Round and Round the Garden

I got so behind posting paintings done on the 30x30DirectWatercolor challenge, I'm just dumping a whole bunch here, otherwise I'll never catch up! 

One or two intersected with other online challenges - Virginia Hein's Usktalk about applying explosive colour before painting just enough of the image to make it recognisable (the chairs) and international sketch-a-chicken week (irresistible!) and Suhita Shirodkar's 'Start with What If...' (What if I looked through a glass of water)

These aren't all of them, just some on the home and garden theme, which is of course the most available subject while under lockdown - I didn't manage 30, but was happy to have kept up quite a steady pace. I felt like I was getting a grip on how to get started, and use more expressive, less fussy brushstrokes as I went along. (The first ones are at the bottom, more-or-less more recent ones towards the top.) July is International Watercolour Month, apparently, so I think I must carry on while I'm on a roll - trying to curb my natural tendency to switch to something different just as I feel I'm making progress!

Garden Art

Back to watercolours - I always come back sooner or later, but the rustiness shows. The weather in late autumn here is so gorgeous, it's a pleasure to rip myself away from screens and nibbling stuff (must remember this) and spend time in the garden. Which is quite shockingly neglected as far as grooming and maintenance go, though pretty - I like all the leaves lying around and overgrowth. I painted the birdbath outside my studio and noticed that the wall is precariously leaning in towards our side, pushed over by a rampant banana/strelitzia tree next door. As soon as people are allowed back to work we'll have to sort that out...hope it will wait!

Every year around this time Joburg Land Art enthusiasts have an event and exhibition at Emmarentia Dam, which is closed off now for Covid-19. This year we were invited to make our own land art at home and post it online. I attempted an Andy Goldsworthy sort of hanging sculpture made of the seed pods which already adorn the Yellow Bells tree in our garden, extending them down to the ground by joining them together - with no man-made aids. I loved doing that and watching them swing in the breeze, until they began to drop off as fast as I tried to put them up again. So I turned to some fallen flowers and leaves - fig leaves fished out of the pool - and made a much quicker, easier, more cooperative piece.

P.S. I've just discovered a whole bunch of comments waiting to be moderated - I didn't even know that function was turned on - my apologies for seeming to ignore your visits and responses! They included a bunch of Chinese porn site ones though, so just as well some were monitored before publishing, yikes!

One Week 100 People 2020

Marc Taro Holmes and Liz Steel's #Oneweek100people project came around much faster than I was expecting - I'm sure it's not a year since the last one!? But I always enjoy this challenge, in spite of a great feeling of laziness and denial beforehand. Once out, I love the people watching, trying to capture the variety of shapes, styles and characters, and usually notice an improvement during the week. I started almost by accident last Sunday when I had been standing in a long, long grocery queue for a good 10 minutes before I realised it was a great sketching opportunity. Of course as soon as I started doing that, the queue started moving along really fast.

It was a real effort to get out of the house and seek people the next day. First I sat at my steering wheel and sketched people moving around in car parks - mostly going far too quickly for proper observation. 

I've been asked how I sketch moving people so fast, and of course they're very often out of sight before I finish. I can draw basic figures, in about any position, from memory - after many hours of figuring it out, and staring without always trying to sketch (if the left foot is forward, which arm is swinging to the front?...if I've drawn that leg there, how would the other leg make sense, at what angle/where is the weight? etc.etc.) and practicing, and trial and error. Observing the live subjects provides details like body shapes and postures, hair and clothes styles, defining features, and I'm often craning my neck to see my subject's particular standout shoes or headwear, or whatever captured my attention in the first place as they disappear into the crowd or distance. 

I then decided to find more stationary subjects, and found a table at a café with a good view of the other customers. People on phones are pretty much oblivious to anyone staring at them, I find, but had to peer surreptitiously at others through sunglasses. 

It's ironic that the week I ventured out of a long semi-hibernation is the week Covid-19 arrived in this country. I certainly noticed very thorough and regular cleaning of surfaces by restaurant staff at the two I visited, but were still bustling with customers. I'm sure that will drop off drastically this week after the president's announcement of a state of disaster last night, and infection numbers double every other day. Please take care and stay safe everyone.

