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!

Joburg Carnival

A few of us sketchers still in Joburg over the holidays went into town to sketch the old year out on Monday at the annual Joburg Carnival. Groups of inner city residents, with the help of local artists and art students, make floats, dress up and parade through the streets. The procession got to our designated meeting place nearly an hour sooner than I thought they would. I was a bit early, so dashed over to where they were coming down the next street towards Nelson Mandela Bridge and scribbled off a couple of quick impressions. Luckily the parade ended nearby in Newtown, where we caught up with it and carried on sketching as the groups competed for best costumes, floats and performances. Onlookers crowded around some of the sketchers, fascinated, but blocking their view, and ran off to tell the subjects they were being drawn, who then came over to have a look. Quite chaotic, but lots of fun.


I took too many sketching implements and couldn't decide which to use - so a bit of a mixture here. I must learn to restrict my choices.

This and other possible New Year resolutions to follow, but in the meantime, I wish all my friends, followers and passers-by, all the very best for a happy, healthy, love and art filled 2013!