What good is sitting alone in your room?

Hello! Back to my nice quiet blog after almost drowning in crowded, noisy Facebook. It's such a long time since I posted, I don't know where to start, so I'll just start... been doing quite a bit of figure drawing and painting lately, with the Figures & Form group I mentioned before and in a workshop - more of which soon - which was very hard work! These two watercolours on Arches cold press were sold hot off the easel as a birthday present for the model, so apologies for the bad photos. I would have liked to get more varied angles but the class was full and I couldn't squeeze into another position.

Figures & Form

Ecoline watercolour and Neocolor II on Fabriano 70x50cm

Graphite and marker on cartridge 59x42cm

Ecoline and Neocolor II on Fabriano 70x50cm

I spent the last Wednesday mornings of May at lovely figure drawing sessions held by the Figures & Form group in Parkhurst, in return for a 10 minute talk on urban sketching on my last day. It was lovely to slow down and spend whole hours looking, drawing and painting. These were from a session with the theme of Flappers - the top and bottom ones long poses and the middle ones two 5 minute poses. Such fun, but what does one do with all these studies..!?
The talk went well in spite of nerves, I'm a drawer not a talker!..but I had stacks of sketchbooks on display, and inspirational sketching books like The Art of Urban Sketching and One Drawing a Day and Danny Gregory's books. The group received it enthusiastically - ten minutes wasn't actually enough to say all I had to say about urban sketching. I'm hoping  a few more will join Joburg Sketchers, as well as start their own sketchbooks and journals. I forgot to take a photo, as I always do :-/ but I have to say the display looked quite impressive, I never feel like I sketch enough, but when they're all spread out - whew - 100's!!

Inanda Country Base

Sorry to be so scarce, so much going on - more on my to-do lists than actually getting done, but I don't  function very well when pre-occupied, as I am. I should be back to normal after July and my daughter's wedding, but the days when I had long hours to sketch, post, visit lots of blogs and leave comments, seem to be a very distant, nostalgic memory! Thank you to everyone who continue to visit and comment, I so appreciate it - and it was lovely to hear from some old familiar friends recently!
These were from a sketchday at Inanda Country Base stables about 2 weeks ago. I'm not very used to horses, or drawing them, and was disconcerted by how very large and curious they were - they had to come right up and see what we were doing, and attempt a nibble at brushes and watercolours. I feel I'd need to spend a few weeks just looking to do them justice, but could only stay a couple of hours. I spotted a figure coming towards me down the avenue and quickly sketched her before she reached and walked past me. Then the little group of children gathered around and delightedly recognised my sketch as the youngest child's mother. That was it, they had to draw, and be drawn, and were gratifyingly thrilled with it all. Hopefully it will have sparked an interest for life..?

The Lamp Post

Thank you for all the well wishes! I'm happy to report that the pain in the neck is getting much better - numbness in my fingers will take a little longer. Sketching is fortunately one thing that isn't too hard to do, unlike hanging up washing (yay) and gardening! So I joined our group for the 39th SketchCrawl on Saturday, in the quaint suburb of Norwood. We had a great turnout, and the Lamp Post, a lovely shop full of interesting stuff and curiosities, was very welcoming, letting us 'crawl' all over it, inside and out, and providing lovely soup and sandwiches at lunchtime on a chilly autumn day.

I drew the outside of the shop, before increasing traffic blocked my view, and some raindrops drove me under cover. Two ladies at their food stall were not at all keen on being sketched, and emphatically turned their backs. While the newspaper man was very happy to be my subject as he wove amongst passing cars and trucks - turning to the old doll's pram in between glimpses of him.
You can see the other Joburger's sketches and a few photos here on Facebook and here on the Sketchcrawl site.

Prints for sale, and back at the Dam

Urban Sketchers has a new online store where you can buy prints of sketches from around the world, including these two of mine. All the art in the store raises funds in support of the USk blog and the upcoming symposium in Barcelona - which I was planning and looking forward to going to until my daughter announced her wedding date for a week later. Ah well, exchanging one happy event for another, not a bad prospect!
I chose these sketches as typical scenes in Johannesburg, very familiar to me. The jacaranda sketch I described in this blog post last November. The top one I did a couple of years ago, at Emmarentia Dam near my home. These basket ladies sit outside the entrance to the 'Dog Park' where we often go walking. If business is quiet they pick up their wares and walk around trying to find customers, keeping an eye out for security guards, as trading in the park is illegal. I sketched these three coming towards me from a distance - the furthest figure in my sketch actually being the woman in front, by the time they were up close I was scribbling down the one bringing up the rear.

On our last Joburg Sketchers sketch date we also went to 'the dam', the venue for our very first meeting back in August 2010 - still only four of us since a few of our regular sketchers have departed Jhb for more picturesque surroundings. But we make do with what we have, so once again applied ourselves to the geese, the pecked-bare red earth, the trees and the people...

Barney & Bella

I tried to do some watercolour sketches of Bella and Barney, who we cat-sat while on holiday at Kidds Beach, as a little thank you to their beloved pet human for opening her home to us while she was travelling. Of course they didn't stay still for a single minute, even while sleeping, and my birds-eye view (I wouldn't like to be a bird near these two highly athletic and alert siblings!) of them moving around on the deck resulted in a page of rather contorted looking kitties.

Posting here is likely to be even more erratic than usual with a wedding on the cards, my eldest daughter and her fiancé happily having booked the day. My usual reaction to a mountain of things to do and having to think and plan is to freeze in a tizz until adrenalin takes over and I start to get things done. Sketching and painting seem like an unnecessary distraction from my state of catatonia, but I'll try now and then!

