Paying Attention

I have been listening to a lot of artist's podcasts - too many, there are a million of them out there! But a couple of phrases have stuck in my head from other nuggets of wisdom I've heard recently. (I will credit them here if I can find my bitty notes, but both have recurred in a few interviews.) 

One, regarding subject matter, is "Pay Attention To What You Pay Attention to" (sounds obvious doesn't it?) and the other is "Work in Series". I think both of these will help with frustration at myself for continuing to have such a diverse range of styles, medium and subjects. I dread the question, "So, what do you paint?" and should really have a ready reply by now!

Something that keeps stopping me in my tracks with a longing to capture them, are the groups or pairs of (usually) women in local streets, chatting, sitting or walking around - wearing bright colours, with umbrellas, children on backs or otherwise attached; mostly in summer when shadows are strong or people are out and about later in the day. Such a warm, convivial feature of Johannesburg, I've painted and sketched these scenes often but haven't found THE way to do them that isn't a rather slavish copy of a photo, but more finished than an urban sketch. I did two versions of this group - dressed all in white in this case, walking home from church through the leafy green streets of Emmarentia - trying to keep to strong, simple shapes, the results not what I'm after yet... are they ever though? 

A peek at the Faraday Muti Market

Oh my goodness, blogging has got so left behind in the whirl of this fleeting year, I don't know where to start again...or whether...but I remind myself that if I don't record here some of what I've done/drawn/painted, chances are it'll all get lost in the jumble of events in my mind, and I'll be wondering what on earth I did with my life!
I'm not going to try and do a chronological catch-up, too much work and I have to spend less time on the computer - this sketch was done in May at one of our USk 10x10 workshops, 'Through the Windows' led by Lisa Martens, from Joziburg Lane (now called Hangout Jozi) where I did these sketches, only out of different windows, and looking down.

I felt like a rather illicit voyeur as I squinted down at a section of the Faraday Muti Market, which I've never had the courage to venture into myself. A traditional African healer's market, or hospital, it has animal - both common and highly endangered - and herbal products on display and traditional doctors that prescribe potions and lotions of herbs, spices, bones, flesh and more to cure every ailment or life problem. If you have a strong stomach you can read blogger 2Summers personal account, or google the market and find out more. Fortunately the area I could see below me consisted mainly of grains, herbs or husks laid out on mats in the sun and the 'bush meat' was hidden from my squeamish birds-eye view. People came and went to consult the sangomas and traditional healers for age-old remedies and spiritual and supernatural help; a Don Quixote-like figure poked and slashed at covered piles of who-knows-what with his stick as sellers sat calmly watching - and the 21st century rushed on past on the M2 highway above.

A Thursday Morning in Bertrams

The sketchers group has been getting a lot of invitations lately - as Joburg warms up (and then some!) and events are planned before the rush for the coast in December.

One was to sketch some Street Theatre in the little, poverty stricken suburb of Bertrams just south of the city. We decided to go to a rehearsal on a Thursday morning, but sadly it had been rescheduled without our knowledge - so we found ourselves banging on an unresponsive corrugated iron gate in an famously lawless area. We recklessly decided to unfold our chairs on a corner and start drawing in spite of warnings by concerned individuals to keep our car doors locked etc etc.

As is usually the case when we venture out into Joburg's vastly varied streets, we soon felt part of the furniture as locals passed us by, some stopping to look and chat about drawing, some taking no notice; a father ushering his two sweet little boys to say hello to the gogos (grandmothers); an undoubted illicit exchange between a young chap and a passing mini-bus taxi driver; a woman coming to tell us her story of being kicked out of the nearby home for vulnerable people and being taken in by her kind friend, who came to join the conversation; men changing their car oil and pouring the old stuff into the empty plot next to us (ulp! - sometimes you have to just keep your mouth shut!) Only one very interested look into my sketching bag...luckily he wasn't interested in pens and paint. In the distance a corner café was bustling with activity, the peeling bark of the plane trees leading to it reflecting the surfaces of the decaying but still beautiful buildings.

