Done from a photograph, with kind permission of a dear friend, Maria Lock, Millmerran, Queensland, Australia.
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Shhh… germination in progress. Can you hear the swish of the brush, dipping, dipping into water, gathering colour from the palette? That's the process of planting flowers in my watercolour garden. *•.¸ðŸŒ¿¸.•*
Showing posts with label architecture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label architecture. Show all posts
Saturday, March 21, 2015
A farm cottage
Done from a photograph, with kind permission of a dear friend, Maria Lock, Millmerran, Queensland, Australia.
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Wednesday, August 28, 2013
Cape Dutch Homestead
Watercolour on Visual 200gsm
This was virtually one of my first forays into watercolour painting in the late 80's and done from a photograph I had found in a magazine (I think!)
The Cape Province in South Africa is renowned for the Cape Dutch style of building since Jan van Riebeeck landed on our Southern shores in 1652. Early homes in Cape Town and it’s surrounds were built in the Cape Dutch architectural style, unique to a small area of the world and unquestionably beautiful. The style has sources as widely different as mediaeval Holland and Germany, the France of the Huguenots and the islands of Indonesia.
Houses in this style have a distinctive and recognizable design, with a prominent feature being the grand, ornately rounded gables, reminiscent of the townhouses of Amsterdam. The houses are also usually H-shaped, with the front section of the house usually being flanked by two wings running perpendicular to it. Furthermore, walls are whitewashed, and the roofs are thatched.
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Thursday, January 14, 2010
Fisherman's House
Never a fishermen need there be
If fishes could hear as well as see.
- Author Unknown
A daily practice of sketching and painting gives you a chance to exercise the big three P's - practice, practice, practice!
"Weskushuisie" - Watercolour in Moleskine Watercolour sketch-book - Maree©
Examples of the original little fishermen's houses on the West Coast of South Africa are becoming a rare site and artists seem compelled to capture images of an era long gone by. Not being anywhere near the Cape Province, I did this sketch from imagination.
The West Coast is a region of the Western Cape Province in South Africa and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on the west and the Swartland region on the east.
The Cape West Coast stretches from Cape Town as far as the border with the Northern Cape at Touws River, including within its parameters the indescribably beautiful Cederberg Mountains, famous for centuries-old rock art. All along this stretch of coastline is a series of quaint historic towns and fishing villages with names like Lambert’s Bay, Paternoster, Saldanha and Langebaan that today roll with ease off the tongue, but until fairly recently were left to languor in relative obscurity.
South Africa's fishing industry has a long and eventful history. As early as 1658, a mere six years after the first permanent settlement at the Cape, four free burghers were given permission to settle in Saldanha Bay. They established themselves as fishermen and sold dried fish to the other burghers as well as to passing ships.
Today, three centuries later, the once unlimited fish stocks have been placed under such pressure through wastage and over-exploitation that it has become necessary to protect them from total decimation. As a result, the government has reduced catch quotas drastically across the whole industry. The number of fish meal and fish oil processing plants has also been reduced.
If fishes could hear as well as see.
- Author Unknown
A daily practice of sketching and painting gives you a chance to exercise the big three P's - practice, practice, practice!
"Weskushuisie" - Watercolour in Moleskine Watercolour sketch-book - Maree©
Examples of the original little fishermen's houses on the West Coast of South Africa are becoming a rare site and artists seem compelled to capture images of an era long gone by. Not being anywhere near the Cape Province, I did this sketch from imagination.
The West Coast is a region of the Western Cape Province in South Africa and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean on the west and the Swartland region on the east.
The Cape West Coast stretches from Cape Town as far as the border with the Northern Cape at Touws River, including within its parameters the indescribably beautiful Cederberg Mountains, famous for centuries-old rock art. All along this stretch of coastline is a series of quaint historic towns and fishing villages with names like Lambert’s Bay, Paternoster, Saldanha and Langebaan that today roll with ease off the tongue, but until fairly recently were left to languor in relative obscurity.
South Africa's fishing industry has a long and eventful history. As early as 1658, a mere six years after the first permanent settlement at the Cape, four free burghers were given permission to settle in Saldanha Bay. They established themselves as fishermen and sold dried fish to the other burghers as well as to passing ships.
Today, three centuries later, the once unlimited fish stocks have been placed under such pressure through wastage and over-exploitation that it has become necessary to protect them from total decimation. As a result, the government has reduced catch quotas drastically across the whole industry. The number of fish meal and fish oil processing plants has also been reduced.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Leawood Pumphouse
An artist is always alone - if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.