The Tearoom

Two other sketches from my week at the coast, the top one is of what used to be the Kidds Beach Tearoom, now a restaurant and pub. When we used to come here as children it was about the most thrilling aspect of the trip. Walking up those curved steps into the smell of suntan lotion, sweets, fresh bread, sand and sea is still a strong memory, though now replaced with fish and chips and beer. We were allowed to choose one or two sweets - usually it was a big pink stick of 'Kidds Beach Rock', with the name running right through from end to end, to last for the whole holiday.

The second is the ancient little changeroom/wind shelter next to the tidal pool, daubed with seaside graffiti -and with a passing beach cleaner superimposed. The sea around here really does teem with dolphins sometimes - a day or two before this I'd watched hundreds slowly rolling past as we sat having sundowners on the patio - what a privilege!

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.

A Little Break

A repost of a 2009 sketch just to say, I'm off to see the sea for a few days, lucky me! I'm looking forward to long walks, staring at the waves and rocks, and perhaps trying to get some of it onto paper. An old expression my grandmother used to say: "Sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits" sounds good to me!

Flutter by, butterfly

Oh, I'm having trouble getting going in this new year! I've been cleaning my studio, slowly, sluggishly, for two weeks - hoping that when it's sorted out (still not there yet!) I'll get to my easel and start on at least one of my intentions for 2013 - more painting. I feel I need to sort out this blog too, freshen it up, but that seems like a mammoth task and many hours on the computer. In the meantime, this is a watercolour sketch from the dining room window a week or two ago when things were rampantly growing in a spell of hot, wet weather. There's been a huge migration of little white butterflies swirling endlessly through the garden, from west to east, over Johannesburg and much of the country. Where they come from and where they go, I don't know, but they are lovely!

Parkview Christmas Market

Christmas Markets have been in full swing in Joburg - getting their business done before everyone disappears to the coast for the holidays. I went to this one in Parkview on Saturday - it has been so hot and sunny but the weather turned cold, wet and grey, unfortunately for everyone who worked hard to put this together, and the charities that benefit. Still, quite a few turned up and it went on over three days, so I hope they made a good profit.
Lots to draw, with musicians, jugglers, dancers, pretty stalls, children and angels - and Father Christmas scandalously dressed in blue for his sponsor. I think I wasn't the only one put off, some of the children looked at him very doubtfully!

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.

Swan Lake

I was invited to go sketching last month with friends at Gallagher Estate, a business conference centre which, I was told, has gardens which are Midrand's best kept secret. I almost refused, as the next day I had to go into hospital, but instead of staying home getting more and more nervous, I decided to go along.

Behind the imposing gates, and past the huge exhibition centres and parking garages, we met up in a green, woodsy tearoom area, with the peaceful sound of trickling water taking us far away from the 'suits' discussing important stuff inside. After coffee, we wandered down through stone pathways and over pretty bridges, arriving eventually at a tree-lined pond, scattered about with bright orange clivia blooms, and two magnificent swans floating serenely over the surface, gently rippling the reflections....Not!! As soon as we sat down and started taking out our sketchpads, the huge birds began rushing at us, glaring out of beady eyes hidden in their black masks, swishing up waves in front of their chests, and very obviously telling us to back off, get lost, and get the hell out of there! We gingerly retreated to slightly higher ground, behind some rocks and trees and sat at the chairs and tables, which seemed to appease them slightly, though they carried on swimming away, then whooshing up to remind us to keep our distance. They must have had eggs or chicks - cygnets (thanks Bridget ;-) somewhere to be so aggressive. We at last settled down to lose our fright in trying to capture the dark reflections and the deceptively pure white grace of the scary swans.

But one brave - or daffy - sketcher persisted in getting closer and was eventually attacked - she fended them off with her bag and sketchbook but was bashed hard on the leg with a muscular wing. The swans were then so irritated that when two unsuspecting business execs came out of their meeting for some fresh air and sat on a bench nearby, one drew itself up into full battle mode - I grabbed a brushload of dark paint off my palette and sploshed down the alarming form - with neck doubled up on itself, chest thrust forward, wings akimbo and back arched and fluffed even larger. It slapped its great feet down like claps of thunder beating towards them. I think I thought it would back off so I didn't warn them, but they noticed it just in time to leap behind their bench to safety. Whew - we all behaved after that and finished our sketches at a respectful distance, all thoughts of scalpels and anaesthetics successfully banished from my mind!

Ackland Museum Show in North Carolina!

 The first group show of Urban Sketchers: Seeing the World, One Drawing at a Time opens at the Ackland Museum of Art, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on Thursday August 16th. Thirty eight of the group's one hundred contributors have donated sketches, proceeds from the sales of which will go mainly to Urban Sketchers to support their educational programmes, with a small percentage to the Ackland Art Museum. These are two of the four sketches I sent in, with my thanks to Gabi Campanario and Urban Sketchers, for the wide world they've opened up to me! 

This is a street scene in Parkview (other sketches from there here). Along the pavement, vendors set up their wares and hope people visiting the shops and restaurants will stop and buy. The man was selling bulbs from his carrier bag, with a magazine opened on a page with pictures of clivia in bloom. I have bought bulbs from a similar salesman before, and something completely different came up from what he showed me, so you take your chances!

The woman selling baskets and pots sat patiently, aware that I was sketching her. When the sun started sinking she loaded up her goods to leave - she saw me pick up my pen to sketch her again, and said in words I couldn't really understand, but got the gist of, that she certainly wasn't going to hang around to be drawn again - and within minutes was flouncing off down the road, and gone.