The Tearoom

Two other sketches from my week at the coast, the top one is of what used to be the Kidds Beach Tearoom, now a restaurant and pub. When we used to come here as children it was about the most thrilling aspect of the trip. Walking up those curved steps into the smell of suntan lotion, sweets, fresh bread, sand and sea is still a strong memory, though now replaced with fish and chips and beer. We were allowed to choose one or two sweets - usually it was a big pink stick of 'Kidds Beach Rock', with the name running right through from end to end, to last for the whole holiday.

The second is the ancient little changeroom/wind shelter next to the tidal pool, daubed with seaside graffiti -and with a passing beach cleaner superimposed. The sea around here really does teem with dolphins sometimes - a day or two before this I'd watched hundreds slowly rolling past as we sat having sundowners on the patio - what a privilege!

Rocks, Pools, Waves

I'm back from a wonderful, relaxed ten days down in the Eastern Cape - in the little hamlet of Kidds Beach where my family have been spending holidays for generations and which holds many happy memories.

It was quiet after all the holiday-makers had returned to work - we are rejoicing in no longer having to stick to school holidays to take our breaks!

As you can see, I had time to sketch, as well as walk, read, swim, sleep... I found a great watercolour book at our extended family's home, 'Mastering Color & Design in Watercolor' by Christopher Schink, which I studied and took copious notes from, and tried to use some of his exercises in these sketches (using mostly watercolour, with some Inktense crayons). The colours in that rock pool are exaggerated, but when you stare at them for ages, they seem so brilliant! There were beautiful long white beaches too, where we walked and swam, but my husband and son fished from the rocks so that is where I sat too. Trying to paint the sea and rocks is completely absorbing, time flies and I felt I'd just begun when it was time to leave. I can see why some artists spend a lifetime trying to capture it.

A Little Break

A repost of a 2009 sketch just to say, I'm off to see the sea for a few days, lucky me! I'm looking forward to long walks, staring at the waves and rocks, and perhaps trying to get some of it onto paper. An old expression my grandmother used to say: "Sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits" sounds good to me!

The Snoek Run

My other two sketches from our drive around the Cape peninsula last week - we stopped at Miller's Point to watch the snoek boats coming in with their bountiful catches - good to know there still are sometimes bountiful catches to be had for these fishermen. Apparently snoek is nomadic and grows fast, so is resilient to trawlers and other dangers of the deep.

When there's a 'snoek run' the fishing harbours leap into life, as they did on this day. I could have sketched in Kalk Bay harbour for hours (these are sketches done there last year) - the great characters, throwing fish around, cleaning, filleting, shouting, (the language is as blue as the sea and sky) selling, seagulls and seals milling round snatching at morsels tossed aside - but had to settle for a sketch from 'Kalkies' café where we enjoyed a delicious meal of, naturally, fresh snoek.

I have a feeling that if I did sketch the people there might be a 'fee' asked, as for everything else including chatting to this little boy who was playing with the seals with a bag on a rope so we could get photos! 

I posted these two sketches on Urban Sketchers as the original line drawings... I have an almost uncontrollable urge to 'colour-in' later, and often wonder if they would be better just left as they were.

Katherine asked how I carry all my supplies, which at the moment is in a big squarish handbag, with the pens and waterbrush standing upright in a side pocket, and sketchbook all easy to whip out. I don't often have the time and space to add colour on site, though I always have a little Cotman palette in my bag in case. If I'm really hell-bent on a few hours solid sketching I take a simple school backpack with more paints and brushes, small water jars, cloths, a mixing palette and maybe some nicer watercolour paper folded into an accordian sketchbook, and sometimes a little folding stool. My latest sketchbook is a square 'Seawhite of Brighton' one from London Graphic Center - it was a moleskine until recently. Neither perfect for 'good' watercolour technique, but the paper holds up well to a bit of washing and scrubbing. I'll take a picture soon. This all undergoes constant review, so any tips for more efficient sketching are welcome.

Coastal Delights

Continuing with our trip to the Cape, our next stop was the seaside town of Hermanus, where my family spent many happy holidays when my grandparents lived there, long long ago. If there's anywhere I'd love to paint in perfect sunshiny vividness, it would be Hermanus - to try and convey the way my heartstrings tugged around every corner, changed though it is from the village my sisters and I roamed freely as small girls. But the only sketch I did during a languorous fresh-fish lunch on the rocks (how this restaurant got permission to build themselves right ON the rocks I don't know!) was the feeble attempt below. I was too busy enjoying watching the whales frollicking in Walker Bay and chatting to one of those sisters and her husband as we reunited from our separate continents for a couple of days. The sketch is of the Whale Crier - a man whose job it is to alert tourists to the presence of whales in the bay by blowing his kelp horn. The whale tail wasn't quite that big, though they were very close... somebody said there were 40, don't know who counts them, but the sea was alive - tails and blowholes and fins flipping and rolling as they played out their primal rituals, oblivious to the oohs and ahs of us onlookers.

