Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps

Holding thumbs this works out - a video of some sketches from 2018 in my Seawhite-of-Brighton big black sketchbook. Thanks to my techier husband Bruce for adding the soundtrack... Perhaps I could have sketched more... perhaps the next one will be better... perhaps I'll take my sketchbook out today... I'm always glad when I did, and regretful I didn't do so more often. 

Here we're fastening seat belts for a rough ride in 2019, with elections coming up, all parties and factions at each other's throats, and much damage to be repaired - I'm really hoping it won't be as tumultuous as I fear. To you, all my sketching, painting, drawing, blogging, following friends, wishing you a very happy, peaceful and productive New Year.

Wrapping up 2015 - Happy New Year!

Time to say goodbye to 2015, and a tumultuous old year it has been. Long warned of climate change seems to have arrived with a vengeance, or is it just El Nino again? I just know it's too darn hot! Our rainbow nation has turned into a confused and worrisome kaleidoscope of corruption, leaderlessness and fiscal woes with strikes, protests and marches always in the news. These sketches from the #ZumaMustFall march in Cape Town that we joined - there were similar scenes in Joburg and Pretoria.

But let's not dwell on that...

My blog - halfway through its 9th year - has mainly focused on urban sketching, which brought happy times and camaraderie with other sketchers, both locally and visiting from afar. I'm uncomfortably aware that my drawing style has become ever faster and sketchier, ie scrappier and less attractive - I haven't been drawing regularly enough outside of scheduled sketch dates which is one thing I plan to change in 2016.

As usual, I've been torn between artistic pursuits - urban sketching, painting, illustrating - and having now reached a 'mature' age, probably should accept that I never will concentrate completely on just one form of artistic expression or identity.

Deciding to forego another full painting course this year, much as I love the companionship, input and inspiration, I felt like I needed to find a pathway on my own - I have spent precious time in my studio, just moodling as is quoted from Brenda Ueland* in Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way - hoping that something interesting or engaging would emerge and take hold so I could fly into a fresh and unique direction. There were some beginnings, some promising that I hope to get back to, a few that flapped and failed... I haven't posted much about my painting endeavours this year, feeling strangely reticent about exposing them to the world in this time of prolific online sharing - even the ever positive and encouraging one that my generous blog readers and friends provide. I'll get braver and back to it sometime!

An idyllic moment on our Cape holiday sitting beside the sea with an old friend, sploshing watercolour around

And so into the New Year... big changes are in the air for me and mine which I hope to record here as they happen. For this reason I'm not making any plans, aims or resolutions as they will very likely all go for a loop (which is what they normally do anyway so no diffs there!)
I wish every one of you reading this, a very healthy, happy and creatively productive year. Let's hope the news globally and locally, wherever you are, is better than last year's.
May the good guys win and the light shine through! Happy 2016!


*So you see, imagination needs moodling - long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering - Brenda Ueland. (I used to be VERY good at this, but motherhood and other responsibilities made me pull up my bootstrings and get more organised - perhaps to the detriment of my art.)

Late, but Happy 2015!

We returned last week from a frosty but lovely Christmas and New Year in England where we spent a relaxed holiday with family. I didn't even try sitting outside in that cold (though everyone said what a mild winter it was) to draw, but I did this sketch from a warm living room window. Those wintry tree skeletons could provide years of inspiration with the varying veils of mist and colour, this is a very rough and inadequate quickie rendition. I only managed a few other even rougher sketches when I found myself twiddling my thumbs in a warm spot...

...and now here we are back in warm if not quite sunny South Africa and our jungly green garden that needs some serious taming.
Wishing everyone who looks in, a wonderful, productive and creative new year!

Happy 2014!

Happy New Year to everybody! With the hot colours of the zinnias now flowering in my garden, at last we're getting some proper summer after a cool, drizzly Christmas. I've been pondering where to, what and why for this blog. Posts have been becoming decidedly fewer and farther between - although I've been doing stuff, I just don't seem to have the time I used to to scan, edit images, write (which always takes me forever) and post. So as useless as I am at keeping new year resolutions, I think I'll make a list of Mores and Lesses to guide me through the year, and I hope it will mean more updates, with less time spent on this chair...so!...

