Sketches on the Move

You may have read by now this post on Katherine Tyrrell's Making a Mark about the new blog A Postcard From My Walk, where a group of us sketching, exercising people a.k.a. Sketchercisers are going to be showing the postcards we'll be sending each other every month over the next year or so. Hand-made, sketched postcards of course. These samples are just me experimenting on different types of card and paper, and trying to sketch smaller - I tend to overflow my boundaries and this small format is quite a challenge. The postcards themselves will remain a secret until we spot an exciting little rectangle in our letterboxes. Let's hope they all get here, and there, safely! I was quite concerned about them staying clean and pristine, but Albrecht Rissler (see his mailart section!) showed us some of his postcard collection, and the stamps, postmarks, wear and tear just add to them, and show the journey they've been on. Watercolours probably need an envelope for protection from rain and snow, but otherwise, anything goes. I'm so looking forward to checking my post box over the next months, I'll probably be getting quite a bit of exercise just doing that!

My walking map!

View Walk around the dam in a larger map

Blogger didn't want to let me write about this yesterday when I put this map up - but now I've managed to find the cursor! Some of the Sketchercisers, as well as Urban Sketchers have been making maps of their 'stamping grounds' and its been fascinating to see exactly where they sat to sketch a particular tree, or boat, or bit of forest. This is my regular walking route, though I have variations, round Emmarentia Dam - if you click on the balloons you can see the sketches I've made at various points. It's easier than I thought to make one, and Google maps has very clear directions in their Help section if you want to have a go (click on My Maps to start...)!

*Now it doesn't seem to want me to have this text in a bigger size font...>;-/

Talking of Walks

On Sunday was the annual Walk the Talk fundraising event where 50 000 people pound the pavements of Joburg, starting and ending about 500 metres from our house. Those who've been watching this blog since it's beginning (I know there are at least two of you ;-) will know that means that the second anniversary of A Sketch in Time is therefore coming around soon! I'm embarrassed to read on last year's post I did about the walk (this is the first one), I vowed that BFG and me would be partaking next year...ahem, coff, coff, we weren't quite feeling up to, er, registering in time, and when we were feeling fitter, well, um, it was just too late...darn! I'm ashamed that a declared Sketcherciser chickened out - again, but we went down to watch and encourage, with camera and sketchbook, and it was lots of fun. My sketch of the walkers isn't nearly as 'accomplished' as last year's - that's because I tried to do it live, on the spot, with no techno-aids... just impossible really, they all came at me so thick and fast.
So I gave up and we went to Mark's Park where the end-celebrations were taking place. I sat in front of the stage and started sketching a group, trying to get a view of the interesting looking befeathered and beskinned people sitting in it, and on the stage - Bongani who sang, and some wizard soccer-ball jugglers with drummers.

Then the people in skins jumped onto the stage and began some very high-energy, high-kicking, stomping and springing - they were a Zulu dance group, I don't know from where - perhaps Gold Reef City or some such tourist destination - we don't generally have Zulu warriors and maidens in full regalia strutting around the streets - I thought they'd dressed up for the walk, as many do.


After their spirited show a group of Tswana dancers went up - dressed in different skins, they did a much more restrained performance - it looked like a courting sort of dance with much flirting, pleading and spurning going on.

I sketched these in a very small A6 sketchbook - trying as always, to be inconspicuous, but a few people around noticed and came to have a look over my shoulder, making me feel embarrassed at the little squiggles I'd produced. They were improved after I'd added a bit of colour at home.


While I was busy trying to make a scribbled record of the day, my husband was having a whale of a time routing out some famous sportsmen who were donating their time and energy to the occasion and it's charities, and cajoling them to pose with him for his version of a brag book. Here he is with, from left to right, Michael Vaughan, the ex-England cricket Captain, 'Baby Jake' Matlala, our flyweight boxing champ, and Bafana Bafana soccer star/ex-Leeds United captain, Lucas Radebe. He already has pictures with many of the Springbok rugby team who he was overjoyed to find himself with, on a flight from Cape Town some time ago, and with whom he now identifies so strongly that the green-and-gold Springbok jersey is donned at every opportunity.

