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.

Italian Festival Sketchday

It may look like four different artists did these sketches, but it was all me, trying out different ways to capture the fluid but fast-moving actions of the Flag Dancers that performed at the Italian Festival at Montecasino. Our group sketched there a few weeks ago, but we decided to go again on Saturday after hearing that these guys would be there, plus fashion shows, Italian cars and food. We started off at the food court, it was a bit early to indulge in the lasagnes and pastas, but I warmed up sketching some potential customers sitting nearby. 

Then came the sound of drums beating and horns playing, so we rushed through to the Piazza in time to have sketchbooks at the ready for the colourful arrival of the Flag Throwers and Dancers.  I tried first with a brushpen, and then to get some of the colours, with wax Mon Ami crayons which I washed over with watercolour later - the intention was better than the result of this experiment below!                                                                  

 So a return to my beautiful Pentel brush pen (see Rozworks review here) to catch the last drumrolls and trumpeting, then feeling quite wiped out after all the frantic sketching, to the coffee shop to relax with a more leisurely drawing of my fellow sketchers, Cathy and her son Lino, John and Barbara - Lorna had gone home by then but I guess I couldn't have squeezed another face in there!

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!

Montecasino SketchCrawl

These sketches are from last week's World Wide SketchCrawl day. I got home after it to find our computer had been attacked by a virus that removed everything off my desktop, plus access to all programs, and so the delay - though I'm also buzzing around trying to keep up with 101 projects which I'll blog about sooner or later. When is life going to calm down?!

We met at the big entertainment complex, Montecasino, which is styled along the lines of various Italian cities, I believe (thanks to Robyn for that info!), sketchbuddy John and I tackled this outside facade last thing on the wet, dismal day, and I added watercolour at home as the cold was getting to our bones.

This was my first stop - the six of us split up as we had been warned that the management wasn't too sketcher-friendly, quite excited to be intrepid guerilla sketchers, but as it turned out no one took the least bit of notice of us. I leant on the wall surrounding the flashing lights and bells of the casino, fascinated at the single-mindedness of the gamblers as they fixated on the machines in front of them - almost bit off more than I could chew and came away from there after a couple of hours with a throbbing headache!

After lunch and a look at everyone's drawings, John and I went over to the movie theatres to gather some more people practice - and an indulgent ice cream sundae as we had to sit at the ice cream parlour to get the best view, yes definitely the best view from there!

I'd had my eye on this balloon man all day, but he'd been a moving target selling his wares from one end of the centre to the other. At last I found him in a spot where he had run out of steam and stood still for a good long spell, letting his customers come to him, as this small girl happily did just when I was ready to add something to the drawing. The mom wasn't actually her mom, but she'll do for this purpose. The Carioca children's felt pens I used behaved completely differently on moleskine paper, not blending at all with water - in the first casino sketch they were completely soluble!

Quiet Monday morning

A quick sketch I did yesterday after shopping for spring bulbs... one good thing about winter being on its way, is that spring and all its joys will follow. After a week of busyness at home I went looking for more people to sketch, but they were hard to find on a Monday morning. Even Zoo Lake, which is usually buzzing with activity, was slow and sleepy, as demonstrated by the guy on the bench there (I know that physiology is weird, but thats how he looked from where I was sitting!). A young family wandered past and a couple of others, but by then I had already filled in the background, so for now, thats it!

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.

Zoo Lake

Four of us went sketching yesterday at Zoo Lake,

a lively place to go on a Saturday. Moyo restaurant where I've sketched before was abuzz with customers, but we started on a quiet balcony overlooking a solitary woman working on her laptop amongst the treetops - she was the unwitting model for a couple of us - my daughter included, who I was delighted to have with us. I sketched the same mosaic angels that I've done before, but I think I might save them for a Christmas post a bit later in case I don't get anything else done. I then wandered around until I found where the others had got to - Barbara was busy drawing these guys selling wire bicycles and xylophones but they had tired of posing by then and I had to scribble them down fast. We went down to the water's edge and sketched the ice cream man and his bell ringer, after which I felt quite sketched out and went home - lots more subject matter down there for another trip!

Here are my daughter Alex's sketches of the laptop lady, a wooden fish and a metal sculpture...

Weddings in the Park

Suddenly, summer! On Saturday we had an early morning walk through the botanical gardens and I just had to go back later to sketch all the spring pinks and greens - by which time it was 30°C and the peach trees looked like they were shedding their blossoms for protective leaves almost as I watched. As I sat on a wall in the shade, wedding party after wedding party came traipsing past for their photo shoots. The ice cream men on their bicycles seemed to play quite a role in the entourages - I'd hear the bell tinkling, then came the bridal group with guests over the horizon, then photographs, one with the bride and groom even perched on the ice cream cart!