More:

• drawing and sketching - of course
• painting (am doing another year long Greg Kerr course to keep me under the pump)
• moving - I think my hips are seizing up from long hours sitting, got to get back to regular walking, swimming, maybe dancing, which I love - as long as nobody's watching.
• gardening - I've planted a wisteria in front of my studio and it brings such a welcoming, fresh feeling I just want to spend more time there - lots more empty outdoor space to fill.
• playing, thinking, daydreaming

Less:

• words - you may get just pictures here sometimes
• computering, facebooking - much as I love seeing what everyone's up to and following hundreds of fascinating links and stories, it eats up hours, days and weeks!
• sitting
• housework - sorry family and friends who might pop in but I'm running out of time (not that I've ever done vast amounts of it but honestly as Joan Rivers says, "You make the beds, you wash the dishes, and six months later you have to start all over again.")

I'll probably think of other things but that'll do for now, as I've been sitting here too long already. Wishing YOU a very productive and creatively fulfilling 2014!

Joburg Carnival

A few of us sketchers still in Joburg over the holidays went into town to sketch the old year out on Monday at the annual Joburg Carnival. Groups of inner city residents, with the help of local artists and art students, make floats, dress up and parade through the streets. The procession got to our designated meeting place nearly an hour sooner than I thought they would. I was a bit early, so dashed over to where they were coming down the next street towards Nelson Mandela Bridge and scribbled off a couple of quick impressions. Luckily the parade ended nearby in Newtown, where we caught up with it and carried on sketching as the groups competed for best costumes, floats and performances. Onlookers crowded around some of the sketchers, fascinated, but blocking their view, and ran off to tell the subjects they were being drawn, who then came over to have a look. Quite chaotic, but lots of fun.


I took too many sketching implements and couldn't decide which to use - so a bit of a mixture here. I must learn to restrict my choices.

This and other possible New Year resolutions to follow, but in the meantime, I wish all my friends, followers and passers-by, all the very best for a happy, healthy, love and art filled 2013!

Chinese New Year in South Africa

 Brightwater Commons had a Chinese New Year festival on Saturday, and some of our sketchers decided to join the throngs and see what there was to draw. There was plenty! I don't think I've ever done so many sketches in one session.. I started off quite slowly, with the beautifully serene Thai Massage tent - a great subject for an afternoon, all on its own.

But there was lots more to see, so I moved off to some of the stalls, selling parasols and fans, very popular in the baking sun.  I started adding colour to my sketches, but things were happening on the stage, so off to find a spot to sketch...

 The Dragon Dance first of course, being it's Year. My pen had to start flying across the page as the pace increased, and accuracy gave way to just trying to capture a feeling, a rhythm, a movement - or ten!

After mixing some muddy reds for the Lion Dance in my haste, I gave up on the colour, taking a few notes here and there so I could remember them later

An eclectic mixture of cultures started to emerge on stage - first came the Zulu dancers in sort of traditional dress, with some adaptations of bright pink and blue beads

and then a rather bizarre combination of Pedi men in Scottish kilts, with the women in a modernised version of the traditional Pedi dress

- after these thumping, , drumming exuberant local dancers it was the turn again of the Chinese, with the graceful, flowing Fan and Flower Dances

Then came the high-kicking karate students from the school in the shopping centre

- and lastly, before we went off for a break to see everyone else's sketches and looking forward to some Chinese food and a drink, the slow precise and meditative movements of the Archers.

Unfortunately most of the food was sold out and shortly afterwards the rain came belting down, so the Chinese acrobats carried sportingly on without us in the slippery wet - Just as well, I think I was sketched out!

Happy, Bright New Year!

Just as I suspected... I sketched these day lilies in our garden for New Year last year too - they're about all that are flowering at this green, green time of year. Painted very messily and feeling out of watercolour practice, they do come with my very best wishes for a 2011 that brings you everything that you'd wish for yourselves and your loved ones. May it be a richly satisfying creative year!
I haven't made any hard and fast plans, I am doing an oil painting course that spans the year in four sessions, though I don't think I'll be blogging about it, because of copyright clauses on the course material, but also because I want to just do the work without talking too much about it or seeking advice or your valued comments this time - maybe at the end of it I'll show the results. It may mean fewer (even less!) blog posts, but I want to try and keep the blog true to it's name, just sketching, when I can. One plan that did come about in 2010 was finding a couple of like-minded sketchers to join me on expeditions, which will help me get out of my comfy cocoon and into the world.
Thank you to all my visitors, and the lovely friends I've made here, for your feedback and time. As with some other bloggers, I have been posting and commenting less, not due to lack of interest but just trying to juggle a way to spend less time on the computer and more in the studio, or out sketching. For some reason it takes me an inordinately long time to compose blog posts and comments - my muddled brain battling to sort thoughts and words into a legible state, so I might be writing less to go with the pictures... if I remember... I can also babble on regardless, which I'm doing right now. So without further ado, HAPPY NEW YEAR, let's get going!!!

