Holiday Snaps

From the picturesquely perfect little town of Franschhoek in the Western Cape, more sketches from our holiday. I was determined to do some in spite of lots of eating, drinking, socialising and driving around. I'm only about halfway through Marc Holmes' Craftsy course on Travel Sketching but I took some of his tips on doing simple line drawings in the minutes you do have, and embellishing them later with texture and/or colour when you have a few more. Way off his high standards, but I'm pretty pleased with having been able to capture some little vignettes of our trip!

This was from under a big cool pine tree next to an African market that my companions were shopping at - looking through a rose garden towards restaurants and shops on the Main Road to part of the beautiful mountain bowl that surrounds the town.

 A derelict heritage building dating back to Simon van der Stel and French Huguenot times that is due for restoration, on a small farm near the village. Such textures and colours on the whitewashed walls, corrugated tin roof and ancient vines - could sit and paint this for weeks!

Lunch at the Franschhoek Station now turned into a pub restaurant - the old railway station of which, incidentally, my husband's grandfather was the stationmaster in the 1920's. His mother and some of her siblings were born and went to school in Franschhoek, a very different place from the high-end tourist destination it is now. We visited here a few years ago before it had been converted. It was a bit run down but without all the canopies and pub furniture, was much easier to visualise him standing on the platform blowing his whistle... wish I'd sketched it then! Waiters Yolanda and Romarsha noticed me sketching and obligingly hovered within view so I could add them to the scene - I sent them the image but hope they see themselves here too...

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!

Following the Steel Wings

Last weekend we drove to the little town of Clarens in the foothills of the Maluti Mountains, known as an 'artist's haven' as so many artists live there, or visit regularly. Apparently it is also a Biker's haven, as both times we have been we've had these growling, throbbing machines follow and overtake us all the way there. Once in the village, they're parked outside the pubs and restaurants while the leather-clad, be-studded, tassled and tattooed riders mill around on the pavement and occupy tables not too far away from their metal beasts. 

I started sketching the approaching road, but found it a bit stressful and decided to relax and enjoy the scenery - but grabbed a quick scribble at a 'pitstop' in Harrismith. It must be one of the prettiest places to fill up and get coffee and a snack - rose bushes and flowers everywhere with sandstone mountains as a backdrop - bikers had stopped here too so in they went.

Late afternoon and over a beer at the Clarens Brewery, I started sketching some wire sculptures outside the window, when more bikers arrived and I had a view of them through the doorway. I discovered that it was, in fact, Harley-Davidson weekend in Clarens, and that the Steel Wings raise funds for Aids orphans and other charities. They did seem perfectly nice and normal once you got chatting (my husband chatted while I sketched) in spite of the intimidating outfits.

On Saturday I sketched at a wedding - a commission and the main purpose of our trip - scary... a whole lot more pressure than choosing your subject and it either working, or not and nobody cares. I'm still fiddling around with those!

With the annual Cherry Festival on this weekend in nearby Ficksburg - we were delighted to find bucketloads of the beautiful fruit being sold along the edge of the town square, and the cherry sellers happy to be drawn if I bought their wares, which I did in abundance.

Thumping exhausts alerted me to another group of bikers having breakfast across the square, so I found a spot behind the row of bikes and did another sketch while my husband watched cricket inside before they roared off, and we drove more sedately, back to the city,

Before Lisbon... Zambia

In complete contrast and as a gorgeous relaxed prelude to the busyness of the week in Lisbon, my husband and I were lucky enough to join my two sisters, their spouses and a group of friends, on an idyllic holiday on the Zambezi River in Zambia. I didn't do a lot of sketching - my few attempts at drawing the abundance of wildlife - lions, hippos galore, elephant and crocodiles, buffalo, impala and kudu were quickly abandoned as either they or the vehicle moved, or I was too entranced to take my eyes off them to reach for my sketchbook and brushes. These were some of the quiet moments I did manage to get down on paper...

A view from a pool deck at the lodge down the river.

Hippos grazed and grunted contentedly near the tented rooms - I sat on one of the patios and sketched them and a group of baboons picking at seeds on the mud flats - ready to run inside if they came any closer!

