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 Fire Walker

Our sketching group was privileged to be invited to sketch in William Kentridge's garden last week. The artist himself was away, but the place was abuzz with gardeners and its designer, who gained permission for us to visit - house and studio staff, personal assistants and visiting builders and workmen - really a full-on business in motion. We were allowed a peek into the huge studio where some exciting work-in-progress was displayed on shelves and walls. After an exhausting climb to the top of the garden to see the stunning views, I settled for a section of the garden in which a smaller version of William Kentridge and Gerhard Marx's 11 metre high FireWalker sculpture strides under an old fig tree. (I was struck by the holes in the fig leaves echoeing the holes in the sculpture and spent too long trying to depict that!) From various angles, the sculpture looks like scattered shapes of black and white metal plate, but when you see it directly from the front, they join together to form the figure of a woman, often seen around the streets of Joburg, who cook and sell mielies (corn) and meat over their fire braziers, carried to and from work balanced on their heads.
Ah, me and William K, working and drawing in the same inspiring surroundings...who would have thought!!

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.

Woe is me

I've been feeling a bit sorry for myself. I did this stupid thing trying to swing myself up into a tree to prune a branch, badly straining muscles, tendons and nerves from my neck all the way through to my right forefinger. Comes from not realising my upper body strength has not kept up with my lower body expansion, and that I am no longer 25, but the reverse, plus some!

So these are a few sketches that I have managed with my restricted drawing capablities: Two women outside a local fruit & veg shop, selling brooms and embroidery, and a series of quick sketches in the waiting room of the X-ray department where I got my neck and shoulder checked out - nothing too alarming besides ancient whiplash injuries coming back to bite me, and good old, old age :-O)))

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...