitting up there in peaceful shade, students who would never have been allowed the opportunity to study here in those days, cheerily greeting us as they walked past.

A footnote: I was asked about the colours I used to get the purple - I use Winsor & Newton almost exclusively as it's easily available here - and it is mainly Winsor Violet in different concentrations, lifted and dabbed with the sponge to lighten it, with touches of Permanent Rose here and there.  I added Viridian Green to the W.Violet in the shadowy bits, the two combined make lovely greys - and touches of Smalt, or Du Pont's Blue, which was a free trial tube I got some years ago. I love the way it granulates on the paper, I think if I did a big painting of jacarandas I would use it with Permanent Rose to help create the texture of the massed flowers - hope it's still available! Here is a strip of these colours:

That Jacaranda Time again

This seems to come around faster and faster every year - jacaranda blossom time. They aren't as spectacular as usual in Johannesburg, perhaps because we've had early rains and I think the flowers need a little stress to perform really well - perhaps like all of us. I was not too stressed, it was a lovely sunny morning and I met three sketcher friends in a tranquil side street in Westcliff where we spent a relaxed couple of hours. I did exaggerate the purple, it was there, but sparsely scattered - hard to paint without getting finicky. I started with the bottom one in my watercolour Moleskine with rather a fat brush - a Van Gogh goats hair one that I 've loved for years but which has now lost its point and is losing its hair. 
I switched to some long neglected Caran d'Ache Neocolor II watersoluble crayons which I've never mastered (but haven't spent much time trying). With only 12 basic colours, the middle one is startlingly vivid where I put in street signs, bougainvillea, some yellow and orange  flowers and a bit of a jacaranda - I reined myself in a bit on the last top one of Alan and Marlene sitting picturesquely under the trees.
Previous posts on jacarandas are here, here, here and here if you're interested.