St John's College

Not many kilometres away, but a million miles in other respects from the graffiti, vendors, noise and smells of Newtown, are the hallowed grounds of St John's College, a prestigious private school where three of us went sketching on Saturday. With historic stone Herbert Baker buildings arranged around immaculate gardens and sports fields, every direction we looked held another perfect scene waiting for our attention. In fact - apart from having a quick look at the north side, where the wind was blowing and school buildings far too imposing and intimidating to draw - I didn't stir from my first chosen spot in the shade (on a steaming hot Spring day) in the David Quad, just turning to face front, left and up!

I took ink, dip pens and an array of sharpened sticks, determined to try and sketch in the medium of Kiah Kiean, whose work about brings tears to my eyes it's so beautiful. Of course mine is nothing like it, as it should (or shouldn't) be, but I enjoyed the different lines and unexpected results, in spite of my attempts to control them. An organist practising in the chapel nearby, over and over and OVER again was the only slightly jarring note after an hour or two, but I took it as a lesson - practice practice practice!

Street Tales

Sketches from last Friday's trip into Newtown - I decided I had to have a good go at sketching some of the buildings and architecture - something I'm not at all confident or comfortable doing as some of you know! After much holding up of pencils to measure and estimate angles I was quite pleased to get a reasonable rendition of Gwigwi Mwrebi St down, but want to get a looser and more interesting look to my lines - much more practice needed. I left off all the graffiti as my lines might have disappeared in the confusion!                                                             When a big truck parked in front of my view, I turned to the two women selling cigarettes on my right who had been chattering non-stop from the time I sat down next to them. They didn't seem to notice, or care, that I was drawing them. I liked the way the graffiti on the highway pillar soared up behind and above them, kind of illustrating the tales they might have been telling - I needed a longer page!

Newtown Fridays

 

 This is a whole bunch of sketches I've been doing on the first Friday of each month, over the last four months. Our Joburg Sketchers group, of varying attendance, have been meeting with some artists from Assemblage at their studios in Newtown on the west side of the city. We join forces for sketching trips to draw some of the nittier, grittier areas of Johannesburg that we have hesitated to venture to before  -though now and then we have been so brave, for the New Year Carnival and one or two other occasions.

The studios are nearby the underside of the big M1 highway, and so far we haven't managed to go further afield than that as there has been so much happening around there. A new shopping precinct, Newtown Junction, being built; vendors cooking, selling and flirting with the construction workers; a music video being filmed with dancers and a young cyclist flying past - luckily over and over so I had a chance to sketch another bit of him as he sped past. (I switched to a new Moleskine A4 sketchbook half way through this series, hence the buff coloured paper!)

 We're going again tomorrow - hopefully we'll get a bit further along on this long, slow sketch crawl!

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!!