Round and Round the Garden

I got so behind posting paintings done on the 30x30DirectWatercolor challenge, I'm just dumping a whole bunch here, otherwise I'll never catch up! 

One or two intersected with other online challenges - Virginia Hein's Usktalk about applying explosive colour before painting just enough of the image to make it recognisable (the chairs) and international sketch-a-chicken week (irresistible!) and Suhita Shirodkar's 'Start with What If...' (What if I looked through a glass of water)

These aren't all of them, just some on the home and garden theme, which is of course the most available subject while under lockdown - I didn't manage 30, but was happy to have kept up quite a steady pace. I felt like I was getting a grip on how to get started, and use more expressive, less fussy brushstrokes as I went along. (The first ones are at the bottom, more-or-less more recent ones towards the top.) July is International Watercolour Month, apparently, so I think I must carry on while I'm on a roll - trying to curb my natural tendency to switch to something different just as I feel I'm making progress!

Cactus Shadows

It's very late in January, but here's wishing everyone a happy, creative and peaceandlove-filled 2018. Wishing lots of water to those who are fast running out - Cape Town and its surrounding areas have something like 90 days supply left, with the rainy season only starting after that.

Here is a postcard I painted for the annual @Twitrartexhibit happening in Canberra, Australia this year, and supporting Pegasus Riding for the Disabled. It's a hot, dry scene from a photo I took at Babylonstoren, a lovely garden farm near Franschhoek. I loved the shadows and may do a bigger watercolour from the same reference - it was hard to control on such a small scale! 

If you'd like to support this, you need to have a Twitter account (I have one that I don't use very much) and get your 16x12 cm postcard to Australia by 6 March. Details can be found here. 

That's it for now - I'm sketching a lot with visiting friends who are very keen to do that, so will post some of those soon!

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!]

Shadows from Different Folks

After all that purple oil paint, I decided to join in with the Different Strokes from Different Folks project at the last minute. I got out my watercolours again, and some Caran d'Ache crayons for texture, and had a go at those shadows. They didn't come out the way I was intending them to - the Grumbacher Indigo that I used for the darkest tones, doesn't like mixing with others, and it is very dark indeed! But I quite enjoyed the unexpected results. I think this has a slightly ominous feeling, with the plain blue background... is it water? Is it sky? Is it a light?
I loved looking at all the interpretations from all the artists taking part - some fabulous paintings!