Pastel Rocks

Some more pastels produced while taking the online course on by art professor and teacher Gregory Kerr, using different methods of creating the paintings. This one of my son - about 25 years ago - and our dog Gucci who has featured elsewhere on this blog... he wasn't actually present at the rock pool, or even born at the time, but due to the wonders of photography and drawing he makes an appearance. This one was built onto a charcoal base.

And this was onto a base of a tonal ink painting, which is how I got such dark areas - difficult otherwise with the medium. This is my husband's grandmother's bridesmaid transported from Cape Town in 1910 to a Kidds Beach thicket of bush. How are those flowers!

So what do I like about pastels?

• They are quick, you can lay down colour in seconds, layer after layer.
• They are easy to change, almost endlessly depending on your paper. You can work and rework and add and remove over and over again.
• There are loads of colours available, but you can get lots of effects just with a basic set.
• They're easy to take out and put away.
• You can get lovely veils of colour, as well as expressive marks.

What don't I like?

• They are dusty, chalky, stick to your fingers and clothes and work surfaces. Which actually you don't even notice when you're deep in the process, but do have to clean up eventually - the whole room!
• There seems to be a lot of waste - so much pigment just falls down the paper, and some colours get used up fast. I've been collecting it in an envelope, perhaps to use as a base for another one - waste not, want not, or just Scrooge?
• The results I've had so far are - pastelly, I want to get some bright brights, dark darks - which is possible as I've seen in others' work but not in mine so far.
• I tried quick sketching with them (below) and they were - ungainly, clutzy, although once I stopped trying so hard to control them (got really annoyed!) and let them do their thing, I was happier with the results - in the last drawing. 
• They seem very fragile - you can fix them very lightly with hairspray or fixative, but a heavy coat changes the surface alarmingly. Storing and framing must be a challenge!

I've always wanted to paint this chair with the about-to-bloom cymbidium, and the light behind them - more of this subject to come I hope, if I can stick with it!  (This was a London USkTalks project to use different colour papers, and different to your usual palette)

Pastel Shades

 I've had soft pastels hanging around for years in my studio, but never really used them. I've been exploring them and learning to like them more (they are dusty, and a bit unruly!) with the guidance of Greg Kerr's online course. This was based on photographs I took of the Boomslang treetop pathway at Kirstenbosch gardens in Cape Town  - ended up in wild fantasy colours... perhaps I should have stopped at some earlier stage!

 And an 'urban' sketch - a storyboard of a typical day under lockdown, which was a virtual challenge by James Richards. In fact it's a typical day most days, except I'd be going to actual Tai Chi, and there'd be more visits to and from family, and the odd coffee or sketching with friends.

Finishing things

Over the last few months, on and off, I've been spending time in the studio determined to finish a whole bunch of half-done paintings - for better or for worse!  

These you may (or well may not) recognise from a previous post on Greg Kerr's Objets Trouvé workshop in 2014. Below are some of the stages these 60 x 60 cm paintings have gone through, some rather tortuously, via a series of processes. Splashing, rolling and printing paint onto the canvases with an underlying prepared motif  - mine our birdbath - which had to consist of organic and geometric forms. Interventions followed of adding textures, patterns and elements - some prescribed by Greg (each painting had an element taken from someone else in the class's paintings, to explain some strange additions... the crystal, the water tower, the child swimming, the sardine tin) as we worked through the course, some added tentatively or recklessly by me as I eventually took the plunge and tried to leave dependency on the teacher behind me.

Often I wished I could backtrack to a previous stage of simplicity or clarity, and in the one with the child swimming (I changed my classmate's child into my daughter) I was at the point of scrapping the whole thing but decided that more might be more and carried on adding flowers and fishes and glazes... it may still be scrapped...or cropped down to just the little girl swimming...or I could add the kitchen sink...

With changes and a move from Joburg sometime in the not too distant future, I have to finish and clear out so much stuff I don't know where to start. Painting is the relatively easy bit, I have to get them out of here!