It felt like street theatre in a way, even without the actors.

[And hooray, my blog list is back!]

Playing with Inks

Urban Sketchers Johannesburg (yes, we're now an official chapter!) was invited by Assemblage, a local visual arts community organisation to join a challenge to use only Lamy products to produce artworks or in our case, sketches. Lamy provided a range of their pens and inks to share among the participating artists. I have my own much-used Lamy safari pen plus a spare for just-in-case, so filled those and took a few extra colour cartridges...a cool pinky red, a viridian-ish green, another luminous yellow-green, purple, and a few drops of a dark prussian blue and turquoise in containers.

A shed at 1Fox - old industrial warehouses now restaurants, bars and event spaces... note the chandelier!

Most of my sketches ended up looking purply-green and I discovered that the luminous green was the only warm shade I had, and mixed with the pink had to serve to make skin tones and browns. With a high pigment load the intensity of the inks is amazing though, a little went a very long way.

Sketching friend Leonora and I sat on a busy street corner in the city and I sketched the traders. The guy selling cosmetics, combs and sundries in the "two Rand shop" never let up his call for a minute of "pondopondotworandi", interspersed every now and then by his neighbour yelling "Walalawasaba" which, I believe, means "you snooze, you lose!"

The same corner, slightly different experiment with the pens and ink. I tried swapping cartridges in the pens to see if they would show a progression from, say, green to purple, but as the pigments are so powerful, I would've had to put in a few km's of line to show the complete changeover.

Dismal attempt at the lovely old building on the opposite corner... need some architectural drawing workshops!

My Blog List has disappeared from my sidebar... I have no idea how - I reported it to Blogger Help and someone(?) said they were aware of the problem but so far nothing has been restored. Anyone else had this happen?

Basket Sellers

I popped out to collect my contact lenses from my optometrist and got a parking place right in front of the basket ladies on the pavement outside her rooms. Too good an opportunity to miss sketching them unaware!

SketchCrawl in Melville

...And crawling to non-existent internet speeds here, so an overdue post about the 50th Worldwide Sketchcrawl on 23 January. We met in Melville, a suburb we've sketched quite often because of its quaint shops and bohemian population. 

I started at the corner clothes shop where some sketchers were doing a bit more catching up than sketching for a while; then popped into the tattoo parlour who surprised me with caricatures by one of the artists in return for my efforts; indulged in a delicious iced coffee at the IT café while sketching the restaurant opposite, with pavement bead artist traders on the corner; then we all ended up at 27 Boxes, which I've sketched before but don't seem to have posted on this blog... it is up on Urban Sketchers here.
We were lucky enough to have our wrap-up meeting coincide with a young jazz band's performance at the little outdoor arena, giving us more sketching fodder as well as a treat for the ears - a very talented group, some of whom were just off to Cape Town to start on their musical studies and careers.

Even though a few of our regular Joburg Sketchers couldn't make it, so great to have a good turnout of ten! Yay!

Trees in the City

On a gorgeous Spring morning last Friday, a few sketcher friends and I met in Braamfontein to record a 'Parking Day' event where artists and activists were supposed to take over parking bays and transform them. It had been cancelled at the last minute and not an activist was to be found. Lots of cars in the parking bays, students to and from nearby Wits University, some vigilant security guards steering a few beggars away from the streets and cafés - I decided to try and draw the row of public art tree sculptures that runs all the way up Juta St, but all these things got in the way. I added the colours so you can spot them among the other activity!

A Bunch of Sketches & Visitors

 Yikes - it's April, and autumn already, and I've been so busy sketching and painting and thinking about what I want to/need to/have to do - posting it all has taken a back seat. To think I once started blogging to try and motivate myself to draw more... well, something's working at the moment!

We've had a couple of visits lately from sketchers from other parts of the country and the world. Ex-Joburg Sketcher Barbara Moore came up recently from her new home in Simon's Town in the Cape, and three of us had a relaxed morning catching up and sketching on a beautiful clear autumn day at Zoo Lake.