Henry Miller
A daily practice of sketching and painting gives you a chance to exercise the big three P's - practice, practice, practice!
"Leawood Pump house" watercolour on Visual 140gsm watercolour paper - Maree©
I did this painting from a photograph, but had no idea what the Leawood pump house was, so I Googled it and found this :
The Cromford Canal Company was formed by an act of Parliament on 24th of August 1789, it had from monies raised (£46,000) to cut the Canal and fill it with water.
The Canal operated successfully for a further fifty one years, 1844 was a dry year, the Canal suffered a severe lack of water, the normal supply from the Cromford and Bonsall soughs had been supplying less water due to the Merebrook sough removing water from the lead mines at a level below the Canal. By the autumn of that year the situation was so serious that a pump was hired and installed by the end of November to take water from the river Derwent.
In late 1849 the Leawood Pump house became operational and pumped water from the River Derwent to the Cromford Canal for the first time since its conception in 1844.
The objective of the pumping engine was to maintain a level of water suitable to keep Canal traffic flowing, the Cromford Canal has a flight of fourteen locks connecting it to the Erewash Canal at Langley Mill Basin, each time a boat enters or leaves the Cromford Canal it takes a lock full of water into the Erewash Canal which needs to be replaced. Also all Canals leak, but even this does not explain the sheer scale of the engine, if water could be taken out of the River Derwent regularly then why was such a large engine needed and why was it built 13 miles away from the nearest lock ? The answer to these questions lies with the significance of the industry on the River Derwent, water which powered the cotton mills was protected by an act of Parliament, so anyone wishing to extract upstream of the mills had to comply to strict conditions with a heavy financial penalty if they failed to do so.
The conditions were that water could only be removed from the Derwent between the hours of 8 p.m. on Saturdays to 8 p.m. on Sundays and no more than one twentieth of the flow of the river in any period of that time, and none at all if the flow was less than 570 tons per minute. The flow was measured at the weir behind Masson Mill, Matlock Bath.
With such restrictions it can be seen that if you wish to maintain a level of water in the Canal but can only voluntarily fill for one 24 hour period in a week then a substantial amount of water will need to be pumped, this explains the size of the engine as it is capable of pumping almost four tons of water per stroke and seven strokes a minute, a total of over 39,000 tons of water per 24 hours.
Henry Miller
A daily practice of sketching and painting gives you a chance to exercise the big three P's - practice, practice, practice!
"Leawood Pump house" watercolour on Visual 140gsm watercolour paper - Maree©
I did this painting from a photograph, but had no idea what the Leawood pump house was, so I Googled it and found this :
The Cromford Canal Company was formed by an act of Parliament on 24th of August 1789, it had from monies raised (£46,000) to cut the Canal and fill it with water.
The Canal operated successfully for a further fifty one years, 1844 was a dry year, the Canal suffered a severe lack of water, the normal supply from the Cromford and Bonsall soughs had been supplying less water due to the Merebrook sough removing water from the lead mines at a level below the Canal. By the autumn of that year the situation was so serious that a pump was hired and installed by the end of November to take water from the river Derwent.
In late 1849 the Leawood Pump house became operational and pumped water from the River Derwent to the Cromford Canal for the first time since its conception in 1844.
The objective of the pumping engine was to maintain a level of water suitable to keep Canal traffic flowing, the Cromford Canal has a flight of fourteen locks connecting it to the Erewash Canal at Langley Mill Basin, each time a boat enters or leaves the Cromford Canal it takes a lock full of water into the Erewash Canal which needs to be replaced. Also all Canals leak, but even this does not explain the sheer scale of the engine, if water could be taken out of the River Derwent regularly then why was such a large engine needed and why was it built 13 miles away from the nearest lock ? The answer to these questions lies with the significance of the industry on the River Derwent, water which powered the cotton mills was protected by an act of Parliament, so anyone wishing to extract upstream of the mills had to comply to strict conditions with a heavy financial penalty if they failed to do so.
The conditions were that water could only be removed from the Derwent between the hours of 8 p.m. on Saturdays to 8 p.m. on Sundays and no more than one twentieth of the flow of the river in any period of that time, and none at all if the flow was less than 570 tons per minute. The flow was measured at the weir behind Masson Mill, Matlock Bath.
With such restrictions it can be seen that if you wish to maintain a level of water in the Canal but can only voluntarily fill for one 24 hour period in a week then a substantial amount of water will need to be pumped, this explains the size of the engine as it is capable of pumping almost four tons of water per stroke and seven strokes a minute, a total of over 39,000 tons of water per 24 hours.
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