Exhibition of student's work

Hi - sorry about another long absence - I've been paddling as fast and as diligently as I can to help make this exhibition happen this weekend. Somehow or other I got to be coordinator-in-chief in spite of the almost catatonic state I get into when in administrative pressure roles.
Amazingly enough, I think we're on track and all will appear as planned on Saturday. It is, as you can see, an exhibition of student's work done in, or as a result of Greg Kerr's painting courses and has lots of interesting, unusual and provocative pieces. The image on the invitation is by Tracy Witelson, artist and art teacher, and assistant to Greg when he is teaching in Johannesburg, from The Dinner Party programme that I participated in 2013. I'll have two or three paintings on from this year's Objets Trouvès course (which I still have to show the end results of here, sometime).

If anyone who sees this is in Joburg this weekend, please come along, I'd love to meet you!

Objets Trouvès 3 W.I.P.

Back in class in May with our 12 colour exercises (see previous post) for inspiration, and having chosen another subject - which had to include both geometric and organic forms, with photographs of it to work from - we were let loose with acrylic paint on three of four big canvases (600x600mm).

We did have some restrictions on each format - on one we were to draw our geometric forms with aids such as rulers with an acrylic line of changing hues, and then washes or glazes of pure hues, pulling back with a cloth to reveal shapes and textures (pic 2).
On another we made shapes and textures by any means other than brushstrokes - printing with textured surfaces, rolling on colour with cloth or plastic, splashing, spraying or slapping (pic 1) and transferring some of this wet mélange onto the third canvas, where colour, shape and texture was further achieved through stencils and transfers (pic 3) This last one changed completely from the way it appears here, but I forgot to take more photos until much later in the process.

So this was mostly a lot of liberating fun and playtime, especially for someone like me who tends to get pernickety about rendering things (that comes later!) I had chosen a very simple image - the bird bath in our garden with some brickwork and foliage behind and reflected in it - and was getting worried that I would be spending the rest of the year painting my bird bath.... I still am but with so many surprises and interventions in store, it's hardly recognisable - but I'll get to that eventually.

Objets Trouvès 2

I was thinking that I should focus this blog on urban sketching and not be such a scattered Jill-of-all-arts - but then I have these big gaps where it looks like nothing's happening, when it is. And I need to record it because I will forget!

 I've been busy with another of Greg Kerr's year long painting courses, this year called Objets Trouvès. Four weeks spread over the year, with plenty of homework in between (just remembered that I did in fact do a post about some of the preparation before we started back in January). To track back to what seems like an age ago in the progression of the course... we had to do a bit more slog - find an insect... I 'found' (thanks to my photographer nephew who had been given it by Pretoria university for a shoot) a nice big dung beetle, long deceased and easier on aging eyes than the little goggas that drop belly up on my windowsills... photograph it, construct it out of wire and photograph that - ready for the first session. Amazing how you can begin to feel fondness for such a creature when you study it so intently!

In class and already well acquainted with our bugs, we used our material to produce four big (40x55cm) charcoal drawings, each with an aim in mind - a history (or palimpsest - lovely word); architecture, tone and texture; spatiality and surface detail and; monumentality, complexity, personality. To put it in a nutshell - it took long hours of concentration, teacher inspiration and application!

Then... I'm rushing along here to catch up... back at home and keeping the creative force surging, we had to pick two or more of these drawings, photocopy or print (hold the toner) them onto watercolour paper to produce 12 formats on which we did different colour exercises in various mediums - watercolour, gouache, wax resist and encaustic, acrylic alla prima and glazes - to explore terms such as hue, value, tint, tone, chroma, complementary and adjacent hues...etc etc.

I have to admit that I got annoyed at myself around this point because... I know this stuff, I've been doing it forever (and forever seems to be running out). WHY don't I do this by myself in my own time, without the impetus and discipline of a class and an encouraging teacher...why don't I grow up and be a 'real' artist?
Well, now heading towards the fourth and final session, I think I've figured it out - there are big gaps in my art education, and they are being filled by this most excellent tuition - I'll keep you posted, will try not to take so long about it next time!

