The Art of It

During the cold winter months we painted at Oudekraal.  What a magnificent venue, so quiet and peaceful but oh so freezing.  I don't know where summer has gone to as it is still freezing!

This was another view of the pathways on Signal Hill where I have participated in so many painting sessions. and still I battle to photograph paintings!  The gloss of this one has interferred with the colour somewhat. I have just discvovered an incredable website called Wet Canvas and have had the most amazingly mind bending morning learning from the wise words of other artists.  If any of you get the chance, go and have a look at this very extensive website.

This was painted on one of our mornings at Signal Hill.  The mist was roaring in from the sea, ahead and to the right and Table Mountain is on the left.

One of the wonderful places I have been priveledged to paint in was outside The Courtyard Hotel and The Wild Fig Restuarant. From there you have an amazing view of Table Mountain with Devils Peak in front. I painted this at home using an oil sketch I made on site. The trees are actually more crooked in life and bend majestically to the right from the continual South Easterly winds.

At the beginning of March I attended one of the most stimulating workshops I have so far been to. I had seen Cherry Nichol do a demo at a Constantia Art Society meeting and absolutely loved her work. It was also very fiddley and I must say, I love to fiddle! She firstly paints beautiful washes onto her drawing in the colours she has chosen. Then, painting into the negative spaces she goes into the background and uses a gel called ATP paste (similar in smell to wood glue) which she blends into the wet paint. Then, she uses a tooth pick or pallette knife to move the paint around forming ghost like flowers and foliage. She uses gouache to cover any underpainting e.g. stems and then goes in with Leaf Green and Shadow Green to really bring out the colour. A tiny brush is used to paint Sepia into the darkest areas to highlight the lights. She grates water colour pencil into the wet paint. The splashes of white in the poppies are gouache flicked onto the page from a paintbrush. These...

I completed this oil painting about two weeks ago and got so wrapped up in my plein air painting that I forgot to post it. I am working with a set 40cm x 30cm canvas board at the mmoment and I really like the control I have over the whole painting. I wondered about putting a figure walking down the road then decided that the road was in fact the subject and dropped the idea.

A favourite walk of ours in Wilderness is the Kingfisher trail, which meanders along the banks of the Touws River ending at two picturesque waterfalls cascading into a series of pools. These are perfect for a refreshing swim. The trail is around 8km, there and back, through shady forested countryside. National Parks have constructed wooden walkways and stairways through the "difficult" bits to prevent erosion and make the going easy for even us "old" folk. The original pathway, which we first walked several years ago, was washed away in the recent floods and a remarkable job has been done in re-establishing this very popular route. The photographs below show the two waterfalls. They were taken on a beautiful, if rather hot day. In the second photograph I was experimenting with a slow shutter speed to add a sense of movement to the water. Without a tripod I was a little restricted but in the full resolution image it worked reasonably well. Unfortunately down s...

I was given a beautiful new box easel for my birthday! My first painting using it was done on the veranda of our home. (This was the recycled red roofed house by the way). It looks much better doesn't it? The inspiration was a photograph taken at Hillcrest Wine Estate during a recent visit. I kept it as originally painted and not tried to show too much detail. I rather like it as it is! What do you think?

This one will also be relegated to the recycle bin in the near future!

This painting was developed from a photograph in which the fence started at the bottom right and lead in to the picture toward the left. I started painting it this way but it felt wrong. My eye instinctively reads from left to right and so eventually flipped the photograph and repainted the picture. If anybody happens to take a walk along the Kommetjie coast toward the Slankop Lighthouse they will see what I mean.

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.

This post has been a long time in getting ready. I have recently become totally involved in a few new sites. After searching for ages for art blogs and finding nothing I have hit the jack pot! There is just so much really good stuff out there. Try Sixty Minute Artist , or Art and Perception , or A Painting Journey / the Painters Keys or Art News !!! I have been totally hooked in and am learning just so much! I painted this Hex River Valley scene and absolutely hate it. One of these days I will paint over it, but in the meantime I painted two little miniatures of the original using just three colours. The first one was Burnt Sienna, Ultramarine and white. The other was Cadmium red, Phthalo blue and white. I am really sick of this view now but have learned so much by doing this exercise. It's amazing how going back to the first painting it now looks all wrong. I just didn't see it as I should have. I suppose that this is part of learning process. A lot of patience ...

This article was originally posted on 12 August 2007. We picked up a typo and corrected it but Blogger refuses to allow the time and date of posting to be reset to the original so here it is again. Thursday’s public holiday, National Woman’s Day, provided the perfect excuse for a trip to Delheim , one of the oldest wine estates in Cape Town, for lunch. A traditional South African babotie (curried mince with a custard like topping) complimented by their excellent Gewürztraminer hit the right spot and put us in the mood to try to capture the winelands in a winter mood. And just for fun, something a little abstract.

Namibia is a land of amazing contrasts, from the arid Namib Desert to the raging seas of the Skeleton Coast, from the great escarpment separating the coastal region from the central plateau to the bushveld in the north. It provides endle ss material for photographers and artists. Take a look at this site to get some idea of the scenic diversity of this remarkable country.

This painting is based on a photograph of the Knysna lagoon taken from a vantage point near the Heads. There was a lot more activity on the lagoon in the photograph. I prefer the simplicity of a solitary boat, which is reminiscent of a less frantic era, before the tourist boom.

My first attempt at a landscape in acrylics.

About the Karoo and the Karoo National Park The art on the rocks gives testimony to the past occupation of this arid land by the Khoi and San people. The word “Karoo” is said to come from a Khoi word, Karusa, which means “Thirst land” or “Place of Great Dryness” but I have been unable to find any authoritative references to confirm this. For many years our experience of this arid region, which takes up about 35% of South Africa’s land area, was confined to what we could see from the N1 National Road when travelling from Cape Town to the northern parts of South Africa and to Zimbabwe. This dry, dusty and desolate strip of land straddling the highway between Laingsburg and Colesburg, with its low scrubby vegetation, blazing hot summers and bitterly cold winters, seemed to provide little reason to linger. And then, in September last year, we decided to spend a long weekend at the Karoo National Park near the town of Beaufort West, roughly in the centre of the Karoo. More information …. Th...