Another outside table at the Zone in Rosebank, some people staying put for a few moments on what is apparently Smoker's Bench right in front of me - others approaching from or departing into the distance, giving me a little time to catch some details.

And my last day, at Emmarentia Dam's dog park, where people seemed to arrive in batches. I had to include some of the dogs, so much fun to watch (and yes, I did get dam water shook all over me and my sketchbook!) but I ended up with some strangely rendered specimens! I counted 95 attempts at people - the most I've got to doing this challenge over the years, only five escaped!

What a Mess!

We are lucky to live in a leafy suburb with a wonderful green space in the middle of it - the Johannesburg Botanical Gardens, fondly known as Emmarentia Dam - but boy, do we have a lot of events arranged around us - many with loudspeakers booming across the valley from 6 am onwards.
Last Sunday morning, thankfully not as early, was the Color Run, "the happiest 5K on the planet", starting and ending at a nearby school; so I took my Koh-i-Noor Magic rainbow pencil (unfortunately not the sharpener) over there and started sketching the shenanigans.
It was a hot, hot morning... why anyone would want to run through arches where kilos of coloured powders are chucked over you, sticking to your sweaty brows and limbs and no doubt getting in your eyes, nose and ears, I don't know. I was much happier perched on a small grandstand observing and drawing than down there getting colourfully doused - even so I caught a few splashes on my hat and jeans.

Is too much colour a bad thing? I preferred my simple line sketches before I filled some of the shapes in later - the colours all blended together to make nondescript dusty shades, which in fact is what most of the runners ended up looking like too - red and yellow and orange and purple and blue and green make - mud.

But the real messy sketching came when my pencil was down to the wood and I turned to my new Sailor pen, which is perfect on its own with its variable line possibilities... I got way too creative trying to get coloured powders from the event to stick to my sketch, using candle wax first and later fixative, neither of which worked, the powder fell off with the gentlest blow or shake.

But did I stop there? Oh no, I persevered with watercolour splashes, ink brushes, more spray and white crayon until it was a total shambles and those pages fit only to be glued closed together. Ah well, a lesson to keep it simple and remember my sharpener next time!

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...

If you go down to the woods today...

...and you haven't been around 20 or so tots for a while, it is a big surprise! I'd forgotten how non-stop full-on go-go they can be. It was my nephew's baby's first birthday party on Saturday and I set myself an impossible task trying to capture all the little people that were toddling, crawling and dashing around, while negotiating some sticky hands grasping at my pen and offering me spitty sausages - but I got a few, and a couple twice.

photo: Huw Morris

We brought teddy bears for the Nkanyesi Day Care Centre for children with cerebral palsy in Soweto, a little way to share the happiness of this occasion with babies who aren't so lucky.

Sketching Woes

Oh my, after a couple of weeks of slow, contemplative painting I went out this weekend for some fast on-the-spot sketching and was all at a loss as to where to begin, middle or end. Its scary how quickly the confident line escapes when not in daily practice! But for the sake of keeping the blog updated, I'll post some of my not-great sketches anyway, and hope to do some better ones soon.

I went to the Rose Gardens in the nearby park on Saturday - the early roses not quite out yet but lots of springily dressed young women, with many photos being taken on mobile phones of poses amongst the fountains and trees.

Yesterday I drove into the city, to Main Street Life, an 70's industrial building that is under refurbishment and together with Arts on Main down the road, is an island of art, good accomodation and cultural activity in an otherwise rather grubby, ugly part of Joburg. The rooftop of the building was the venue for a charity event, 1000 Drawings, where people are invited to draw or doodle on A5 paper to be sold on one night in November for R100 each regardless of artist or artwork. Excited to see the city so close, I had to try a cityscape sketch, and then turned to the other drawers - no one that I noticed was sketching the surroundings or people, most were bent over their own creations of  doodles and illustrations. I continued to struggle to get down a flowing, happy line, but by the last sketch, thought it was slowly returning to my faltering pen. Must not leave it in my bag for so long again!!