Draw, draw, draw

I have been busy drawing for my upcoming course, 'Objets Trouvès' with Greg Kerr which starts in Johannesburg next month. Part of our prep was to find an object - not your regular Still Life subject matter which may have been drawn and painted to death already - but something unusual and perhaps strange or unappealing that happens into your life or surroundings.
I had a few false starts with things I found - a woodwork plane - too linear, a toiletries travel bag - too tedious with its zips and meshes, a computer fan - too hard and mechanical... when one day a storm approached, the wind blew, a painting flipped off the mantelpiece knocking off and breaking an early attempt at turning wood on a lathe by my son - which made me a bit sad until...aha, voilà! I had my objets!

There's something deeply satisfying about completing and beholding 20+ drawings you've done of the very same item. I usually draw something, tick it off and seldom feel inclined to do it again, so before I began I dreaded all that slog before me, certain I'd be bored to tears halfway through. But tackling one frame at a time, and with options of different mediums to do it in I became absorbed in the challenges and new perspectives of each rendition.

Starting with three drawings with the humble HB pencil, moving onto six in charcoal and going onto my favourite method, water-soluble ink with bleach, water, brushes and pens (I had whittled a new bunch of bamboo pens while watching cricket on TV days before) which I explored and experimented with for the remainder of the 20 - I've only shown three of those ones here, will get to photographing the rest sometime. So interesting to play in this technique but be warned if you try, I'm told they won't last - the paper may rot and the ink fade!

End of the Dinner Party

 I've just come to the end of this year's Greg Kerr (website currently under construction) painting course, "The Dinner Party", which once again has been a fascinating, informative and unpredictable ride through the world of painting, art and artists, as well as really fun, sociable interludes throughout the year.

It started with researching and making Valentine cards for 5 artists, plus yourself, as preparation for the course. During the first week we painted place settings for each one in acrylic, glazed and embellished later if needed in oils. As prep for the following session we had to make and photograph clay models of the artists at a dinner table, in a setting, which we drew up carefully and painted in class onto one canvas and freely painted onto a second, using oil glazing methods.

In September, we were introduced to a process called Decalcomania, where we covered our place-setting paintings with plastic, repainted the images thickly in primary and secondary colours in acrylic, and then quickly transferred to a new canvas of the same size, repeated as many times as was necessary for a rich textured surface. This process produced unexpected and random results; blobs, blotches, textures, misregisterings, all of which were part of the grand plan.

On these printed images we were to cool down and warm up chosen areas (Mavis and Fred in Greg's unique terminology!) to make them recede or come forward, and then go through a list of possible interventions to challenge us, develop a dialogue with the work, and create an interesting patina and history - including more decalcomania, patterning, glazing, shadows, wet-in-wet and dry brush painting.

The entire project has upended my 'normal' way of doing things - which I welcome wholeheartedly, bored as I often get with my faithful renderings of things and people - but challenging and perplexing it certainly is...and am still busy with, so no final results to show you as yet, but here are some pictures of the process so far.

Dinner Party Work-in-Progress

After an intense four days of painting on two 1200x800mm canvases last week, there is still a way to go on both of them. Here's what's happened since the clay figures I made... the six figures were arranged around a table and put in a setting. I put plain cardboard walls around them after failing to make a convincing stage set and afraid the whole thing would crash down and further destroy my crumbling people, then lit the scene in various ways to take as many interesting photos as possible (the possibilities were endless!) I digitally cut some of my figure arrangements out and pasted them onto photo backgrounds, finally settling on one of a ruined cathedral in Lisbon that my husband took when I was busy with the Urban Sketchers Symposium last year, and he and our son were sight-seeing. We were to draw up this design onto one canvas and leave the other blank.

