The Art of It

I joined SASA at the end of last year. It’s turning out to be one of the best things I ever did!!! Besides the very stimulating meetings and talks they have, I went on my first painting outing to The Company Garden s. I was incredibly nervous, as I have never painted out in the open before. What a wonderful experience! Now I begin to realise why some people will only paint in situ. I don’t have the luxury of being able to do that all the time, it’s just not safe on your own and besides, I am a slow painter. It took a while walking around to find a spot where we would be in the shade as the sun moved over. Actually one of the most difficult things to do is to find the right spot! Being my first time I did everything wrong, like taking too long on the drawing, making it too detailed, getting the size all wrong as in the open air everything looks very different and you have to choose your boundaries. In painting from a photograph you have already chosen the comp

I wanted to experiment with a new technique of putting colour into a thick white base using a palette knife. The foreground was difficult because acrylics dry so fast and I ended up going back to a brush. The mountains were painted with a palette knife. I am beginning to get the feeling that perhaps I should try using oils.

Regular readers of the blog will know that we frequently visit Noordhoek Beach, which is a wonderful place to walk the dog and get some interesting photographs. A while ago, planning a family celebration, we thought of going to Noordhoek. Living in Cape Town we have a huge choice of Restaurants. Deciding where to go can be a problem. There are so many options. We often refer to Rousseau’s Restaurant guide, which we have found to be useful and reliable. The guide listed only two restaurants in Noordhoek, neither of which appealed as we wanted somewhere that took advantage of the spectacular surroundings. On previous visits we had seen the Monkey Valley Resort sign but had never been there. Their website listed a restaurant on the premises so we decided to give it a try. The views and atmosphere are breathtakingly beautiful and did not disappoint. You approach the resort via a narrow road under a canopy of Milkwood trees. From the Restaurant you have a magnificent view ove

Long time no posting! Our poor blog has been neglected! We have been on holiday; no not away but enjoying the beautiful place in which we live. On my Birthday we went on a family outing to Lourensford in Somerset West. Truly beautiful. We started off visiting the Tretchikoff exhibition in the Bell Roberts art gallery. I found it very interesting, as I have never seen so many of his works in one place before. I still can’t understand why he was so ostracised by the art establishment. He certainly sold well. We then moved on to sample and buy some freshly roasted coffee beans from Switch . Oh the aroma!!! Very interesting chap but the shop was so busy that he could not chat much. Bought lots of coffee though. Next on the agenda was Healey's cheese shop – oh my word what divine cheeses. They are far superior to the yellow “plastic” cheese available in most of the supermarkets. It was an exceptionally hot day and not having a cool bag with us we were reluctant to buy mu