Shepstone Gardens

On Monday a group of us went to Shepstone Gardens, a Heritage site and a busy wedding and events venue. It is a whole conglomeration of stone constructions - houses, chapels, pathways, walls, a garden shed and a studio, commissioned by the Modderfontein Dynamite Company and built around the turn of the century by Afrikaners after the Anglo Boer War - from 1 000 tons of quartz rock. Apparently Mahatma Gandhi stayed on and off in the encampment at the foot of the ridge, while his friend, the architect Kallenbach was building.

The first sketch I did there is on its way as a postcard in the Postcards from my Walk project, so I won't show it yet. (my last one never reached its destination in California, so holding thumbs for this one!)

I had another prepared splashy watercolour sheet in my sketchbook and the blues and browns fitted well into the shape of the wedding chapel, so that was my next subject.

There was a little boy looking like he needed something to do (he was on school holidays and his dad was working in the Gardens) on the lawn next to me so I offered him a sketchbook and pencil, which he shyly but eagerly accepted. He told me his name was Gift, and he spent the next hour or more drawing intently - watching me looking up and down and sketching, and then following suit. I think he indeed has a gift, to be so young - in Grade 2 so not more than 6 or 7 - and concentrate for so long on his carefully observed drawing. I left him my pencil, I think I'll go back with a sketchbook - a possible young urban sketcher/artist/architect in the making!

Tennis Rules, OK?

A lot of time spent in front of the TV watching tennis lately and when I'm not too wrapped up in the match to think of it, I sometimes pick up a pen and try and scribble down the action. This time without rewinding and stopping on frames as I did four years (four years!!) ago in this post, I hardly looked at the paper as my pen tracked the movement resulting in some strange but descriptive postures. Not very flattering to the players, but fun!
Much as it would be nice for a Brit to at last win, in this Jubilee and Olympian year, I have to stay loyal and yell once again.... Go Roger!!

Fête de la Musique

Last Saturday we went to sketch at the French Fête de la Musique in Melville, where 7th Street was closed to traffic, restaurants and cafés overflowed their tables, chairs and sofas outside into a beautiful warm, sunny day and a free and easy atmosphere took over as three large dancing puppets started the festivities.

I thought there was to be a brass band and had prepared a sketchbook sheet at home with watercolour washes to draw over - thinking the yellow splashes would be a good base for a brass band to burst forth from into the blue. Well there was no brass band and the puppets pranced past so quickly, I hardly squiggled down their outlines before they and the drummers behind them disappeared down the road. I'm feeling the urge to sketch in different mediums lately - this first technique was more successful than others...

 ...my next sketch (above) I tried Carioca markers in a sketchbook that didn't allow them to wash and spread with water as I intended, so onto different paper that did... as did the disposable Pilot Vpen, which I love using for its watersoluble properties, but hard to control on the trot.

I managed to capture my daughter (with her back to me, above) a proud new resident of Melville, then I pulled out my Pentel Pocket Brushpen for a few more figures as they dashed past - so much activity, this was not a relaxing sketching experience! Perhaps when I go sketching I should just take one pen with me to stop myself trying to use everything in my artillery and feeding my indecisiveness and confusion.

Having lost the other sketchers in the crowd, I joined my family for lunch in a Mexican café, fitting in another sketch while waiting for the food to arrive. I had done a fair sketch of my daughter's fiancé - a good likeness, dark in tone against the light outside - but later at home I thought I'd 'fix' it and really messed it up, saturating the paper with uncontrollably bleeding colours and pens, dabbing didn't help and I lost his face completely. Lesson: do not fiddle with sketches after the fact!

A last sketch before home, rather wishing I was younger, trendier and more energetic to carry on eating, drinking, sketching and listening until late to the great variety of music pumping from every doorway up and down the street.

Symphony Choir and Orchestra

I went and sketched at a rehearsal of the Johannesburg Symphony choir and Philharmonic Orchestra on Saturday. They were practising for a performance of Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, a celebration of the Queen's Jubilee and the 80th birthday of Prof Mzilikazi Khumalo on Sunday. These two Ebony pencil sketches were done last, after I'd tried first my rollerball pen with Ecoline watercolour-filled waterbrushes - the blue one is still working well, but the brown one has clogged up badly! - and then a disposable fountain pen with waterbrush to wash in the tones.

