First Light

early dawn | two-note, two note | who are you?
A Twitter poem from WATERMARK


"First Light" - Acrylic on Canvas board - Maree©

This was one of my first ventures into Acrylics. I've only done another 2 or 3 since then, and will get around to posting them some time or another.

Sunrise or sunset in the Kalahari Desert in the Cape Province of South Africa is always a spectacular affair. Here I have tried to capture the mystery of the desert as the sun rises over a landscape of golden grass and small red dunes.

The name Kalahari is derived from the Tswana word Kgala, meaning "the great thirst", or Khalagari, Kgalagadi or Kalagare, meaning "a waterless place". The Kalahari desert is part of the huge sand basin that extends some 900 000 square kilometers from the Orange River up to Angola, in the west to Namibia and in the east to Zimbabwe. The sand masses were created by the erosion of soft stone formations. The wind shaped the sand ridges, which are so typical of the landscape in the Kalahari.

In the southern Kalahari desert, which is the driest part, the Kalahari desert takes the form of a stationary dune veld. To the East and to the North of this, the Kalahari desert becomes a flat park-like terrain or savannah.

The Kalahari is not a true desert as it receives too much rain, but is actually a fossil desert.

Blue Gums & Black Wattles

"I am good enough, perfect in my own special way."
A daily Affirmation

A daily practice of sketching and painting gives you a chance to exercise the big three P's - practice, practice, practice!


"Blue Gums and Black Wattle Trees" Acrylic on Bockingford 300gsm watercolour paper - Maree©

In this painting I experimented with acrylics on a good, thick Bockingford watercolour paper and decided I just LOVE how the acrylics feel on the paper. It's amazing! I think I'm falling more and more in love with this versatile medium.

These trees are on our smallholding and although we are trying to get rid of all the Black Wattles, they spring up faster than you try to eradicate them. The problem is that they produce a huge amount of seeds, which can grow in the most arid and infertile of soils. Even worse, these seeds can live up to a 90 years. And after a first clean-up, even though we have removed hundreds of trees, millions of young seedlings appear. It's basically fighting a losing battle. These evergreen trees were originally imported from Australia for our tanning industry.

Now the touchy subject: chemicals. One simply cannot get rid of Black Wattles unless you use a good herbicide. Cutting a black wattle and hoping it will die, is wishful thinking. We do not use any chemicals at all, with the result that we have an on-going battle, but which provides employment opportunities as we hire several casual workers every year to do another clean-up.


The seed pods on one branch of a Black Wattle tree


Growing habit of the Black Wattle


The flowers of the Black Wattle also causes great outbreaks of hay fever among hay fever sufferers during spring.