An icecream man pondering the lake with a beaded dragonfly mobile behind him

Waitrons and a mirrored angel - over cappucinos at Moyo restaurant 

A couple of weeks before that French urban sketcher Michel Davinroy was in town. He had been sketching prolifically on his own, but joined us at a Dance Umbrella rehearsal at the Market Theatre for the difficult challenge of capturing the unpredictable movements of contemporary dancers, mostly in the dark!

And yesterday, we arranged a mid-week sketching session in the nearby suburb of Melville to meet Brighton, England resident and world traveller Fiver Löcker.

It's exciting that we are so much "on the map" that sketchers from around the world are starting to seek us out to draw together, and enrich us all with their stories, sketches and enthusiasm! 

Car guards and basket ladies outside the Golf Tearoom in Melville

Fiver sketching on her iPad in the eclectic clutter of Antz café, Melville

Stormy Day in Fordsburg

I'm cutting and pasting this post from the Urban Sketchers website, catching up a bit on posting here on my once again neglected blog - only Feb and life is already too busy!:
For the 46th WorldWide Sketchcrawl on Saturday 31 Jan our group went to the historic suburb of Fordsburg on the outskirts of Johannesburg. We met outside this building on Mint Rd and discovered that there was a bustling market getting into gear behind us. Some self-designated car guards and a vendor selling clothes hangers - everyone trying to make a rand or two for the day...

 Before we could get going on the market, there were rumblings of thunder and some fat drops of rain, warning us to get under cover, so we took advantage of the kind offer of an artist, Hermann Niebuhr, who has a studio in the area to use his balcony to sketch from. We got there just in time before there was one of several deluges. (Sorry about the quality of the images, my scanner is was out of action.) Below are Marlene and John - with the luxury of chairs and a table - sketching the view.

And the sketchers huddling under the tin roof along the balcony - we still got pretty wet with some interesting droplet effects on some of the sketches.

Maboneng

We went sketching on Saturday in the Maboneng Precinct, an area on the East side of town that was once a no-go but which has been mostly reclaimed from crime and urban decay by private developers who've built galleries, shops, studios and restaurants . It was a nightmare getting there and back, as much of Johannesburg was experiencing one of our now frequent power cutting programmes, trying to save us from total blackout in the near future - so all the robots (traffic lights to you in the rest of the world :)) were out. A few of us managed to make it all the way there, and once our jangled nerves were calmed, we found a lot to draw - the most interesting being the street life and characters.

 Uncle Merv's serves coffee and smoothies and hires out bicycles if you're brave enough to take on the taxis, jaywalking pedestrians and other surprises.

A different kind of Food Truck - an old Chevvie with a container on the back serving customers on the pavement. I had two little boys accompanying me for this one, first gleefully setting off firecrackers all around me till I complained, then sharing the tyre I was sitting on (lost my little sketching stool) one very helpfully holding my palette for me.

And a last few squiggly sketches of passersby - there were so many interesting characters wandering past, and a beautiful old building in a bit of a sad state that I wanted to sketch but couldn't spend the hours that it would take me. The squiggle on the left was a recycling collector surfing expertly past on his home-made trolley with his huge sack of plastic behind him - SO fast downhill on his tiny wheels - one of the surprises you wouldn't want to collide with on a bike!

Joburg City Centre

Our small sketching group was invited to go and sketch in the city by a group of artists who are holding an exhibition called Joburg Joburg, which aims to engage its immediate surroundings and to promote the renewal of the city centre.

We have ventured to the edges of the city in Newtown a few times, but never really braved the inner streets until now. I started on one of Joburg's oldest buildings, Victory House, while we waited for everyone to arrive (finding architecture as difficult as ever!) - quite a crowd of nine when joined by some of the participating artists. We then walked along to Ghandi Square, which was fairly quiet on a Saturday morning, but a few shoppers and people waiting for buses.

