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Another day of painting in the harbour. This time we went after lunch and painted facing the boats. About 4.30 we then turned our easels around so that we were facing Chapmans peak drive and painted the sunset. I would say that this was the second most exciting "painting en plein air" I have experienced. The mist on Tafelberg still takes number one!
These are some of the views from our en plein air Tuesday morning sessions. Many paintings get recycled but every now and then there are some that I want to keep. For the moment anyway.
Hout Bay Harbour is home to the famous Snoekies fish shop. Last week I bought some Kablejou there and cooked it for supper. It was the best fish I think I have ever tasted! Next week that will definately be a stop for me before going home after our usual morning painting.
My New Years Resolution, for what they are worth, was to indulge in en plein air and life drawing and painting. This I have done with a vengence. It has been an incredibly stimulating time. This is "Amy" and was done over two mornings. You know that "butterflies in the tummy" feeling? well this was one of those times. I will be adding a touch of light to the bottom left hand side where her knee is, but have just not had the time to get around to it.
This painting was done from a photograph with the kind permission of Diane, the photographer. Thanks you for the oppertunity! I thoroughly enjoyed painting her and hope I have done her justice! Maybe if you are still in contact with the parents you cen get them to have a look see.
Being very short of time at the moment I have put in three weeks worth of en plein air paintings. This is the first. This mountain of ours is very imposing! These were all done from the Tafelberg Road parking lot.
This was the second painting from the following week. The first was a total write off! These things happen, and I am learning to live with it.
Then came Tuesday the 5th May!!!! The mist came swirling in over the saddle betweenSignal Hill and Lions Head. It came roaring up through the City and over Devils peak. This was the most amazing painting day. We couldn't get our easels up and functioning fast eough. Butterflies in the tummy! You could smell the mist while you painted! What an experience!!!! I managed to do two paintings. The first facing Signal Hill, which was invisable, and the second facing Devils Peak, which kept on disappearing.
All the above are very small, 285mm by 200mm. I feel more comfortable at the moment painting small. The last two paintings I did on a pure white background of primer and Gesso. I actually prefer the white. It somehow portrays the icy cold of a Cape winter with the cool grey rock of the Cape mountains. I wish I could be out there every day!!!!
This was a quick sketch I did while waiting for some fellow artists to arrive. I sat in my car on the Rondebosch common side of the Redcross Childrens Hospital.
This is the, again quick, painting I did once they arrived. For those who do not know our mountain, this is the other side of the mountain from where I was painting on Tafelberg Road.
We really are very fortunate to have such a magnificent mountain on our doorstep!
Our venue was changed from Maidens Cove to Tabelberg Road parking lot, due to the direction of the wind. We paint with this amazing lady who knows all these things due to many years of painting en plain air. For those who don't know Cape Town, this road runs along the base of Table Mountain and the Cable Car lower station is situated on it. In every direction there are spectacular views. Now I start my brush miles in ernest!
This was my first take on the area, looking directly up towards the cable car on the top of Table Mountain. This is one very imposing mountain.
This was done the following week looking towards Devils Peak, Table Mountain is on the right hand side of this. You can see some of the burnt trees from the regular fires we have in March.
Painting outside is incredibly difficult and totally addictive. While standing out there in the wind and sun in this spectacularly beautiful place we are so fortunate to live in, you get surges of excitement rushing through you. Very difficult to explain but you have to just keep going back for more! I think it is a bit like a drug. I am addicted!
After much nagging, Lynn Northam finally set a date for her workshop. She spent the morning going through all the things to take, how to stop your brolly from blowing away (which is simply ingenious) etc etc and generally giving some amazing tips on how to. She then did a beautiful demo showing her technique of using Liquin in her base coat and rubbing it out with a cloth to get your highlights. It dries very quickly so you can then go directly on with adding the rest of the painting. Then we started painting. Unfortunately the canvas that I had taken was not prepared properly and I had to laugh off the painting part. It was a very short time anyway so it was not a problem, I just sketched. I do think that the workshop should have extended to another day when we could have painted in the morning, without pressure of time, under Lynn's supervision. She gave us so much information on the basic things that I was definately brain dead afterwards. Now for the practice! The brush miles!
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 are my attemps at the poppies and landscape - a far cry from her expertise, but I am rather chuffed with the outcome. One of the biggest lessons I learned was that there should always be three values. Go in with washes for your first value then go in darker with the second and for the third value go in even darker! Amazingly enough I had not gone in dark enough with the landscape until I looked at the demo she had done and realized my mistake I went in darker on the trunks of the trees and the whole thing began to sing! Needless to say, despite being somewhat brain dead after the workshop, I learned so much! Thank you Cherry, you are an inspiration!
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 and gently pressed down and this is the result!
Interesting isn't it?
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 points at the end of the course.
The rider negotiating a narrow steel stair with a 180 degree bend half way up and bouncing his front wheel over a prone, and remarkably brave, member of the audience used such a machine. However, as a rider of many larger, heavier machines in my motorcycling days I was astounded by the skill of Christian Pfeiffer riding a BMW F800GS off-road motorcycle. This is a big, 800cc, twin cylinder machine weighing over 200kg and yet such was his control that the machine and rider could have been a single entity. He spun the heavy motorcycle in circles standing it on its rear wheel or front wheel at will. His most spectacular stunt comprised accelerating across the tiny arena toward the same brave girl who had lain so still while the motorcyclists bounced and flew over her prone body and, at the last moment, bringing his big machine to a stop, standing on its front wheel, while he kissed the girl.
What a show!
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's the way I paint!
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?
