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...