Together we make a difference....

Who is more foolish, the child afraid of the dark or the man afraid of the light?

~Maurice Freehill

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

Done from my imagination – W & N watercolours on Arches 300gsm 10" x 7"

One of the paintings I did, stuck indoors again, lots of rain, so no field sketching. In between painting I also read this little story and it actually inspired this scene with the lighthouse.

There was in a certain city a harbour where ships from all over the world would come and dock. However, the harbour was in between a treacherous and rocky shore. During stormy nights, ships would see the city lights off in the distance and head toward the lights hoping to find refuge from the pounding surf.

The ships would struggle against the storm as they made their way to the safety of the harbour. As they drew near, seeing the dangerous rocks, the captain of the ship would try to turn and avoid striking the rocks but it was to late. Many ships were destroyed and hundreds of sailors lost their lives because they did not know of the danger. You see, the people of the city did not feel that it was necessary to build a lighthouse. Besides, it would cost too much money to build a lighthouse they reasoned. So, year after year and storm after storm, ships would be ship wrecked and many lives lost.

There was a man in that city that saw the need. He felt grief and heartache because the people of the city were content to let the ships be destroyed and were not willing to rescue the drowning sailors. So he took it upon himself to do something about it. He tried to recruit volunteers to help him but no one wanted to. He persisted, looking for someone to help him, but they all just laughed at him and said that he was crazy to risk his life to try to save strangers and people who looked different.

Determined to make a difference, he sold everything that he had and bought a piece of land close to the shore and built his house there. It was a lighthouse.

So during stormy nights, the man would make sure that the light from the lighthouse was shining as bright as it could so the ships could be warned of the dangerous rocks. His lighthouse saved hundreds of lives and ships from being ship wrecked that year. But it wasn't enough because even with the lighthouse some of the storms were so powerful that the ships struggling to come into the harbour were tossed about by the wind and the waves that they would get smashed against the rocks.

Being a compassionate man, he would run to the roaring sea at the risk of his own life to rescue as many sailors as he could. Then he would bring them into the warmth and safety of the lighthouse. Once there, he would heal their wounds and feed them until they were able to sail again.

The man laboured by himself for years rescuing sailors and caring for their needs. Each person that he saved was so grateful to him that they couldn't thank him enough for rescuing them from certain death. But all the man could feel was sadness because many more sailors died in the sea than he could save. "If only I had help," he would say. "If only someone would see the need as I do and come and help. Lord please send someone to help, I can't do it all by myself," he prayed.

Then one day it happened, his prayers were answered. His generosity became well known in the land. People in the city began to volunteer to come and help the man keep vigil during stormy nights. Men began to take shifts keeping watch and helping rescue sailors. Then women started cooking and preparing bandages for the wounded sailors. The children did whatever they could to help lift the spirits of the sick.

Ships still wreck along the treacherous shoreline, but now, because there are so many people there to help the man, many more lives are saved than are lost.

Together Everyone Accomplished Much. Together they made a difference.

- by Danny Lizarraga

A Farmhouse somewhere in the Karoo

I had to live in the desert before I could understand the full value of grass in a green ditch.

- Ella Maillart

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

W & N watercolours on Bockingford 300gsm - 12" x 8"

The Karoo (a Khoisan word of uncertain etymology) is a semi-desert region of South Africa. It has two main sub-regions - the Great Karoo in the north and the Little Karoo in the south.

The Great Karoo has an area of more than 400,000 square kilometers. From a geological point of view it has been a vast inland basin for most of the past 250 million years. At one stage the area was glaciated and the evidence for this is found in the widely-distributed Dwyka tillite. Later, at various times, there were great inland deltas, seas, lakes or swamps. Enormous deposits of coal formed and these are one of the pillars of the economy of South Africa today. Volcanic activity took place on a titanic scale. Despite this baptism of fire, ancient reptiles and amphibians prospered in the wet forests and their remains have made the Karoo famous amongst palaeontologists.

Western people first settled in the Cape in 1652, but made almost no inroads into the Karoo prior to about 1800. Before that time, large herds of antelope, zebra and other large game roamed the grassy flats of the region. The Khoi and Bushmen, last of the southern African Stone Age peoples, wandered far and wide. There were no Europeans and no Africans of Bantu extraction.
Info from "Wikipedia"

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Downtown Shopping

To explore your creative side, express yourself,

in depth and knowledge.

