Sunday, June 24, 2012

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


7 comments:

Sadami said...

Hi, Cathy,
I love your pencil sketches! Your lines are clear and very eye catchy.
Cheers, Sadami

Karim said...

Cathy I like the theme of this sketch very much - it is what we at Pencils for Africa call very "frugalis creativus" - creativity utilizing frugal or recycled materials - in this case, as you wrote in the caption: "..bits of old cars, school desks, office and garden chairs and goodness knows what.."!

Karim

Shirley said...

Your pencil sketches are WONDERFUL! They are so lively - something that is harder to achieve with pen. If you spray them with fixative, do they still smudge and lighten? I have an animal sketch from the museum that I am about to leave with just fixative.

Unknown said...

Lovely sketches!!!

I'm like you with pencils, although one of the reasons I don't use them is I'm less accurate than with a pen. I do enjoy them though. I spray my sketchbook with hairspray afterwards (fixative being too expensive & I think unobtainable here)

Unknown said...

I've just read the breaking pencil link - need to help!

dinahmow said...

Cathy, this is a great scheme! I haven't even read the links yet, but will round up some pencils for Karim.
I almost never use a pencil, except for drafting and don't do much of that now!

http://carolking.wordpress.com said...

I love the lines in your pencil sketches. And thank you for all those links. I will go check them out.