JUST ME :: and a stack of blank pages

:: Living creatively ::

About me

This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realise it is play. The only thing that is ultimately real about your journey is the step that you are taking at this moment. That’s all there ever is. I’m here to tell you that the path to peace is right there, when you want to get away. When you are present, you can allow the mind to be as it is without getting entangled in it. If you miss the present moment, you miss your appointment with life. That is very serious!

Tuesday, February 4, 2014

A shelf in my garden shed

Gardening is about enjoying the smell of things growing in the soil, getting dirty without feeling guilty, and generally taking the time to soak up a little peace and serenity. 
 - Lindley Karstens

W & N Watercolours on Bockingford 300gsm – 12″ × 8″ 
A shelf in my garden shed where I keep my collection of Terracotta pots and watering cans, seedling trays, egg shells to plant seedlings, tools, hats and all else a gardener needs to make her life easy! 

I think the true gardener is a lover of her flowers, not a critic of them. I think the true gardener is the reverent servant of Nature, not her truculent, wife-beating master. I think the true gardener, the older she grows, should more and more develop a humble, grateful and uncertain spirit. One of the most delightful things about a garden is the anticipation it provides and my green thumb came only as a result of the mistakes I made while learning to see things from the plant’s point of view! When one of my plants dies, I die a little inside, too. On every stem, on every leaf,… and at the root of everything that grew, was a professional specialist in the shape of grub, caterpillar, aphis, or other expert, whose business it was to devour that particular part. Despite any gardener’s best intentions, Nature will improvise. It takes a while to grasp that not all failures are self-imposed, the result of ignorance, carelessness or inexperience. It takes a while to grasp that a garden isn’t a testing ground for character and to stop asking, what did I do wrong? Maybe nothing.
- Compiled from some of the thousands of quotes I have on my MAC

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Friday, January 31, 2014

Pink mums

“Why don’t you get a haircut? You look like a chrysanthemum.” 
- P. G. Wodehouse

W&N watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm

I’ve just bought some potted Chrysanthemums from Woolworths, and I don’t know why I do this, because I never have much luck with their potted plants I buy! What I HAVE discovered is that there are Mums and there are HARDY mums, and obviously the potted variety for sale in pots are NOT the hardy variety! So planting them in the garden, like I usually do after they’ve finished flowering, is a useless exercise. This one will therefore just stay in-doors and I’ll enjoy it until it expires!

The chrysanthemum is the November birth flower, which means with love and cheerfulness. The hidden meaning of this beautiful flower is you’re a wonderful friend. Although Chrysanthemums are native to Asia and north-eastern Europe, they are widely grown all over the world.

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Sunday, January 19, 2014

Cloudy day


W&N watercolour on Aqua acid-free 300gsm
Summer-time in Magaliesburg, Gauteng, South Africa. 

It is windy today. And cloudy. Perfect.

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Friday, January 10, 2014

Hydrangeas speak of Summer


W&N watercolour on X-pressit 300gsm
Hydrangeas on my kitchen table

To me Hydrangeas speak of Summer and their fading colours speak of Autumn. In winter they are silent and in Spring they shout, “We’re here! We’re back! And Spring has come with us!”

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Sunday, January 5, 2014

Enthroned in his earthenware pot

 
Watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm – 8″ × 12″
Dried Hydrangeas from my garden (Tarlton, South Africa) standing in my potting shed.
 
From the bottom of the garden,
enthroned in his earthenware pot,
the hydrangea god surveys his minions—
lavender agapanthuses bowing starburst heads,
red begonia calyxes trumpeting his fame,
oleander leaves whispering of his misdeeds.
The central path leads straight to him. Behind,
a stained mirror and mossy wall back up his power.
Thousands of crinkled, tiny, white ideas occur to him
with frilled and overlapping edges. No one else
deploys such Byzantine metaphysics. No one
can read his mind. Only he remembers
the children’s secret fort by the cypress tree
among fraught weeds, rusted buckets, and dumped ash,
and how lost the grown-ups sounded, calling, as night came.
“Hydrangea” By Rosanna Warren

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Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Here's to a creative 2014!


2013 has been an amazing year, filled with lots of sketching and painting, love joy and inspiration. A brand new year lies at our feet and here's to putting the past behind us, opening a new door, stepping through and experiencing lots of new pleasures, meeting new people, spending time with our loved ones and, above all, being madly creative!

Happy New Year!

