The Art of It

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...

Wow - I am in seventh heaven!!! I have just had the most wonderful morning! I joined a group of Plein Air painters at Maidens cove, near Camps Bay. Now firstly, I have lived in Cape Town since I was 17 and I have never been to Maidens Cove, and secondly, I have never seen so many paintings just waiting to be painted in one place!!! .... and I didn't have the confidence to take my oils! - I left them at home!!!! Well we women make a plan! I first sat under my enormous garden umbrella on a rock and sketched. Just let the juices flow! It was sheer heaven! Yes, the woman is a rock! there are five of them, although I could only see four. Then I got out my watercolour paper and drew another view of her - keeping a careful eye on compisition etc. One gets so tied up in detail that I really battled to get her shape right! But eventually I had enough down on the paper to bring out the watercolours. I am rather chuffed with the result even if it is rather pale and misty- that...

I just found this painting I did while sitting on my own at Kirstenbosch. Only two of us pitched up for this Plein Air outing at Kirstenbosch. I am glad I went though. While sitting there, the cloud got heavier and heavier and it started spitting with rain. Tourists poured past and it was difficult to just focus! Isn't it wonderful to be able to create out in the midst of this wonderful world we are so lucky to live in?

I have been so sick, Bronchitis, and really not in a creative mood at all! I did play around with my water colours a bit though and here is the result. They were photographed at Kirstenbosch on exhibition day.

I wish I had the time to study and paint the sea as a full time project! Maybe one day!

Thanks Liz, for getting me back to my water colours!!! It was great fun and really freed me up to at long last finish my lighthouse which I will be posting soon. I have not touched my water colours for over 10 years so I needed quite a bit of encouragement - not a bad first try I think, after such a long time!