These two elderly women collapsed gratefully in the shade for a few minutes before once again following the tinkly bell, and this matron-of-honour stopped to check her messages, or perhaps a quick Twitter before going back to the business of waiting on the bride. I do love being this fly on the wall in the guise of sketcher, my lifelong interest in people-watching indulged as I practice drawing!                                                                                          

The Snoek Run

My other two sketches from our drive around the Cape peninsula last week - we stopped at Miller's Point to watch the snoek boats coming in with their bountiful catches - good to know there still are sometimes bountiful catches to be had for these fishermen. Apparently snoek is nomadic and grows fast, so is resilient to trawlers and other dangers of the deep.

When there's a 'snoek run' the fishing harbours leap into life, as they did on this day. I could have sketched in Kalk Bay harbour for hours (these are sketches done there last year) - the great characters, throwing fish around, cleaning, filleting, shouting, (the language is as blue as the sea and sky) selling, seagulls and seals milling round snatching at morsels tossed aside - but had to settle for a sketch from 'Kalkies' café where we enjoyed a delicious meal of, naturally, fresh snoek.

I have a feeling that if I did sketch the people there might be a 'fee' asked, as for everything else including chatting to this little boy who was playing with the seals with a bag on a rope so we could get photos! 

I posted these two sketches on Urban Sketchers as the original line drawings... I have an almost uncontrollable urge to 'colour-in' later, and often wonder if they would be better just left as they were.

Katherine asked how I carry all my supplies, which at the moment is in a big squarish handbag, with the pens and waterbrush standing upright in a side pocket, and sketchbook all easy to whip out. I don't often have the time and space to add colour on site, though I always have a little Cotman palette in my bag in case. If I'm really hell-bent on a few hours solid sketching I take a simple school backpack with more paints and brushes, small water jars, cloths, a mixing palette and maybe some nicer watercolour paper folded into an accordian sketchbook, and sometimes a little folding stool. My latest sketchbook is a square 'Seawhite of Brighton' one from London Graphic Center - it was a moleskine until recently. Neither perfect for 'good' watercolour technique, but the paper holds up well to a bit of washing and scrubbing. I'll take a picture soon. This all undergoes constant review, so any tips for more efficient sketching are welcome.

Afternoon in Newtown

Yesterday was the second gathering of our new Joburg Sketchers group - only two of us turned up this time, but we had an absolutely lovely afternoon in Newtown, in Johannesburg's inner city, a hub of city life and industry in the early 1900's, revived as a home for artists, musicians and actors with the establishment of the Market Theatre in the 1970's, and has once again been rejuvenated with the building of the new Nelson Mandela bridge making access easier. I absolutely loved it - I'd chosen it as a place to practice some building sketching on, with some of our oldest and newest architecture visible from there, but was so attracted by the colour and people that I didn't end up fitting many buildings in (nothing to do with the fact that I find them so hard to draw of course!) After sitting outside the Market Theatre drinking coffee, me drawing the stalls, John my sketching companion (very competently!) some buildings - we moved across the square to another small market in the shade of enormous old trees, which I can't find any information about, but which, if they could talk, would surely tell tales of much of the areas tumultuous history.

I haven't captured the scale of them, the palm tree is much taller, the far one much broader - I'm sure children could slide down the base of its trunk which is probably the area of the average -um, I don't know- bathroom? I added colour to this one afterwards, leaving the background 'sunbleached', well that's my story anyway!

Everybody moved around a lot so the centre figure got really muddled, but these two women sussed out that I was drawing them and kindly sat still under their gorgeous rainbow umbrella - I've emailed a copy of it to Ntosh on the right. This tree scene I felt could be almost anywhere in Africa, it was reassuring and relaxing to find it right in the middle of the biggest centre of commerce on the continent - can't wait to go back and sketch some more.

SketchCrawl - with company!

Yesterday was a great day!... the 28th World Wide SketchCrawl and, at last, there was a group of us instead of just me! I'd heard from John Philip through this blog, and he being of an age and mind to know how to do these things, started a Facebook Event to invite interested people to come along to the Emmarentia botanical gardens to meet and sketch. We had about ten sketchers and a couple more to provide encouragement and model material, and we had a lovely afternoon, in spite of rather chilly weather and dry, sparse wintry gardens to inspire us. When there are more resulting sketches posted, I'll put a link here to the others that were done on the day. I tried to record the occasion by putting as many of my fellow sketchers in mine as possible. We are planning to make it a regular gathering, with many others who couldn't make it keen to join in when they can. Another reason to celebrate, the third anniversary of A Sketch in Time was also yesterday - who would have thought I'd keep anything going that long!?

