Happy Thanksgiving

Just to wish all my blogging friends, and family in the USA a very Happy Thanksgiving - I am thankful for this blogging platform where I've got to know and share so much with so many of you!
(this is the Graffiti app on Facebook - press Play to view the whole message)

Fashion School

Today I did something I've been wanting to do for ages - I went to the Design academy where my daughter Dominique works as a lecturer, and was kindly allowed to lurk around the edges as they prepared for a big fashion show. I started with shaky line drawings in a sketchpad, then bravely decided to bring out my lovely new A4 Moleskine watercolour notebook and full W&N wooden-box set. What a great place to sketch... I felt like I was just getting into the flamboyance, excitement and tension of it all, when I suddenly felt quite exhausted and had to call it a day - I hope to go back again sometime and go straight in with colours and confidence!

A Small Sketchcrawl

I didn't find anyone to go Sketchcrawling with me on Saturday, and I wasn't feeling very energetic after a week's sleep deprivation (neighbour's alarms and springtime sinuses taking turns to wrench me from my slumbers), so I just took a little sketchbook with me to breakfast at a little café nearby, and then to the delectable Cheese Shop next-door. I'm afraid they aren't very typical of Johannesburg, or South Africa, to represent this part of the world in my first contribution to this forum. By the time the next one comes along I'm determined to dig out some other sketchers in this city - there must be some!


I slept in the afternoon, to be ready to go to a performance of Cats at The Teatro at the Montecasino complex in the evening. It was a really fabulous production, I can't imagine that it was too much inferior to the original London one. I took just the black of my Elmer's Paintastics colour-changing markers (for kids really, but too cool for this grownup to resist), because it would be quick and easy to carry, then added more colours and the Magic Wand later.


We sat at the back, way up in the rafters, so the stage looked pretty tiny, but the performances, sets and lighting were BIG, so we enjoyed it nevertheless. It was pretty dark when I sketched the stage, and when I had a crazy attempt at the dancers, I couldn't see what I was doing on my page at all, so this is an - um - expressionist(?) rendition of a little bit of the movement.

Pet arrangements

I've been keeping a little sketchbook in the kitchen and scribbling down some of the yin and yang-like poses our dog and cat get into every night after their supper. If I'd done that over the last four years I'd have hundreds of convoluted combos in the collection. This is a crazy weimeraner who, when our daughter brought the waif kitten home, we were convinced with one boisterous nip, would bring about her very early demise. After weeks of protecting her like a coopfull of mother hens from 'The Orc', as we rudely referred to Gucci (the designer dog), one unguarded moment we turned to see Kenzo the kitten tucked under his chin, and both of them fast asleep and very contented, and that's the way they've snuggled up ever since.

And since those first raindrops started plopping down in my last post, it's been raining and pouring here. It's the 25th International Sketchcrawl tomorrow, but with this being the forecast for the next 48 hours, I'll have to find a shopping mall or some such dry place, to take part. I haven't tried very hard to find other sketchers to join me, but if anyone is in the neighbourhood and would like to, leave a comment or email, I'd love to have company!

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!

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!

Jacaranda time

It doesn't seem a year ago that I was painting jacarandas in flower, but here they are again. This is in our garden - it jostles for position with a yellowwood, a stray little privet and a tall cyprus. We've had lots of wind, hail and rainstorms this year so the blossoms look a little sparser than usual.