There is no need to be quiet.

There is no need to hold back.

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

Watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm - 12" x 8"

The Cape Malay community is an ethnic group or community in South Africa. It derives its name from the present-day Western Cape of South Africa and the people originally from Maritime Southeast Asia, mostly Javanese from modern-day Indonesia, a Dutch colony for several centuries, and Dutch Malacca, which the Dutch held from 1641 - 1824. The community's earliest members were enslaved Javanese transported by the Dutch East India Company. They were followed by slaves from various other Southeast Asian regions, and political dissidents and Muslim religious leaders who opposed the Dutch presence in what is now Indonesia and were sent into exile. Starting in 1654, these resistors were imprisoned or exiled in South Africa by the Dutch East India Company, which founded and used what is now Cape Town as a resupply station for ships traveling between Europe and Asia. They were the group that first introduced Islam to South Africa.
~Info from "Wikipedia": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Malay ~

I did this from my imagination, starting off with two figures, letting it develop as I went along. Therefore, here the image was the inspiration for the words, whereas, often a song or certain words will be the inspiration for my sketch.

Most of the Malay people (about 166 000) live in the Bo-Kaap at the foot of Signal Hill in Cape Town and some of their recipes are world-renowned as "traditional South African dishes". Here's a recipe for an age-old favourite :

Bobotie

Bobotie is a sweet curry mince dish set in an egg custard traditionally served on yellow rice, but is delicious with Basmati too.

Ingredients:
Oil
1 slice of white bread soaked in milk
2 onions, chopped finely
2 t crushed garlic
500g topside mince
15 ml curry powder
2 ml salt
2T Chutney
2T brown vinegar
2T Worcester Sauce
2t Turmeric
2T Brown sugar
100 ml sultanas
2 eggs beaten separately
1 cup milk with a pinch of Turmeric

Method:
Heat oven to 180 deg C. Fry onions in oil. Add mince and brown.
Add the curry powder and other spices.
When well browned, remove from the heat.
Mix in the Sultana’s and one beaten egg and the soggy bread.
Spoon into a greased oven dish.
Mix the milk and second egg together.
Pour over the mince mixture.
Arrange some bay leaves on the surface.

Softly the evening came

Softly the evening came. The sun from the western horizon like a magician extended his golden wand o'er the landscape; tinkling vapours arose; and sky and water and forest seemed all on fire at the touch, and melted and mingled together.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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

W & N watercolours on Bockingford 300gsm - 12" x 8"

This painting was inspired by the above poem by Longfellow – 'his golden wand o'er the landscape' – what beautiful words!

Seeking Nature in Spring

Who are you, Nature?

I live in you;

for fifty years I have been seeking you,

and I have not found you yet.

- Voltaire (1694 - 1778)

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

Watercolour in Moleskine Folio 200gsm watercolour sketch-book 12" x 8"

Ever since I attended a watercolour class with Angela Eidelman in Magaliesburg (Gauteng, South Africa) almost a year ago, I've been experimenting with bolder and bolder colour, something she taught me, "be bold and never be scared of colour!" It certainly pays off with watercolours, especially if the work is fairly small. Here I took my cue from all the Spring colours abounding in my garden last Spring at the end of a hard, cold winter.

Why the environment has to be preserved

Every time I have some moment on a seashore, or in the mountains, or sometimes in a quiet forest, I think this is why the environment has to be preserved.
- Bill Bradley

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

Done from my imagination, no preliminary sketching - W & N watercolours on Bockingford 300gsm - 12" x 8"

We're still having a lot of rain here in Tarlton, Gauteng, South Africa, and my palette is definitely being affected by this - I'm drawn to all the wet and cool colours as we haven't being seeing much of the sun at all. Our dams are filled to capacity, rivers are swollen and causing flooding and, of course, the gardens are smiling!

I'm not sure whether us humans are all to blame for 'global warming' and the strange weather patterns, because Mother Earth has her own natural cycles of warming and freezing, but the mess that us humans make on this planet is of major concern to me. Isn't a beautiful landscape enough incentive for each and every one of us to take responsibility for our mess in order to preserve it....?