Then to Elgin where I sketched the vineyards and the day after the birthday party, off to Cape Town. For once we didn't try to fit everything in, but spoilt ourselves by being tourists, cruising along the coastline and taking in the breathtaking scenery on a sparkling spring day. The top sketch is in the old naval village of Simon's Town, where I sat in the car and sketched the main road while my husband looked for a pharmacy - can't remember what he was after, it couldn't have been serious!

Two more sketches of that trip along the coast to come... my busiest sketching day for a long time.

Prayer for the Gulf

Sometimes words, and images too, just fail... the catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico is appalling beyond description, but, on the day after World Environment Day, a small contribution to Suzanne McDermott's Spirit of the Gulf Challenge. I've only had a brief glimpse of this coastline on a visit to New Orleans some 17 years ago but have spent much of my childhood happily near the sea, which is all one precious, irreplaceable body of water, as Suzanne points out. Not having my own sea photos to work from, but looking at pictures on the internet and Flickr, and this one in particular I thought of those perfect white wings encircling the gulf and all it's creatures, healing, comforting and restoring. It will take many years and much more physical labour than such a wishful thought could conjure, but... may it be so.

THE SPIRIT OF THE GULF CHALLENGE:

• 
  
  Find a photo or other resource depicting some living aspect of the Gulf of Mexico before the oil disaster or

• 
  
  Tap into your spirit and use your imagination

• 
  
  Make a drawing, painting or other piece of creative work with love and gratitude for the beautiful life of whatever you're depicting.

• 
  
  Post what you make on your website, include a link to this post: Spirit of the Gulf Challenge (or the facebook group — (http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=127832103901693) and put the icon below in your sidebar with a link to this post (or the facebook group). Send me a link to your post and I'll add the link to bottom of this post.

• 
  
  Now a facebook group at Spirit of the Gulf facebook group. You can link to your work there! (If you're not on facebook, just email Suzanne your link and she'll post it.)

Invite 5 of your friends or favorite artists to accept this challenge, include a link to this post, the facebook page, copy this description of the challenge and the icon below for their sidebar.

                                            

I'm so bad at choosing and passing on, and it takes me forever, so please if you read this, join in!

"Hope" is the thing with feathers -

that perches in the soul -
and sings the tune without the words
And never stops at all.


Emily Dickinson

The Seagull

I decided to try a full-on finished watercolour painting from the seagull sketch in the last post, using a couple more photographs to add reflections of a boat, and the yellow bollard, which struck me at the time as a larger mirror image of the seagull's beak. I don't know if this is compositionally sound, but I liked the three strong shapes of the gull and shadows (is the bottom one too strong? - and it looks like a duck!). I tried to stay loose, but got quite involved in the textures of the flagstones.
Looking at the painting next to the sketch on the screen, I think I prefer the warmer, softer colours in the sketch - darn - I don't know if I have the dedication to do it over again :/

Kalk Bay

A seagull that I sketched from my digital camera with watercolours and waterbrush - it started off well, but the cheap sketchbook paper didn't take to much working of the paint - I might try this on better paper.
Just the loveliest day in Kalk Bay - a fishing harbour which still barely supports a few local fishermen going out to sea in their boats. I hope and pray that the big trawlers on the horizon don't put them out of business for once and for all - a fate that's befallen many a similiar seaside industry.
We were inside the restaurant - 'Livebait' - and had a great view of the harbour and its activities. The two fishermen on the bottom left having their lunchtime 'dop' of sweet muscadel wine. I guess they'd finished fishing for the day!
The opposite side of the bay where waves crash right up against the Brass Bell - another restaurant that's been there as long as I can remember. I believe nobody wants to insure them any more against water damage!

The Fairest Cape

We're just back from a visit to Cape Town, for a birthday and a short holiday. We thought we'd be going into the notorious Cape of Storms, with weather forecasts of raging gales and torrential rain as we left Joburg - but after a day or two of drizzle and greyness, we got "The Fairest Cape in all the World" (Sir Francis Drake) instead - sparkling sunshine, blue and white sea, awe-inspiring mountains, autumnal vineyards... at its best it has to be about the most beautiful place on earth!We did lots of socialising and driving (had to take full advantage of unlimited free miles in the hired car!) so my watercolours remained untouched and the sketching I did was in 15 to 20 minute sessions, usually around a meal. The sketch above was done from the 'Green Room' we rented in Camps Bay high above the sea, which was a good thing, as that was where all the storm action was. I added colour at home from photos - the day I sketched it was grey and misty. I've gazed in awe at these magnificent cliffside homes over the years and never dreamt I'd ever get to stay in one. As our hostess said, they found a piece of paradise when they bought here 20 or so years ago.