Quick sketches

A quick sketch of a bit of garden, done with ballpoint pen and watercolour some months ago - the jacarandas are full of leaves now - to say I'm still here. After all the intense activity of the workshop and the Stations, I've hit a slump! I've been arranging and re-arranging my watercolours (it's called procrastinating) to make them easily transportable for walking and sketching, and managed to get a little tin with six colours, a waterbrush, small sketchbook and a pencil into an old make-up bag tied around my waist - cunningly hidden under my T-shirt so nobody tries to remove it in the hope that it contains untold wealth. I did this little 10 minute sketch yesterday at the dam - found I'd packed the wrong little moleskine - a plain notebook instead of the watercolour one. Oh well, will get it right sometime!

Bus stops & Soccer balls

Oh my, I have been away a long time - I'm ashamed to say I have flagrantly flouted my resolutions and all but disappeared into the bowels of the internet. The reason - Facebook, which I've been very nonchalant, take-it-or-leave-it about, has suddenly delivered up for me a whole bunch of old buddies from school, art school, old workplaces... and I've just been in a time-warp. It's wonderful, and I hope to carry on keeping up with them, but somehow I have to find a way to do it without never leaving this seat ever again!

I absolutely had to leave it today, to do a few essential things, and took my sketchbook along for the much needed outing. The Joburg skyline has been slightly altered by the addition of a soccer ball to the Hillbrow tower - a little reminder to us that this is the year of the Soccer World Cup in South Africa, of which I'm sure we'll all be hearing much more about. I passed two women sitting at a bus stop on the way home, and remembered that 'Buses and bus stops' is the theme for this weeks Urban Sketchers Flickr discussion group, so did a turn around the block so I could sketch them. Their bus took a long time to arrive, lucky for me but not for them, as, feeling very out of drawing practice, I had time to do two sketches. I added a bit of colour later at home to the top one, which improved it - this one I posted on Urban Sketchers, just as I did it on site. I have a soft spot for bus stops and their patient occupants. I did this bus stop painting some years ago, and had people clamouring to buy it, the only time that's happened to me!

Night of a 1000 drawings

On Thursday evening my daughter and I went to the Night of a 1000 Drawings at the old Park Station in the city. I've been to 'new' Park Station before, to catch or meet trains to and from Cape Town, but I didn't even know about this old section to the south of it, abandoned and disused apart from the odd party event. I can find very little information about it, but I think it dates back to the Gold Rush. It is a magnificent building with soaring arches, beautiful wood and tilework, marble steps and pillars - I sincerely hope there are plans to restore and preserve it, though I can't find any reference to it on the net.
The event was great fun - the public had been asked to donate A5 drawings to be sold for R100 (less than £8 or $14) each on the night and the funds raised go to city charities. I only heard about it a day or two before, so didn't draw - next year! You had to buy envelopes with stickers, then peruse the drawings and choose the ones you liked, then at 7.30 there was a signal and a mad rush to put your sticker on your chosen artworks. There was some stiff competition for some of them - we got the ones we picked, though Dominique had somebody begging and pleading with her to part with her treasure.
As for my sketch... oh, buildings are a challenge for me!.. I found a nice secluded vantage-point but got confused with all the arches and what you could see through them, and completely overworked the watercolour. Those stars were projected onto the ceiling - it started pumping as the music got progressively louder but I was happy to depart with a sketch and my two purchases - I think the daughter would have liked to stay and party.

Testing times

I've been thinking I should try and focus this blog a bit and stick to watercolours and nature, but that's not where life is at the moment, or not all the time.... today was a(nother) trip to a traffic licensing centre to book a learner's test for our youngest child. Heavy traffic, bureaucracy, power outages, frustration, waiting, waiting, and therefore a chance to sketch, what would I do without it? So, some ugly buildings, an ice cream man who came, and went, and came back again, and a turnstile that kept on turning - and eventually a boy with a booking to to take his learner's, please, for the last time this time!!
Oh, but I did get out yesterday for a few minutes to the greenest, lushest most verdant Emmarentia Dam park. I started sketching and watercolouring, when I heard cries of "no, Oscar, nooo-o-oooo!!" and looked up to find the cutest Staffie puppy in mid-flight onto my sketchbook and lap. That was fine, I can incorporate muddy paw prints into a landscape, but then huge raindrops started plopping onto the page and the black clouds said they weren't going to stop, so I flapped the sketchbook closed - thus creating the masterful green reflections in the water - and trekked off home to finish it from memory. I know it looks ridiculously shrieking green - but it was!

By the Stream

Just back from sketchercising... I sat next to the stream that runs into the dam with my original little kit of watercolours and waterbrush. The morning sun was coming through the bright spring leaves, lots of dappled light and dark shadows, leaves, sticks and branches, rocks, water and reflections. The sound of the water trickling a very pleasant start to the day, though I couldn't get it to show up in my little sketch. While that dried I did two tiny sketches, squinting to try and just see bigger shapes and values instead of being distracted by all the many visual things going on. I could have quite happily spent all day there.
I'm reconsidering the waterbrush for this type of sketching - I'm sure I get far more colour and water on my towel than I do on the paper!