A Merry Christmas 2015!

Here's wishing you all a very merry Christmas for 2015! I send my thoughts afar, and let them paint your Christmas Day at home!

Fifty shades of brown

W&N watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm.

Using various shades of brown mixed from a variety of colours on my palette.

A scene at my pond

W&N watercolour in Moleskine 200gsm watercolour sketchbook

I have this bit of Celtis forest (Celtis africana - White Stinkwood) at my wildlife pond and it's my favourite pastime to sit under the thatch umbrella and sketch part of the scenery. A few weeks ago the bare trees were just beginning to sport green leaves. This is also the area where Torti, my Leopard Tortoise, used to live before I relocated her to her new home at the Krugersdorp Game Reserve.

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Sketching again

Black ink sketch and colour wash on Amedeo 200gsm

I feel it's time for sketching again, have been neglecting it of late, been preferring just putting colour straight to paper.

Black ink sketch in Moleskine 200gsm watercolour sketchbook

Black ink sketch in Moleskine 200gsm watercolour sketchbook

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Short-cut through Spring Farm

 W&N watercolour in Moleskine 200gsm watercolour sketch-book

Often, when I go to Magaliesburg (Gauteng, South Africa), I take this short-cut through Spring Farm past the little dam. It’s a gravel road, forcing one to travel slower and take in the scenery and I often have tortoises, hedgehogs, guinea fowl and small buck crossing my path. I much prefer it to the quicker route along the main tar road.

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Winter at the pond

W&N watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm

Winter is almost nothing but a memory and now spring is fully upon us, with the first spring rains having fallen over the past couple of days. But together with that came freezing temperatures as low as 12℃ yesterday. But soon all the cold will be in the past and I look forward to my wildlife pond once again bursting with summer colour.

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