Studio Window

Oh no, they're changing Blogger - have to learn more new stuff!... it looks like I can't change the size of the images any more, unless there's something I've missed..? (I reverted to the old style to make these bigger this time.)

Anyway, with days blending into each other, I'd forgotten to do the weekly post I'd promised myself I would. This little series below started with a doodly sort of continuous line drawing of my studio windowsill . I then added monochromatic tones, which scattered the image into little pieces - so I printed out a copy of the original line drawing (luckily photographed it first - a good way to try out different approaches) and tried to mass the tones into bigger areas. Still a bit busy, but it's a very busy window! And then added white highlights with a Pentel paint pen. The light was changing constantly as I painted, so these do sort of reflect the passage of time in a day, but I'd love to get simpler, stronger designs in my work.

Summer Umbrellas

These are six A5 drawings done from photos that I've taken over a couple of years, mostly from my car window when stopped at traffic lights or the side of the road, or while my husband was driving. I've always loved the sight of these women walking along with their umbrellas shielding them from the hot sun and wanted to sketch them - but they're moving, and I'm moving and it's been a bit impossible. So when I was thinking what to do for the Night of a 1000 Drawings charity event I decided to pull out my blurry photos and make a little series to donate. I kind of want to keep them now, but too late - they're on their way to the big night on Thursday. It's summer though, and there'll be plenty more bright umbrellas bobbing along pavements for another little - or big - series!

On the road again

Before I get irretrievably back into city life, I wanted to carry on with the small (moleskine watercolour notebook) record of our trip to the coast that I was exploring. I don't know if it is a good idea - it may become tedious, but it can only improve my landscape painting - something I've never really taken to, but think I ought! My original plan, to paint as I travelled, was quickly ditched as lurches and bumps and speeding scenery made that effort laughable!
I sketched this tiny cottage with it's lollipop trees lightly in pencil in the car, and painted it later.
Driving through the Karoo - classified semi-desert, it was really green after lots of rain - it's always been the most boring, endless stretch - miles and miles of very little.
But this time there was more colour, and loads of cloud formations all the way there and back (all that water has been dumping on Joburg the last few weeks!). Little flat-topped mountains are typical all through the Karoo. This was on the way down to the coast - I took many more photos on the way back. You're in for a long ride if I keep this up.
Coming into the little 'dorp' - really just a filling station and a shop - called Three Sisters after these three koppies - former flat-topped hills that have been eroded away until just these 'little heads', which is what koppies means - are left.

Well these are definitely not works of art, but I still like the idea of a journey in a sketchbook, and am interested to see if my painting improves or gets more interesting as I go along, and will be a nice balance to the urban sketching I hope.

Cheerio, chooks

Well the Fair is finally over - a sigh of relief and a slight feeling of emptiness as the pressure of the last weeks is lifted. My Chicken series sold, and two of the Pavement women scenes, and one Jacaranda, with possibly two more after a night or two of sleeping on the thought, so I had a good day. Very little else was sold, sadly, as there was some excellent art on show, at I think reasonable prices. As I've said before, I think a church arts fair won't generally attract big art buyers - unless word gets around and next time (if there is one), they'll come flocking in. I think the familiarity of these scenes, plus their small size and relative prices, worked quite well at this particular show. My favourite bit about it all was

meeting and chatting to some of the other artists - somehow

or other I haven't had that opportunity at other exhibitions - I suppose because I've never 'baby-sat' my work before all through the showing. Some interesting information and contacts were swopped and I'm quite excited to be not quite as on my own in this part of the world as I have been for a long time - many of my past partners-in-art have left Johannesburg for greener pastures over the years - it's high time I found some new ones!

Jacaranda Series

This concludes - for this year anyway - the jacaranda series of 4 little (25 x 25cm) oil paintings, that will be going onto the Arts & Crafts Fair at the end of this month, and with the weather we're having, had better be the last of new oil paintings for then - they will just never get dry in time! The flowers are falling like rain, too, and new green leaves sprouting. Soon the pods will fall, and then the tiny stalks, then the leaves and then the long stalks... it never ends with jacarandas - as we know too well, because some clever built our house's swimming pool right underneath one - a constant slog to keep it clean!

This is the opposite side of the koppie from which I painted the view of little Melville houses - this looks over the suburb of Emmarentia. Someone had considerately blasted a hole in the rock to begin work on their driveway, so that I could get a glimpse of the North-facing side - these houses have a wonderful view, which on a clear day must go all the way to the Magaliesburg.
Coming in on a wing and a prayer,

Look below there's our field over there.

Though there's one motor gone

We will still carry on,

Coming in on a wing and a prayer.

Four Chickens and Out

That's it for now, with chickens - I can see how I could go further with them - but I would want to have them around to do so. If I did carry on with this series, I would try and use more expressive, freer marks, perhaps moving towards the abstract, and compose them better on the canvas - I continue to fill up the space available right to the edges...sigh!So that's that mini-series - for the next exciting production... um, not sure - I think I will go on a recce over the next couple of days and gather ideas and material. While I was photographing Chickens IV, I dropped my little hp camera that has been my constant companion since I got it, so I'll have to sketch references instead of clicking them - eek - might be good for me I guess, but I'm so mad I broke my precioussss >:o( Please Father Christmas....

A Series of Chickens

OK, here is one little plan... there is an Arts and Crafts fair coming up at the end of November at my church, for which I've been asked to put up some artwork. I thought I would try and do some 'painting-a-day' paintings (or as close to that as I can get), in small series of four or six to each theme. I doubt if anyone will come to a church A&C Fair and buy a great big painting, so these are little oils on 8"x10" stretched canvases - so they don't need to be framed - the trouble with watercolours.
Starting with Chickens- they bring back happy childhood memories of them scratching around under our big mulberry tree in Bulawayo, Rhodesia, as it was then - Zimbabwe of course now (you never saw such enormous, shiny black mulberries as grew from the richly manured soil of the chicken-coop)... dodging the foul(sorry)-tempered cock to discover the delight of an occasional egg... coming home from trips away to be greeted at the gate by two dogs, two cats and two chickens.... and the trauma (not-happy memory) suffered by my sister Vivienne when her best beloved Little White Hen was presented as dinner one night...It's strange going back to oils after such a long - for me - immersion in watercolours (which I have not abandoned, the oils are for practical reasons). I wasn't quite sure how to begin. I prepared the canvases with a red ground, then sketched in the light value chicken shapes, and then the dark shadows and values - rather backwards foremost I think.

I finished one - once I got going I couldn't stop - though when I see it on screen, I see all the faults I couldn't before, so it needs some more tweaking. I managed to lose most of the red ground, which I rather wanted to show a bit more. That must be one of the values of doing a series - hopefully they get better, or closer to your intentions, as you go along. I think if I can progress with these small themes, I might be psyching myself up for a bigger series later on, that will develop my self-discipline and purpose!