This was over breakfast on Sunday morning from a beachfront café - everything was lined up in rows...waves, cars (I managed to draw the back of a car resting on the front of an SUV - it wasn't really so!) , palm trees, umbrellas, restaurants... We went for a walk along the beach later and saw the aftermath of the storm - thick cappacino foam all over the sea and sand, kelp knotted around every protuberance and beach chairs that were chained together to a post broken, battered and buried. Who would be a sailor!?
An inexpertly pieced together montage of photos taken from the road at the back of our apartment - the mountain range called the Twelve Apostles

Last sea sketches

The last of my sea sketches - that's a seagull sitting on top of the beacon, which the kids swim out to as a rite of passage into bragging rights beach-champ status. I hope to do a proper painting or two at some stage from them when my studio is sorted - I wish I'd done that for the start of the new year so I could get started while full of enthusiasm and energy from the break.

We once stayed in that house on the cliff for a long weekend - it's called 'Listen to the Ocean', and of course that song runs endlessly through my head whenever I see it - fantastic views up and down the coastline, and back towards Kassies Baai village, a national monument with it's famous 200 year old white fisherman's cottages, painted countless hundreds of times by artists over the years. I felt too voyeurish to sit there and sketch people's homes but I took a few photos from a distance and may paint from those too.

Listen to the ocean,

echoes of a million seashells

Forever it's in motion

Moving to a rhythmic and unwritten music

That's played eternally

Oh I do like to be beside...

This whole vacation I was struck by the many striations (striata?) of every vista - sea, land and sky - almost like handwriting across the landscape. There were lots of clouds all the time, probably causing the horizontal bands and streaks on every surface.

More pages from my moleskine notebook... while I'm posting these holiday sketches I'm trying to get my house, and after that my studio, in order so I can get back to 'work' (though I can't think of it as work :o). My daughters took turns to house- and pet-sit while we were away and if I tell you that I first had to clean the vacuum cleaner before I could vacuum, wash the mop before I could mop, and rinse out the washing machine and dishwasher before... well you get an idea of what a mess we are in! The studio has become a bit of a general dumping ground, I'm going to have to assert myself there again - and then I might get to making plans for the New Year - by which time it'll probably be February!

Seaside studies

The beach was very crowded when I sketched this - our quiet retreat that we've been enjoying on and off over the last thirty years or so, has been discovered in a big way. There were many more people than I've painted here. One of the few really sunny days we had... and the only bits of me sticking out of cover - my inner knees - got horribly sunburnt! A few curious but polite children came to look over my shoulder. This was in my hand-folded Fabriano accordion sketchbook 250x175mm.

Back to the little moleskine and the first bemused attempts to capture the constant motion, colours and mysteries of the beautiful sea. What a joy, even though I feel I need another lifetime to even begin to succeed at this impossible task.

Too much for my palette

The chap who asked for the landscape a la Meyer, doesn't want that after all, but would now like a huge watercolour (a full sheet of Fabriano - what's that, about 1200x900mm?) of his children in the sea, with whole mountain ranges and reflections and two reasonable likenesses and sky with clouds and sandbanks and currents... each one of them a challenge in their own right, and altogether just beyond me. Does anyone do such big land/figurescapes in watercolour? I said no, I couldn't take it on - I saw myself throwing my entire stock of pricey little tubes of colour all over that humungous piece of paper, and sweating and swearing as I tried to spread and control them... makes me hyperventilate just thinking about it. So I did this little (148x105mm) sketch of the kids, with an itty bit of the sea - I think it's actually a lagoon - and mountains to give him as a 'thanks but no thanks' to go back with the photo album. The likenesses are pretty good, (though I don't know them, so can't be sure) but the reflections are fussy and the water overworked and the mountain darkly ominous and he'll probably think he had a narrow escape, but I think it's quite nice of me.

I must down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide...

Well we've had a long power cut today - becoming a regular feature of Life in Johannesburg - thanks to amazing lack of foresight and planning...ugh, but I won't go into all that. I will think of something much more pleasant. One good thing about a powercut is that it forces you to leave your computer and tea-kettle and go outside and garden (which I did) and start a new drawing, which I did but it isn't finished yet. So I'm going to post some pages from an old sketchbook that I did one holiday at Arniston - my son is the little fisherman in the black & white sketch, so it was a long time ago.
Arniston is a wonderful historic village near Cape Aghullas - the southernmost tip of Africa, now also of course inevitably, a growing holiday resort, though the residents and owners have been (so far) quite committed to preserving its original nature. It's also called Waenhuiskrans, due to a cave on the shore that is big enough to hold an ox wagon with its team of oxen (though they would never have been able to get down there), and the original little white thatched-roof house fishing village is called Kassiesbaai - a vibrant and characterful community that still make their living taking their colourful little boats out every morning to catch whatever the trawlers have left them. We are very lucky to have good and generous friends who've invited us to share many an idyllic holiday in the sun and azure sea with them at their beach house. We have a little dream of retiring there one day...
Steps leading down to a white-pebbly beach. Ancient fisherman - strandlopers - built circular rock catchment areas to trap fish in at low tide
Some of the fishing boats pulled up the slipway with a few of the old Kassiesbaai houses sticking up in the background

One happy little boy lost in a world of his own - and hungry seagulls and cormorants ready to help him with his catch. The rocks on the beaches are smooth, round and white, but the cliffs are black and rough - agony to bare feet!