Sunday afternoon

(I started this post a week or more ago and didn't get to send it - so dashing it off now before writing my final Pre-Symposium Post... eeeehhhh!!)

This was sketched some days ago at Emmarentia Dam. This tranquil looking scene was actually one of some drama, as a police van kept belting through, chasing the men on the ice cream carts, who aren't supposed to trade in the park (and are suspected of trading in less innocuous substances). Parents had to grab their children and stand back as the wild west show began, until calm returned - as did the icecream men, like pigeons to a public square - then the whole ritual repeated itself. Bizarre and dangerous, but curiously entertaining for a Sunday afternoon.

Back to the River

Got the watercolours out this morning to go and join my sketching buddy, John, at Emmarentia Dam - we continue to hope other enthusiastic sketchers will expand our little band, but so far it's a slow process finding them. We sat in a dry part of the river bed and painted this woodlandsy scene. The sun kept disappearing behind clouds, changing the light and reflections completely. I so want to learn to paint water and reflections, and they are so difficult! The yellow parts in the water are greener in the actual sketch - reflecting the trees behind, it looks a bit sickly in this scan. Actually it didn't smell too great either, recent rains must have washed down some muck from upstream, but I'm sure you'd rather not know that!

SketchCrawl - with company!

Yesterday was a great day!... the 28th World Wide SketchCrawl and, at last, there was a group of us instead of just me! I'd heard from John Philip through this blog, and he being of an age and mind to know how to do these things, started a Facebook Event to invite interested people to come along to the Emmarentia botanical gardens to meet and sketch. We had about ten sketchers and a couple more to provide encouragement and model material, and we had a lovely afternoon, in spite of rather chilly weather and dry, sparse wintry gardens to inspire us. When there are more resulting sketches posted, I'll put a link here to the others that were done on the day. I tried to record the occasion by putting as many of my fellow sketchers in mine as possible. We are planning to make it a regular gathering, with many others who couldn't make it keen to join in when they can. Another reason to celebrate, the third anniversary of A Sketch in Time was also yesterday - who would have thought I'd keep anything going that long!?

Dam birds

This was one of my favourite sketching mornings last year, so I did it again, going down and just sitting amongst the geese, ducks and other water birds at the dam. They all get agitated and scramble into the water at first, then forget about you and amble back out and get back to their business. Today it was just a bit of preening, then lots of sleeping - obviously I caught them at nap time.

There was a Sacred Ibis, two little Mallard hens and a white faced coot and her hungry chick, none of which I've seen there before. The ibis kept his distance, but the little coot with her huge feet was quite sure I could help her out with some bread for her noisy child. I sketched first with a fat 'Furby' pencil, which was a bit too fat, then with the Pentel brush pen and added watercolour here and there.

Reflections

Its not that I've been completely put off plein air painting after the last icky trip, but the weather has been a bit wet and wild, and I had taken some photos of reflections in the small dam I was sitting next to - so I painted from them, trying to keep a similiar sort of looseness as when sitting out there. But it is just a completely different thing working from a photo - a lack of urgency to get it down, a more orderly approach when I have all the elements already laid out in 2D... it just doesn't have that edge, somehow. There are some areas of this that I'm pleased with - the reflections in the left foreground, the tops of the reeds, but I want to try it again and get more abstract, rhythmic and colourful. This rough sketch is the kind of feel I'm looking for, though obviously its on the far side of 'loose'!
I have just discovered the work of Adrian Berg RA (that sounds like a South African name - but he's not) and would love my newbie landscapes to develop along those lines - do I see hints of Hockney in his work, or should that be vice versa?

When it comes to dedicated plein air painters - Adam Cope is right up there, out in the beautiful Dordogne. He has done a very nice thing for the New Year - a French tradition - paying homage to some fellow art bloggers and I am so honoured to be included on his list. My regular sketching habit, as well as plein air watercolouring began on a fabulous Chateau painting holiday that my sisters and I went on three years ago - merci Adam (and that is still about the extent of my French!) Plein air on the Dordogne (too big for the scanner so I had to photograph it) - I really sloshed the paint around on this one - had a wonderful time, and see how I stopped before it got overworked. In fact I think it was Adam who said "Stop"... a lesson to take note of!

