A poem

I've been reading a book - 'ten poems to open your heart' by Roger Housden, and this poem by Galway Kinnell did just strike a deep chord in me... who of us (especially mothers!) haven't felt that sow-like feeling, or have walked past someone else who is so humble/downtrodden/looked down upon, and uncomfortably looked away. So I copied it into my journal - my loopy inward-looking journal, not the shiny happy one - and drew a sow as I remember them long ago on my Uncle John's farm in Zimbabwe, long since obliterated. Huge, patient, smelly, repulsive, her only purpose to produce and feed the squealing pink piglets attached to her belly. Yet there was something entirely noble and beautiful about her, which she surely deserves to be blessed for.

Old Friends

Oops - I didn't get this sketch into the last post as intended...

Walk the Talk

Yay! I have been doing some drawing - though I'm afraid they were from photos that I took, as in the first one, the walkers were just trotting past too quickly, in the Radio 702 Walk the Talk fundraiser in Johannesburg last month, and in the second, I felt too self conscious to whip out my sketchbook - a common malaise of mine.

On Sunday my church celebrated it's Centenary, and before the festivities began, I spotted Daphne (about 91) and Vi (in her eighties somewhere) sitting in the garden chatting - looking towards the little 'Garden of Remembrance' where the ashes of many of their friends and family are laid. It made me think how very short a time a hundred years is (I am already over the halfway mark) but how much can happen and change. From horse carriages to spacecraft, from uncontrollable disease and pestillence to organ transplants and beyond...

As far as my sketches go, I like the looser ones of the walkers - helped by putting the pictures on slideshow to draw from. The 'old friends' is stiffer, too controlled, what usually happens when drawing from a photograph.

Bus Stop

I still haven't started doing my intended sketch-a-day, though I have been very busy with other things.

But to keep my blog going... oooh it's hard... I'm posting this painting I did, and sold, some while ago - I did the same scene in watercolour, and again in oils, and could have sold it over and over. It's one I rather wish I'd kept - I only seem to have old paintings left here that I don't particularly like - apart from the ones of my children which I wouldn't sell anyway.

She was a woman I saw from my car - sitting so beautifully dressed, cream outfit lit up in the blue bus shelter, occupying it so dramatically, and patiently waiting to get where she was going - I went home and immediately committed it to paper. It's very seldom that a scene just begs to be painted like that - I wish it would happen more often, but, sigh, it usually takes a lot more work and effort than that! Since I painted this, the bus shelters have changed in Johannesburg - they no longer have seats in them, just a pole to lean against. There have been other scenes that I have wanted to paint and haven't, and now times, circumstances have changed and one just doesn't see them any more.

For instance, on sunny afternoons you used to see groups of domestic workers - 'maids' - dressed in their maid uniforms of matching overalls, aprons and caps, sitting gathered on grassy pavements, (or sidewalks) chatting and laughing, enjoying the sunshine and each others company, and a break from their tedious work. It occurred to me that I don't seem to see them any more - I never got around to sketching or painting them - opportunity lost, I think, though I'm still looking...

The Pets

A not very good drawing of our dog and cat, who love each other very much and curl up in all sorts of combinations. Kenzo the Kat does have one flopped-over ear, that isn't just bad drawing!

Watching poppies grow

Here are two very satisfying pages from my journal - not so much the drawings, but the fact that I actually planted the seedlings, which I don't always get around to, and they came up so magnificently. I've had poppies in my house for three weeks now, with new buds forming constantly. These should remind me to keep on sowing and reaping - the rewards are great! The Easter eggs are still hanging around my middle, and my son's shoes lying on the sitting room floor, provoking housewifely grumbles, will maybe one day bring waves of nostalgia for the good old days.

A holiday in France

Here are some pages from my journal I kept on a wonderful painting holiday in France a year ago - the writing's mainly about the food, but the drawing 'notes' helped me to really be there with the details. My book is quite messy, with bits of paper stuck in it, and watercolour swatches sploshed around, but it brings back the whole experience. I drew with a Pilot fineliner, and a damp brush over it to make grey/blue washes. I couldn't really add more colour without washing all the line drawing away, but I like the looseness of the water-soluble pen. It is easy and inspiring to keep a journal on a great holiday, but very hard at home with the mundane day-to-day stuff. When you look back, though, at 'mundane' drawings of years gone by, they are the stuff of which memories are made and just as valuable, even more so, when it's your family, pets, homes you have preserved.