We then tried to go to our next destination outside the City Hall, but found the roads closed and access denied as they were shooting "dangerous scenes" for the new Avengers movie! We did hear a huge crash while we were sketching nearby in the Library Gardens, where political and church meetings, ladies selling religious tracts and boys on skateboards were all on the go.

For the first time, the progression of a sketch of mine of a food vendor's stall was being videoed by a young photographer from Pretoria, when the owner of the stall came over, irate that we were focusing on his enterprise (we had asked someone who we thought was the owner) ...another first for me... so we had to reluctantly give up on that, after spending so long setting up angles and supports.

I sketched the skateboarders instead, who didn't mind at all! More sketches and photos of the day here....

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!

Street Tales

Sketches from last Friday's trip into Newtown - I decided I had to have a good go at sketching some of the buildings and architecture - something I'm not at all confident or comfortable doing as some of you know! After much holding up of pencils to measure and estimate angles I was quite pleased to get a reasonable rendition of Gwigwi Mwrebi St down, but want to get a looser and more interesting look to my lines - much more practice needed. I left off all the graffiti as my lines might have disappeared in the confusion!                                                             When a big truck parked in front of my view, I turned to the two women selling cigarettes on my right who had been chattering non-stop from the time I sat down next to them. They didn't seem to notice, or care, that I was drawing them. I liked the way the graffiti on the highway pillar soared up behind and above them, kind of illustrating the tales they might have been telling - I needed a longer page!

New Chinatown

For the 37th Worldwide Sketchcrawl, Joburg Sketchers went to 'New' Chinatown - old Chinatown in the city centre has fallen into dilapidation, but in the suburb of Cyrildene, a busy, thriving community has sprung up over the last few years. Fantastically fresh vegetables spill out onto the pavements, grown in the gardens of the surrounding houses - and tea shops, restaurants, fishmongers, hairdressers, Chinese massage and therapy studios, supermarkets full of strange, unidentifiable products, so much to draw. A good turnout of seven, we started on the veggie shop near our meeting point, then trickled up the road finding other viewpoints. We met up for lunch at 'Northern Chinese Restaurant', a humble looking place, but with delicious, plentiful and very reasonable food. We should have kept it for last - we all ate far too much, sketching after that was a bit slow and most of us felt the need to go home for a little nap soon after.

Ackland Museum Show in North Carolina!

 The first group show of Urban Sketchers: Seeing the World, One Drawing at a Time opens at the Ackland Museum of Art, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on Thursday August 16th. Thirty eight of the group's one hundred contributors have donated sketches, proceeds from the sales of which will go mainly to Urban Sketchers to support their educational programmes, with a small percentage to the Ackland Art Museum. These are two of the four sketches I sent in, with my thanks to Gabi Campanario and Urban Sketchers, for the wide world they've opened up to me! 

This is a street scene in Parkview (other sketches from there here). Along the pavement, vendors set up their wares and hope people visiting the shops and restaurants will stop and buy. The man was selling bulbs from his carrier bag, with a magazine opened on a page with pictures of clivia in bloom. I have bought bulbs from a similar salesman before, and something completely different came up from what he showed me, so you take your chances!

The woman selling baskets and pots sat patiently, aware that I was sketching her. When the sun started sinking she loaded up her goods to leave - she saw me pick up my pen to sketch her again, and said in words I couldn't really understand, but got the gist of, that she certainly wasn't going to hang around to be drawn again - and within minutes was flouncing off down the road, and gone.

Jacaranda Joburg

Purple, purple everywhere right now - the jacarandas breathtakingly taking over the city - above our heads, below our feet as the fallen blossoms cover the streets, and wherever you turn. Trying to photograph and paint them, it seems impossible to really portray their glowing abundance of colour. On the left I tried splashing and dropping it on, emulating the flowers that drop constantly onto my page, and above, rolling the brush loaded with the staining dioxazine violet around the page to build darker tones but still trying to keep them light and luminous.

We're having a heat wave, and these scenes of women walking with umbrellas and pushing the prams of the babies they take care of are everywhere up and down the shady avenues - pure summer in Johannesburg!