My dream of a Cottage by the sea

“We plan our lives according to a dream that came to us in our childhood, and we find that life alters our plans. And yet, at the end, from a rare height, we also see that our dream was our fate. It's just that providence had other ideas as to how we would get there. Destiny plans a different route, or turns the dream around, as if it were a riddle, and fulfils the dream in ways we couldn't have expected.”
- Ben Okri

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

Aaaah, the dream.... (probably on the West Coast of South Africa.) Done from my imagination – W & N watercolours on Arches 300gsm - 10" x 7"

My dream of a cottage by the sea… There are songs written about it, there are books written about it and poems written about it – the sea. How many of us have the dream of owning a cottage by the sea?

I don't mean a unit in a complex by the sea, I've had one of those in a busy, busy seaside town... I mean a place of peace and tranquility, far from the madding crowd, quiet walks on the beach with not a soul in sight, collecting shells and drift-wood, sitting on a rock watching the ships go by… listening to the sound of thunder and lightning on a windy stormy night, intermingled with waves crashing on the beach, feeling save in the warm glow of the fire crackling in the hearth...

“The size of your success is measured by the strength of your desire, the size of your dream; and how you handle disappointment along the way.”
- Robert Kiyosaki

Gone to the forest

“This is what I believe: That I am I. That my soul is a dark forest. That my known self will never be more than a little clearing in the forest. That gods, strange gods, come forth from the forest into the clearing of my known self, and then go back. 'That I must have the courage to let them come and go. That I will never let mankind put anything over me, but that I will try always to recognize and submit to the gods in me and the gods in other men and women.' There is my creed.”

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

W & N Watercolour on Arches 300gsm - 10" x 7"

I was feeling a bit down the other day and decided the best remedy is to paint.

The Magical process

"Painting is a magical process that I like, where you conjure something out of nothing; you get a little idea that leads you through ... You can go into a trance while you're doing it, so it's a nice contrast to real life."
- Paul McCartney

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


Watercolour on Arches 300gsm

Stuck indoors again, lots of rain, so no field sketching at the moment! This is one of the 6 paintings I did while it poured outside and being without electricity (and therefore internet as well!) - having to boil water for coffee on the little gas burner and sitting close to the window (for light). Did this from my imagination, taking inspiration from the blue, wet hues outside, the bright green of all the grass and all the muddy patches everywhere.

Give yourself the Gift of Time

"In order to hear your calling and answer it, you must generously give yourself the gift of time. It's not how fast you make your dream come true, but how steadily you pursue it."
- Sarah Ban Breathnach

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



This was my sixth painting I did yesterday, for various reasons. I normally do two or three a day anyway, but yesterday the Universe played in my favour. It rained virtually the whole day, keeping me from pursuing my normal activities like gardening, taking a walk on our smallholding, generally just checking on everything and finding subjects to sketch and the electricity was off the whole afternoon, leaving me computer-less and not spending so much time on-line! Sitting at my studio window, which was the only source of light, I relaxed, determined not to get het up by the situation

These are small studies (10" x 7") done on Arches 300gsm watercolour paper (from my imagination and no sketching beforehand) and this particular one was inspired by all the rain we are having - my lawn is totally water-logged, as I discovered when I went outside to do a quick check on my new baby chicks, sinking ankle-deep into pools of water. They were fine, Mother Bobby had led them into the newly built chicken coup (next on the sketching list) and they were happily nestling under her feathers.

African Joy and Sorrow

"The triumph of life is the joy experienced thereafter."
- Maree

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


Watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm - done from a photograph of Guinea standing on the wall, forlornly calling his missing wife.

A couple of years ago, one of my guinea fowl sitting on eggs was killed by a dog, leaving 10 eggs, on the pint of hatching, without a mother. I gathered all the eggs and put them in a basket with a hot water bottle, trying to keep them warm to see if any of them would hatch. Two days later still nothing, but on the third day I heard a weak peep-peep from one of the eggs. None of the others showed any sign of life, so I decided to take matters into my own hands and open the one that was peeping. I gently peeled away the shell and lifted out a perfectly formed little guinea fowl, and placed him on the warm towel, drying his little body with a soft cloth until he lifted his little head and stared me straight in the eye.