Boats took us to some watery by-ways, where scores of varieties of birds nested and fed, as well as some huge crocs and the ubiquitous hippos, the 'pigeons of the Zambezi'. I was grateful for the expert knowledge of the guides as to where to get out and stretch our legs! This was my husband, brother-in-law and his brother fishing for barbel. On another occasion, one of them had caught a fish from the boat and was reeling it in, when a croc shot up and took it, Matt finding himself with this huge toothy beast on the end of his line, a metre away - which fortunately turned and broke it before diving back into the deep.

Vincent, the fishing guide on this trip (my sketch doesn't look much like him, another moving target!), worked hard, baiting all the hooks and advising where to cast - he was extremely knowledgeable about the birds, trees, in fact all the flora and fauna, as were all the guides - getting a little time to fish himself in between work.

The bar hangs over the water and underneath a magnificent sausage tree, adorned with enormous sausage-shaped seedpods. It was a bit chilly in the evenings to make use of this beautiful sundowner area in July, two outdoor fireplaces inviting us to gather around and share every day's wealth of experiences.

The white fronted bee-eater, as my sister Vivienne noted, was the bird of the trip, there seemed to be one around or ahead of us, wherever any of us went, by foot or landrover. One of the guides said they try to lead people, or baboons to bee-hives, so that as you take the honey, they get the bees, wiping the stings out first on a rock - clever little creatures!

...and a jacana digging for food in the mud puddles.

On my last blissful day in the bush, we could choose to go down the river by boat cruise - which I did, having an unforgettable encounter with elephants along the way (photos below) - land vehicle, or canoe, all meeting at a spot on the river bank where a delicious picnic lunch had been prepared for us. I sketched the staff having a well-earned break before clearing up and getting us back via boat cruise or game drive for one last, perfect evening on the Zambezi.

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.

Prince Albert, Great Karoo

On our trip down to the Cape, after an eleven hour drive from Johannesburg, we stopped for the night at Prince Albert where we'd booked into the Swartberg Hotel. First gratefully downing a cold beer in the pub, under the gaze of some poor departed nyala antelope and a huge pair of kudu horns (my proportions are way out, they were much bigger than the heads) we strolled round the village of beautifully restored Victorian and Cape Dutch buildings, housing mohair and weaving businesses, galleries and craft shops, as the setting sun inflamed the surrounding mountains.

We were entertained at dinner with some of the legends and ghost stories of the 125 year old hotel by our waitress, but were assured that our room was not haunted, whew. The next morning while my husband had a look inside, I sat in the garden of the museum and sketched an ox-wagon with the Seven Arches gallery and restaurant behind it. The plant-like structures on the roof are scrap-metal sculptures by one of the area's many artists.
We didn't use the spectacular steep, zigzagging Swartberg Pass through the mountains as it was under repair after heavy rains, going instead via the equally spectacular but less vertigo-inducing Meiringspoort - but the mind boggles to think how these wagons negotiated their way, long before any roads were built.

Vineyard Afternoon

Another long absence from this space, but I've been having a wonderful break in the most beautiful Cape in all the world - a fairly impulsive trip to help celebrate a birthday, as it's a long way to drive - but well worthwhile on all fronts. A happy family gathering, a party, spring seeping into all the mountains and valleys, sea and veld, wonderful stays in towns and villages that we have whizzed through before and longed to spend a little longer Sometime... well the Sometime arrived and all we wanted to do was spend a lot longer, so next Sometime...

This pen and watercolour sketch was done from a kitchen window on a farm in Elgin, a valley rippling with apple and pear orchards, vineyards and olive groves - on an afternoon where a gale was whipping the trees and vines and threatening to sabotage the birthday party - but at 4 o'clock it dropped as if exhausted and all was calm for the celebrations, to everyone's relief.

If any of our friends and family see these holiday posts and wonder why they didn't see us... I'm sorry! It was a whistle-stop week long tour, and we were being mostly tourists this time. Hope to be back soon for a more sociable visit! Other sketches I did were so rushed and scribbly, I need to work on them a bit to make them presentable, but hope to be sharing a bit more of our lovely week away with you soon.

Amazing Olde England

I'm back again - well, have been for a week but was slain by a cold and also have been sluggish about getting back to normal life after all the excitement and highs of a wonderful wedding trip.