On Monday morning our painting group gathered excitedly, nervously, or both - we knew we were in for a week of hard work and plenty of surprises. Greg informed us that we would be painting two large paintings in the four days, immediately creating a sense of urgency/disbelief/panic. The drawn up canvas was to be glazed with primary colours, randomly in sections, then glazed again with the primaries to create secondary colours. While that was drying, the other canvas was covered with a glaze in a colour of our choice, lifting out areas freehand where we wanted lighter or back to a previous colour, using our photos. Both methods similiar to what we did last year in the Dark Cloud workshops. The glazing and lifting  on both paintings continued, building tones and secondary, tertiary and strangely indescribable other colours.

They're not finished yet - mine are extremely weird, not your average portrait group but so interesting to me in subject, process and unexpected results - I will forge on with them and see where we end up. I wish I could show you all the paintings that were produced, each so different and with their own unique qualities, a real credit to the teaching to produce such a range of individual responses to the project.

Clay people

My poor neglected sketch blog - not much sketching going on!

I've been making clay figures for the next stage of the painting course, and getting thoroughly carried away with little fingers and roses, cherries and violins. Each figure again representing one of the artists at my Dinner Party, I've made all six now, set them around the table and am busy staging, lighting and photographing them for the painting sessions next week. I've loved making them - perhaps I should have been a sculptor, though my proportions are off, we have very big heads at this dinner!
This is how they started off, as wire armatures. I would like to have fired and kept them, but they have all started cracking badly and probably full of air pockets, might explode in a kiln.

The Gatecrasher

Thank you everybody for your comments on Guess Who's Coming to Dinner? - I can't take any credit for the concept, I would never have thought of all those connections without prompting and guidance from my highly creative and innovative teacher. Here's the answer to the gatecrasher riddle for those who are still wondering... Salvador Dali, no less, who would normally I imagine, completely dominate a dinner party, so I had to keep him firmly and discreetly in his place. At the top is a rendition of his Lobster telephone, then a tiger from his 'Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bumble Bee round a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening' (how's that for a title!) in which the elephant in the spoon on the right also features, then the face from his painting Sleep. In the salt and pepper set, very hard to see - the Persistence of Memory, and finally his face of 'Mae West Which Can be Used as an Apartment' installation, another catchy little title.

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?

These are what I've been very busy on in between quick sketching trips lately - place settings (420x300mm) in acrylic for my artist's Dinner Party for this year's Greg Kerr painting course. Each place has a main guest in it, plus the guest to his or her left - except for one dinner companion who appears in two as I, the hostess, appear in all of them, as does a gatecrasher who was randomly thrown in as a curveball while we were puzzling over how to arrange all those elements. Mine was ignored by most of the guests, so felt very small! Finally we were to include the Valentine cards, or an element or part of them, from the preliminary stage of the course.

Can you guess who they all are? Answers over here in the Valentine cards, apart from the gatecrasher, who didn't deserve a Valentine, besides I had no idea he would be there.

If you thought that was challenging, and it was (I'm hoping my paintings don't look too much like a car-boot sale!) - wait till you hear the next part of the project.

A Late Valentine...or six

I really wanted to post these on Valentine's Day, but I was just too pooped after the second day of this year's Greg Kerr painting course, 'The Dinner Party'. For our preparations over the last few months we had to design and make Valentine cards for five artists of our choosing, plus one for ourselves (how difficult was that!). It involved much research, reading, thinking and copying. We had to put in something of the artist, something of ourselves and something about Valentines. It was a very clever way to totally involve us in our chosen subjects - I was amazed at how Mr Bacon kept me awake at night! I went a bit overboard on the hearts, lace and flowers - but I thought if I'm going to do this I might as well go the whole hog. So without further ado, here are my tributes to Georgia, Wayne, Francis, Marc, Alice and me!

Georgia O'Keeffe

Wayne Thiebaud



Francis Bacon

Marc Chagall

Alice Neel and me