That was the beginning of a beautiful, long relationship with "Guinea", who spent five years following me everywhere and providing us with endless hours of pleasure with his surprising antics. He even lured a wild guinea fowl female from the wild (they used to pass through our property in large flocks, travelling from one field to another) and together they reared 5 clutches of beautiful little guinea fowl, all of whom stayed on our property for many years.

When Guinea's wife disappeared one day, he was inconsolable, standing on the wall and calling for hours in that haunting 'phe-twee, phe-twee, phe-twee' that is so typical of the South African bush. After that, he would often disappear for a day or two until, one day, he didn't come home at all. I hoped and presumed that he had found another family and was happily roaming the fields surrounding our property.

“This life as you live it now and have lived it, you will have to live again and again, times without number, and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and all the unspeakably small and great in your life must return to you and everything in the same series and sequence -- and in the same way this spider and this moonlight among the trees, and this same way this moment and I myself. The eternal hour glass of existence will be turned again and again -- and you with it, you dust of dust!”
- Friedrich Nietzsche

Vintage Coffee Roses

Oh, my love’s like a red, red rose,
That ’s newly sprung in June;
Oh, my love’s like the melody
That’s sweetly played in tune.
- Robert Burns

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


Coffee and watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm

Some more painting with coffee, this time with a bit of Cadmium Red added - the rose on the left is from my garden and the one on the right is done from an inverted image of one of Elizabeth Kendall's roses on FaceBook.

Happy New Year 2011!

New Year's eve is like every other night; there is no pause in the march of the universe, no breathless moment of silence among created things that the passage of another twelve months may be noted; and yet no man has quite the same thoughts this evening that come with the coming of darkness on other nights.
- Hamilton Wright Mabie



Here's wishing all my beautiful friends, fellow artists and bloggers a WONDERFUL, joyful and inspirational new year! In fact, I wish this for you for the rest of your life! This has been such an awesome year for me, and I don't know how to express all the feelings I've experienced here; the sharing, the support and the recognition from everybody that has crossed my path. May you all experience similar beautiful feelings in the new year!

As far as New year's resolutions are concerned, I have made only one, and will try to always keep to this:

To rise above the little things.

Merry Christmas & A Joyous 2011!

And the Grinch, with his Grinch-feet ice cold in the snow,
stood puzzling and puzzling, how could it be so?
It came without ribbons. It came without tags.
It came without packages, boxes or bags.
And he puzzled and puzzled 'till his puzzler was sore.
Then the Grinch thought of something he hadn't before.
What if Christmas, he thought, doesn't come from a store.
What if Christmas, perhaps, means a little bit more?
~Dr. Seuss



One of my Guinea fowl watercolours turned into a Christmas card - this will be my last post for 2010 and here's wishing you all a joyous and inspirational 2011! I'm really looking forward to seeing everybody's art and inspiration in the new year and I would like to thank everybody for viewing my blog and leaving your lovely comments here!

Painted Dog

Man is the only creature that consumes without producing. He does not give milk, he does not lay eggs, he is too weak to pull the plough, he cannot run fast enough to catch rabbits. Yet he is lord of all the animals.”
- George Orwell

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


'Wild Dog' - Coffee on Bockingford 300gsm - 12" x 8" - Maree©

The Painted dog or *African Wild Dog* (Lycaon pictus), is a medium-sized canid found only in Africa, especially in Savannahs and other lightly wooded areas. It is also called the *Painted Hunting Dog, African Hunting Dog,* the *Cape Hunting Dog,* the *Spotted Dog,* the *Ornate Wolf* or the *Painted Wolf* in English, *Wildehond* in Afrikaans, and *Mbwa mwitu* in Swahili. It is the only extant species in the genus _Lycaon_, with one species, L. sekowei, being extinct.

There were once approximately 500,000 African Wild Dogs in 39 countries, and packs of 100 or more were not uncommon. Now there are only about 3,000-5,500 in fewer than 25 countries ore less. They are primarily found in Eastern and Southern Africa, mostly in the two remaining large populations associated with the Selous Game Reserve in Tanzania and the population centered in northern Botswana and Eastern Namibia.

Whilst the largest population resides in the Kruger National Park (South Africa), some wild dogs have been released into Madikwe, Pilanesberg and Hluhluwe-Mfolozi, South Africa.

I did this painting with coffee on tea-stained (Five roses, black, and VERY strong!) Bockingford 300gsm - 12" x 8"