Plein gross

Oh! Oh! How one suffers for one's Art... you may remember a sketching trip some weeks ago at Emmarentia Dam, where I and my sketchbook were enthusiastically bounced upon by a muddy-pawed Staffie... well today was a way more shocking encounter in the dog park.... I had sat myself down on a cushion in an idyllic little spot under a tree, fields of wild flowers, a rushing stream nearby... laid out my paints, my water, palette and sketchbook, when once again a kerfuffle of canines, an owner's anguished cry..."Noooo!"... and then a warm, wet, creeping feeling down my back! I turned to see the offending leg descending and the awful truth dawned on me - I had been peed on. By a large, delirious young Ridgeback. On my back. Me!! The owner and I looked at each other in utter horror, he mumbled apologies and took off, head down, while I spluttered and swore and tossed my painting water down my back. Thank heavens its summer.
I almost packed up and left, but having spent days trying to get out to sketch, decided it was all part of plein air and I must tough it out like Vivien does on her expeditions. I gathered up my stuff and went to find a seat above dog leg level, passing the owner on the way to a park bench. He came across and apologised again most profusely, and I forgave him and his stupid mutt, who was happily chasing hadedas behind us and not the slightest bit repentant.
I eventually did this sketch - over two pages which I've posted separately as they come out so small in doublespread - and it was quite lovely out. The grasses and reeds are sprinkled and shaded with flowers. Drums were beating in the background hills - some African churches meet there in the Melville Koppies on Sundays and dance and sing.
Finally I went home and showered and washed and scrubbed but I'm still sniffing strains of eau de dog - I think some got on my sketchbook.

Testing times

I've been thinking I should try and focus this blog a bit and stick to watercolours and nature, but that's not where life is at the moment, or not all the time.... today was a(nother) trip to a traffic licensing centre to book a learner's test for our youngest child. Heavy traffic, bureaucracy, power outages, frustration, waiting, waiting, and therefore a chance to sketch, what would I do without it? So, some ugly buildings, an ice cream man who came, and went, and came back again, and a turnstile that kept on turning - and eventually a boy with a booking to to take his learner's, please, for the last time this time!!
Oh, but I did get out yesterday for a few minutes to the greenest, lushest most verdant Emmarentia Dam park. I started sketching and watercolouring, when I heard cries of "no, Oscar, nooo-o-oooo!!" and looked up to find the cutest Staffie puppy in mid-flight onto my sketchbook and lap. That was fine, I can incorporate muddy paw prints into a landscape, but then huge raindrops started plopping onto the page and the black clouds said they weren't going to stop, so I flapped the sketchbook closed - thus creating the masterful green reflections in the water - and trekked off home to finish it from memory. I know it looks ridiculously shrieking green - but it was!

Coming up Roses

The roses at the Botanical Gardens are in full fabulous bloom and I've been wanting to go and spend some time with them and my watercolours all week. Today at last I went and found a lovely spot under a low hanging tree and happily splattered away. I must have blended well into the foliage, at least three wedding parties walked past and nobody seemed to spot me, even when I tried sketching one of the couples as they came down the steps in front of me.














I jotted down notes as I sketched:
'A wedding party nearby... a child laughing as if it's sides would split...
water splashing in fountains. Talking laughing getting louder
then just the fountains. Far away voices and thunder...
tiniest insects that bite like pinpricks... rose smells rose smells.'

By the Stream

Just back from sketchercising... I sat next to the stream that runs into the dam with my original little kit of watercolours and waterbrush. The morning sun was coming through the bright spring leaves, lots of dappled light and dark shadows, leaves, sticks and branches, rocks, water and reflections. The sound of the water trickling a very pleasant start to the day, though I couldn't get it to show up in my little sketch. While that dried I did two tiny sketches, squinting to try and just see bigger shapes and values instead of being distracted by all the many visual things going on. I could have quite happily spent all day there.
I'm reconsidering the waterbrush for this type of sketching - I'm sure I get far more colour and water on my towel than I do on the paper!