Members of the choir and orchestra setting up the stage

Warming up and tuning the instruments



Conductor Richard Cock with part of the orchestra

 

A section of the 100-strong choir



soloist Siyabonga Maqungo singing "Onaway! Awake, beloved!" from Hiawatha's Wedding

Beautiful music, a warm Linder Auditorium and sketching on a cold winter's afternoon - what could be nicer?

Pencil sketching

A ramshackle horse cart made from bits of old cars, school desks, office and garden chairs and goodness knows what, that cruises around local suburbs collecting garden refuse to take to the dump for a small fee 



Anni sketching in a café after our last
sketchday at the koppies

 Here are a few pencil sketches I've done fairly recently - I don't sketch very much in pencil for some reason, although I enjoy it when I do. Perhaps it's because the drawings sometimes look a bit smudgy and pale after they've been bashed around in a sketchbook for a few years. But somehow, Karim Ajania of Pencils for Africa came across my watersoluble pencil sketch at the Salvage Yard a few posts ago, and asked to do an interview with me, and another with my friend Anni, who was also sketching at the salvage yard that day.
Pencils for Africa collects used pencils in the USA and sends them to impoverished children in Africa, recycling them as a sort of relay and as a human connection of the pencils being drawn and written with from one side of the world to the other. Just read this touching story Breaking Pencils if you think kids in Africa couldn't use a previously owned pencil or two!
I apologise for all the links in this short post - I could give you lots more fascinating ones from Pencils for Africa, like the one about a professional pencil sharpener, and someone who carves pencils into incredibly intricate tiny sculptures - but I hope you'll cruise around the site for yourself, and maybe send Karim some of your pencils to go off travelling to someone who will truly appreciate them!


A quick, rather nervous sketch of young lions resting in the shade on our trip to Zambia in July last year



Melville Koppies

Just up the hill from my house, is a heritage site, Melville Koppies Central, where Stone and Iron Age artefacts have been discovered and preserved. It's not generally open to the public, but they have Open days for walkers and hikers, birding days, and for the first time last Saturday, a sketching, painting and photography day. John, Anni and I jumped at the chance to spend a morning in this wild spot of nature in the middle of Joburg, and we really felt as if we were out in the bush, apart from distant sounds of traffic and boys playing soccer down at Marks Park.

 I had planned to move around, sketching from the top of the koppie, down to the forested area lower down, but ended up sitting at the same spot, just turning my chair around to face South, then East, and finally North, before two of the hardworking custodians of the site, Wendy and John came to tell us they were locking up. I became fascinated with the thatching grass all around me - long and dry in the middle of winter, at first it seemed a uniform blond ochre, the more I looked, the more colours I saw. Pinks, golds, mauve and blue, shots of luminescent green - impossible to put them all in without drawing each stalk individually - and glimpses of the city looking soft and gentle through the waving strands  - I felt I could paint there for weeks on end.

We've been told we can go back and paint when the Birders are there - really look forward to another escape to the country - so close by!

Johannesburg City Library

 Joburg Sketchers went to the newly renovated and revamped Public Library in the city on Saturday. We had an anxious start with parking hassles and misunderstandings, and then in the library some of us being told we weren't allowed to sketch there... but after some negotiations it was all sorted out - we've evn been invited back to give a workshop! The library is beautiful, restored to its former glory and more.

There were lots of concientious students using the reading and reference rooms. I did a quick sketch of the huge windows with a floating level halfway down them, then looked down to some people working below - of course as soon as I started on the guy (that is a guy!) on the right he began packing up to go. It was a freezing cold day, and though some of the library is heated, swinging doors let icy blasts through every room, so many of the readers kept their coats and hoodies on.

Fingers freezing, I did a very fast sketch of one of two enormous, ornate book presses in the entrance foyer, the coldest room of all while waiting for the others to finish. I thought that my Pentel Pocket Brushpen wasn't working very well on the paper I had, but discovered when I got home that it had run out of ink - darn! It gave me some interesting textures I guess. We found a fast-food place nearby to have coffee, a bite to eat and look at everyone's sketches. You can see most of them here on Facebook.