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...

Having bought soft pastels to use with water colour (a demo by Cherry Nichol) I had the urge to play, using a technique I had seen done by Heather Selby . I used soft pastels on water colour paper, later discovering that you should actually use hard pastels first then the soft on top! I also had problems with the lighter colours becoming muddy but later discovered that you should use fixative on the dark colours before going into the light! But this is how we learn! Next time I will know what to do! I don't normally copy out of magazines but as this was just an experiment, I did. I then used some grey home made paper, soaked it and covered the pastel portrait with the saturated hand made paper, pressing lightly to transfer a ghost image onto the wet paper. Well it didn't work. The grey was not right. I didn't even bother to photograph it. After fixing the original pastel portrait I then used a sheet of white watercolour paper and soaked that. I covered the pastel ...

In a post shortly after our return from a short holiday in Wilderness at the beginning of the year I mentioned that we happened upon a demonstration by international and local motorcycle stunt riders. This unexpected entertainment took place at the Knysna Waterfront in a small area surrounded by the waterfront buildings and the quayside. We stayed to watch and I used the opportunity to test my Cannon S3IS camera's built in "Sport" mode. A few of the pictures captured at this amazing demonstration are posted below. As an enthusiastic motorcyclist for many, many years I was keenly aware of the skill exhibited by these riders. Several of the stunts were performed using special lightweight trials machines designed to traverse "impossible" obstacles as riders compete to negotiate extremely difficult courses without putting a foot down. Each time a rider's foot dabs the ground to keep his balance he loses points. The winner is the rider with the highest poin...

The drawing competition is on Thursday and I had no idea what to do for it. Flight of Fancy is very difficult for a reasonably well grounded Capricorn, and that is the subject! I started drawing my little dog and then got carried away with fairies etc. Maybe not so well grounded! The closer you look the more you will see. Very strange and rather amusing drawing I think. While I have been drawing fairies, Cape Town is once again burning. Yes, it is February and our winelands are taking a beating. Three winefarms in Somerset West have had extensive damage done to them and we are choking on the ash that has blown towards Table Mountain. Today helicopters have been grounded due to bad weather conditions and my house looks like a giant with dandruff has had a good shake of this head!

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.

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?