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!

Tai Chi Sketching

Just a lot of little sketches from the tai chi class I've been taking since the beginning of the year today... My teacher Masako kindly allowed our sketching group to sit in on a lesson, and a masterclass in ryuku kobujutsu (using weaponry) she gave to a student practicing for his black belt. I foolishly thought by drawing the exercises I'd be able to remember them in future classes (my brain just won't, although Masako says my body eventually will!), but although it looks slow and meditative, I couldn't keep up with the constant seamless movements.

The first two sketch pages were warming up - the tai chi bodies and my sketching fingers both - and I tried out various pens and brushpens before settling on my trusty Pentel brushpen, which made appropriately calligraphic marks.

Moving Into Dance

Our Joburg Sketchers group was given kind permission to sit in on a practice session at Moving Into Dance, a professional company which develops and produces award winning Contemporary African dancers, choreographers, arts administrators and teachers, many from disadvantaged communities. It was exhilarating, not to mention exhausting (I know I know, sitting there on my derrière...) watching and trying to sketch the ceaseless movements of the young first year dancers - it's obvious they must have come a long way since January.
I thought perhaps there would be some repetitive practice movements that would give us a chance to capture postures, but those were few and far between as they flew, spun, stomped, twirled and leaped around the room, sometimes almost landing in our laps where we sat lined up on a bench at one end. So we had to do what we could... I drew with pencil as I couldn't find a gap in the action to even reach for my watercolours at the time, but added colour later to help define some of the frantic lines I put down - and to convey some of the energy of these beautiful dancers. Only 5-10 of them will go through into second year, and even fewer into third - heartbreaking I'm sure for the ones who don't make it, everyone is passionate and dedicated - how on earth do they choose?!

Coffee and Dancing at the Mall

My friend Anni and I went to Rosebank Mall on our Women's Day, the 9th August (sheesh, I'm behind on posting!) We had coffee at the Mugg & Bean and started sketching the surrounding customers and waiters. We then wandered upstairs and from the balcony (under the optometrists sign in the above sketch) we sketched from the higher angle. The staff working below looked very suspiciously up at us until I showed them my sketch in progress, then it was smiles and thumbs up to go ahead. I messed this one up a bit using markers to colour it - should have used watercolour later as in the top sketch, or left it as a line drawing like the girl reading

 Nearby was a dance studio where a promotional make-up session was in progress. We were invited in and I started an unsuccessful sketch of ladies being transformed when a dance class began and I moved across the room to try and catch the - luckily quite slow - moves of the tango. The girl was teaching the guy, lots of concentration, they seemed to not notice me on the sidelines at all! I did only two of these sketches per page, but I put them together here as a sequence.

Tennis Rules, OK?

A lot of time spent in front of the TV watching tennis lately and when I'm not too wrapped up in the match to think of it, I sometimes pick up a pen and try and scribble down the action. This time without rewinding and stopping on frames as I did four years (four years!!) ago in this post, I hardly looked at the paper as my pen tracked the movement resulting in some strange but descriptive postures. Not very flattering to the players, but fun!
Much as it would be nice for a Brit to at last win, in this Jubilee and Olympian year, I have to stay loyal and yell once again.... Go Roger!!

Wonders of Wimbledon

What a fantastic Wimbledon Men's Final!...I could hardly bear to see either of them lose, but lose 'our' Roger did (his mom is South African you know!). I'd been spending odd moments during the week trying to get down some action drawings, but doing them in live time I found quite impossible, though I quite like the squiggly attempts on bottom left, of Nadal - just waiting for the serve, hardly moving! We're lucky to have the stop-and-rewind feature on our TV that you can pause, so I drew some of the real mid-flight poses that I could land on without complete distortion. I didn't draw during the final...much too stressful on top of the other tension...