More trees

It never rains but it deluges - I sometimes don't have illustration work for months and years at a time, and then it arrives by the container-load! So I'm neglecting the blog a bit, and I'm sure it's very disjointed and erratic to read -I will get to posting about materials and process, as I've promised some of my visitors - just when I have time to engage brain and try and be logical, and methodical!

I am finding it essential to get out and move my limbs occasionally though, and happy to have the extra incentive of the tree challenge and sketchercise. It was -1°C when I got up this morning, so I did some work first, and then walked when the sun had thawed things out a bit. I sat and drew the base of a cork oak, couldn't resist adding the duck as he came poking his head round the side, and then added more and more around the tree-trunk - it was supposed to be a quick, simple study of the bark...

On the left is a corner of the neighbour's garden I did after vacuuming a few days ago - the only physical jerks of the day - as the sun was going down, so everything was getting more silhouetted by the minute. That was with a water-soluble felt pen and waterbrush - the cork oak was with water-soluble graphite and my little Cotman set in the small moleskine w/c notebook. That trunk base looks like a dinosaur foot, doesn't it?!

Sketchercising Day One

I have taken a leap and signed up for Katherine Tyrrell's Sketchercise project... not at all sure that I can keep it up, but as I've been walking around our neighbourhood, on and off, for years, and sketching pretty regularly the last two (almost) blogging years, I thought I'd combine the two and hopefully stimulate both activities.
This morning I packed a compact little watercolour set-up, that'll fit into my belt-bag/hip-pack/bum-bag thingy that I can hide under my roomy track top. I don't like to dwell on the downsides of living in Johannesburg, but carrying any sort of a bag while walking alone in a sparsely populated area, is inviting trouble, and I don't believe the opportunists would take the time to ask what's in the bag before relieving you of it!
Anyway, just a few steps inside the gate of the park surrounding Emmarentia Dam, is this rather smelly stagnant little pond (that our Weimeraner, who hates water in every other situation , delights in leaping into and coating himself in gunge). It was rather an ambitious subject for my planned 15 minutes or so of sketching - I left my watch at home so not sure how long I did spend - but it was a start. All very pleasant, but it seemed to take a big chunk out of the day. I should start out earlier in the morning, but that's so freezing cold here in June until September! And I need a pedometer so I can keep track of my steps.

Walking the Talk again

Yesterday was one of those days when Joburgers forget, for a while, about the crime rate, politics, bad service etc., etc. and come out in their droves to our suburb to join in Radio 702's huge Walk the Talk charity walk. It's one of the biggest mass-participation athletic events in the world and over 50 000 people took part. There are four distances - two for the more serious pros that leave early in the morning, and the 5km and 8km ones where all shapes and sizes, and some of their dogs, joyfully throng through the streets.

Loud music, an encouraging Deejay, hovering helicopters and hungry-making smells of cooking boerewors at the finish keep everyone swinging along.

Every year BFG and I say next year we'll walk instead of watch, but honestly, next year we really will!

Walking the dog

A little group ambling along the pavement. Somebody wants to buy this one, plus one more, though she doesn't like the other 'street' paintings - not happy enough!? So I'll have to go and wander around with my camera and sketchbook to find some pleasant scenes. She is emigrating, and wants to take some reminders of home with her - I think she's homesick already...
This 'sketch' blog seems to be turning into a painting one, but I am glad that at least it does seem to be working as far as mobilising me to paint - that, or the other art bloggers I read who all work so HARD and produce so much work!

Walk the Talk

Yay! I have been doing some drawing - though I'm afraid they were from photos that I took, as in the first one, the walkers were just trotting past too quickly, in the Radio 702 Walk the Talk fundraiser in Johannesburg last month, and in the second, I felt too self conscious to whip out my sketchbook - a common malaise of mine.

On Sunday my church celebrated it's Centenary, and before the festivities began, I spotted Daphne (about 91) and Vi (in her eighties somewhere) sitting in the garden chatting - looking towards the little 'Garden of Remembrance' where the ashes of many of their friends and family are laid. It made me think how very short a time a hundred years is (I am already over the halfway mark) but how much can happen and change. From horse carriages to spacecraft, from uncontrollable disease and pestillence to organ transplants and beyond...

As far as my sketches go, I like the looser ones of the walkers - helped by putting the pictures on slideshow to draw from. The 'old friends' is stiffer, too controlled, what usually happens when drawing from a photograph.