Viva 2010 Viva!

OK - here are some plans... not resolutions, because we know how those go, don’t we? It’s really more of the same, but hopefully of the good stuff and less of the bugbears.
Manage my time better - far too much is spent on the internet, which is perfectly enthralling, but it doesn’t get any sketching or painting done. Walking and being fit makes me feel good, positive and energetic, so I hope to do more of that even than last year - the friendly and supportive Sketchercise group is a great encourager to keep going, or start again if I’ve had a lapse.

Do what I love, love what I do - I am becoming aware after all these years that my passion lies in watercolour - I’m not about to throw out all other mediums, but I would like to focus on getting better at this one. I am also so enjoying sketching, the quick, immediate and spontaneous act which I’d never really considered an art form in its own right until I was exposed to wonderful work on Urban Sketchers, Sketchercisers and of course the blogs of prolific and expert sketchers. I want to get better, freer, more expressive!


Paint more Real Paintings - I haven’t made many finished, presentable artworks of late. I was contemplating vowing to produce 50 paintings during 2010, but that makes me anxious, so I gently plan to have some sort of a body of work by the end of the year.

Find a group of like-minded souls who will join me plein-airing, or urban sketching, or both. I want some flesh-and-bone companions for safety in numbers, sharing of ideas and expertise, and - especially for urban sketching - a wider variety of viewpoints and experiences of Joburg than my own limited ones. This is the hardest on the list - it entails phonecalls, arrangements and organisation - all my worst things!
I was considering a shake-up of my blog, focus it, refine it, but I know now from experience that vows to do this or that go clear out of my head within hours of making them, so I guess it will stumble along as usual - blogging friends called it a Graphic Novel of my Life - that could be a theme I could hang my hat on! Thanks to all who take the time to come and look. Onward and Upward to you all!!

Happy New Year!

Daylilies - here today, gone tomorrow with a new one in it's place. It seems like years are almost as fleeting as 2009 furls up its petals and shrivels into memories, recorded for many of us in our sketchbooks, journals and paintings. I've written pages about how its been, what I've learned and what I'd change, and pages more about the New Year - plans, resolutions, hopes... far too rambling and introspective to inflict on you, dear blogging friends... so I'm editing it down to a digestible package of a few points which I'll post in the next day or two, so you can hold me accountable (:oO)


But, predictably, it will be

Out With The Old and
In With The New...


Wishing every one of you a wonderful, interesting, fulfilling and happily memorable
2010

2008

Happy New Year! This is a little watercolour of jacaranda pods from our garden, and a carved elephant 'calendar' from Malawi - my wish for Africa that 2008 will be a year of peace, democracy and enough for everybody. Already that seems like a pipe-dream with today's news from Kenya, but this is not a political blog so...

My artistic goals (doesn't sound as clench-teethed as resolutions, nor as easy to discard after a week or two) for this year - I am pretty bad at organising my thoughts and tabulating them, but here goes...

1. To grow my blog - it has already had a profound effect on my productivity and commitment to learning more and making more art - so I want to post at least three times a week. Not quite ready to commit to every day yet.
2. To draw or paint something every day
3. To find more of a focus - I have tried so many mediums and styles - coming from a background in advertising rendering, where I had to be very versatile and compliant to others needs, I now would really like to discover my own artistic voice - it's been a long time coming!
4. To join up with other artists - a group or society - where there is sharing of ideas, interaction and feedback. I haven't managed to find one yet, though I belonged to the watercolour society, WSSA, once - it may have changed now, but was quite a hierarchical and intimidating organisation. I may have to start my own group..?

That's enough for now - I'm scaring myself! I also hope to travel a bit - probably just around beautiful South Africa, and perhaps Namibia which Bruce is very keen to go to.