I did little sketching and hardly got my paints out - it was primarily a lovely time spent with family and friends, reunions, celebrations, and sightseeing of the first bit of England outside of London that I've been to. Windsor, Oxford, little Pangbourne, Stonehenge!... I wondered if I'd ever get there and now I have... the wedding itself was held in the idyllic settings of bluebell woods and the tulip bedecked garden of this old Priory home, which I sketched very badly on the spot and have not done any justice at all. The top sketch is from the lower double window in the middle one...

...and this a 'pleached' apple tree, carefully trained and pruned into a long flattened shape over many years, leaning over 'black' and pink tulips that echoed the colours of the old tree. I could've spent months or more just moving a few metres at a time to the next perfect picture-painting spot, it's all so beautiful, but this time was much more sociable than that - I did a few sketches pre and during the wedding... quickly and inadequately, leaving my carefully chosen watercolour palette undisturbed as I grabbed at fleeting images in fine pen lines. I'm now adding colour and a couple more scenes to flesh out the album, from photographs as a gift to the newlyweds. Once they've seen them, I'll show them to you - my intentions to present it to them as they left on honeymoon were completely unrealistic, but I hope it won't be too long a-coming!

Off to see the world

Another daughter has ventured forth and flown off to London to find her feet - if not her fortune. In January last year I did a post about her sister going off to Dubai, and dug out some old sketches I'd done of her. This child, being the one who never sat still, and then later who was always 'out', has far fewer of my efforts expended on her, I had to really scratch to find these. I suspect we may hear more of her news now that she's far away than I did when she was home, in between work, netball, yoga, party, party, party, scuba-diving, rock climbing and just hanging out with her friends. Well I hope so anyway!
Though none of these sketches look terribly like her, they all remind me of the various stages of her childhood. Endlessly interested six-year old, happy confident niner, slightly sulky sixteen-wishing-she were-somewhere-else, and sunny excited just finished school and off on her first unsupervised holiday with the ever-important friends.
She arrived at Heathrow at 5.30 this morning, and we've had a message from her to say she found her way to her destination on the tube all by herself!
God Bless, golden girl - I hope London and wherever else you roam to, will be as wonderful as your wildest dreams.

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.

Home from the holiday

Hi!! I'm back ... it feels like a small eternity that I've been away and I'm almost overwhelmed at how much I've missed here in blogland, but also thoroughly refreshed by being removed from computers, scanners and virtual communing for what is actually a short time - thanks so much to everybody who left comments and greetings in the last couple of weeks - so very nice to come home to... almost as good as being leapt upon by Very Happy Dog , and pointedly ignored by So Cool Cat, who is punishing us for going AWOL. I'm sorry to present such sorry little sketches first up in 2009, but they are the fond product of much excitement at my Christmas presents from my dear thoughtful husband... a little Moleskine watercolour Notebook (heavily hinted at), and a set of W&N artist quality watercolour half-pans, in a beautifully crafted wooden box (complete surprise and beyond wildest expectations)I immediately planned to do a full sketch record of our journey from Johannesburg to Arniston (about the furthest point in SA you can go to from here), real, live and in the moment, but after these first frantic attempts at scenery flashing past, and waterbrush erratically bouncing from paint to paper, and quite uncontrollable marks making themselves despite my best efforts to control them - I knew I would have to re-think on how to get a long, long journey down on paper -if at all possible... I have travelled this road, with deviations, so many times - as a child with resignation and boredom and as much sleep as possible, and later with growing appreciation for the infinite variation of scenery... colour, light, tone, mood, season... now I know there are really no words or images to express the vastness of possible experience of this journey, and I just want to share as much of my small snippet that I can render with my limited means...Whew - a resting place... we stopped at Beaufort West in the Karoo and were delightfully surprised to find the B&B we'd booked into - La Paix - was new, clean and air-conditioned (memories of spending half the hot night swatting mozzies and the other half trying to find a comfy spot between the protruding bed-springs in 'Rooms', Colesburg - but that was a long time ago) as well as having a lush French-style garden bursting with grape-vines, fat blue agapanthus and lime trees, to relax in before bed between fresh white sheets... (I'm sounding like a travel-guide aren't I?) A bit of the last stretch to the coast - rolling soft mountains with clouds casting undulating shadows - I did these later from the tiny screen on my camera, trying to hang onto the immediacy but without the turbulence - I have a possible plan to continue with this idea, with the trip back home, where I conscientiously and regularly took photos as we went along, driving BFG and my son nuts with the chirrup of my perky camera starting up. But that's all for right now - it was lovely to be there, good to be back.

Morning at the airport

Our daughter who went to Dubai returned today (hooray!) and the plane was delayed. Since rediscovering sketchbooking, almost an occasion for jubilation - a chance to observe and sketch from life... I had to wait a while for a seat, and then of course had mostly back views, except for people staring up at the arrivals screen, who soon turned away again. I started with the man to the right of middle, very shakily, then became surer as I went along.

By the time I got to these figures on the right, I was beginning to enjoy myself trying to capture the essence of each individual, then someone came to watch over my shoulder and I got all flustered and started chatting to her instead (an art teacher from Vereeniging), then the plane and lovely daughter arrived, then we went home and had some tea.

Hats and rainbow falls

At last I've painted this scene from a Bergerac street from a photo I took two years ago - I just loved the display of saccharine colours and the way the hats and scarves almost seemed to be marching down the street. I nearly overworked it - did in fact, in some spots - but managed to control myself. This is watercolour on cold press aquarelle block - 55 x 46 cm

A reversal of the hats and 'falls' - an oil painting I did a couple of years ago, and which should have winged it's way to it's new home in Australia by now, but hasn't yet (sorry V & P!) due to logistical problems - it's big!.. 101 x 76 cm on stretched canvas. I do apologise to the hat-wearers for some unflattering renderings - I wasn't really trying for strong likenesses, but for a moment in time in front of the timeless Victoria Falls (this was taken from the Zambian side, so a less conventional view as has been remarked on by some).

A Holiday continued...

Well now, Adam left such a lot of questions on his comment on my last post A Holiday to remember - that I thought I'd reply with another post about the same painting in case anyone else wants to know too. His questions are in blue...

did you put a fine wash of transparent yellow down first that gives that wonderful warm timbre to the light?

I put a light wash of W&N Yellow Ochre down first, preserving some whites on the brightly sunlit areas - umbrella, hat, shoulder etc. When that was dry I used masking fluid to sketch in the long grasses and the small highlights on the umbrella.

i guess not being a in rush whilst out in the field 'plein-air', allows for a cooler, more deliberate & more planned approach. to lay a violet-based shadow wash over a bright, pure yellow .... (the shadow did go over the yellow stripes or visa versa? difficult to tell from a jpeg of a painting - though i can see that the greens are classic 'dark over light')

One of course has more time to plan how to go about portraying an object from a photo - which would hopefully help next time one is in a plein-air situation. On the umbrella I first put down my familiar, if predictable 'shadow' wash of ultramarine mixed with burnt sienna (which probably looks a bit violet against the yellow) and when dry added another wash of that on the underside, then added the yellow stripes afterwards.

great that you resisted the urge to fill-in the little empty 'gaps' in some of the washes such as on the back-side of the easel ...

I'm learning, slowly, when painting from photos, to leave well enough alone, to try to keep a freshness about the strokes!

Vivienne is a trooper to hold so many oil brushes in her hand & her posture is so strong & in the shoulders. very concentrated!

Think I added a few extra brushes, trying to keep my brushstrokes light and quick! I was quite careful to keep those little wrinkles around the shoulders to describe the posture.

i never expected that a palette lay-out diagram could have such a funny 'insert' image (see enlarged image at top of post) posed inside the middle of it!! (do you know pissaro's pallete with the painting inside it?)

That was such a quick sketchy-sketch, also from a photo, that I did for a 'value' study, just on layout paper, and decided to stick in my journal as it did remind me so much of the time, place and people - and the middle of the palette diagram was the only space left! Is this Pissaro's painting you were thinking of? I found it here....

but just a pedantic word here, if i may... what are the sizes of these two paintings? it's terribly difficult to have a real appreciation if one hasn't the sizes written underneath the jpeg...( you had to have one piece of negative criticism, didn't you?;)
A teacher is allowed to have a pedantic word! I know I'm very bad at recording sizes, supports and mediums - sorry sir! Vivienne painting is on Fabriano - 398mm x 250mm and the bench one is about 160mm x 105mm, stuck in my A5 - ish journal.