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Saturday, December 28, 2013

Guinea Fowl in my garden

Birds are indicators of the environment. If they are in trouble, we know we’ll soon be in trouble.

- Roger Tory Peterson

Watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm
Helmeted guinea fowl (Numida meleagris)

I used to have dozens of guinea fowl pass through our smallholding here in Tarlton (Gauteng, South Africa), but these days it’s like Christmas seeing just a few of them. When we moved to Tarlton in the middle 70’s, we were one of a few owners living on the smallholdings and there were large tracts of open land with hundreds of mammals, birds and reptiles that crossed our paths daily. Snakes were rife and regularly had to be removed to a safer place, now we only see a snake a couple of times in the year. I used to have wild hares entering my garden and eating my Marigolds; I haven’t seen an hare for about 7 years. The same with hedgehogs, monitors, tortoises and jackal.

The area is now totally built up and our smallholding is now flanked by people on all sides, property fenced and surrounded by high walls – there are few, if any, empty tracts of of land anymore and I’m just wondering where all the wildlife has managed to find a safe refuge…

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Saturday, December 21, 2013

Season's greetings 2013


What do we love about Christmas;
Does our delight reside in things?
Or are the feelings in our hearts
The real gift that Christmas brings.
It’s seeing those we love,
And sending Christmas cards, too,
Appreciating people who bring us joy
Special people just like you.
- By Joanna Fuchs

The holiday season is upon us and here in South Africa, my 7 Little Robins will be cheerfully chirping and singing to sunny skies and braaivleis (barbeque) over the Christmas period! Our weather will be bright, hot and sunny and half the nation normally spends their Christmas on our beautiful, white beaches.

Wherever you are spending Christmas this year, I wish you and your family a happy, festive season!

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Wednesday, December 18, 2013

I live in a landscape

I live in a landscape, which every single day of my life is enriching.
- Daniel Day-Lewis

W&N watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm

A scene in Tarlton (Gauteng, South Africa) after all the beautiful rain we've had.

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Sunday, December 15, 2013

Fun and practical art - Calendars for 2014

A collection of Daisies in watercolour and acrylics - Front Cover

Looking for a calendar for the new year? Something different? Who says art can't be practical? Keep track of your yesterdays and tomorrows with my fun and functional Redbubble calendars.This one above is from "Daisies in Coulour", a collection of daisies in watercolours and acrylics. I have quite a wide selection, you can choose from 'Crows - A Corvid Collection', 'Wildlife of Africa', 'Chickens', 'Africa | Ethnic', 'Birds', 'Affirmations - Heal your Life' and many more.

RedBubble calendars are printed using marvellous futuristic technologies, so complex I can’t go into them here, but I can tell you they are lovingly printed on a luscious 200gsm satin art paper at the striking size of A3 (that’s 297×420mm, or 11.69×16.54”).

They also have very handy wire binding so you can hang them from things like ‘hooks’ on exciting places like ‘walls’!

You can select your own start month, and order right into the future. Everything about them is brilliant, except you’ll have no excuse for missing your sister’s birthday any more!

The back cover of the calendar showing all 12 months' images

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Tuesday, December 10, 2013

Artemis and the girls


Ink sketch and W&N watercolours on a coffee back-ground – Nescafé instant, strong! – Bockingford 300gsm

As I sat on the lawn the other morning, enjoying our gorgeous summer weather (Tarlton, Gauteng, South Africa), I decided to do a quick sketch of Artemis keeping a watchful eye on the girls as they scratch for titbits on the lawn. As long as they are happy, he won’t move, so he makes a perfect subject.

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Thursday, December 5, 2013

The year's last, loveliest smile!

 Watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm 12″ × 8″
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For me, Autumn holds a special fascination. First of all because my birthday is in Autumn in May, and although May could officially be classified as Winter, here in South Africa some of our most gorgeous days are in May – clear, cloudless skies, temperatures still in the early 20 degrees Celsius and a landscape filled with colour, with Nature unwilling to let go of her summer finery. It is also the month for mid-year tax returns, and I always enjoy getting that out of the way!

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Monday, December 2, 2013

Expressing your creativity


Modern image processing has become quite an art form these days. With the advent of the computer age, numerous opportunities have arisen that challenge the way in which we explore the world surrounding us. Engineers use computers to process data and visualise results, while artists found in this new media an attractive way to express their creativity.

I am by no means au fait with the array of image processing programmes available these days, but I do enjoy playing around in PowerPoint and PhotoShop (which I still haven't QUITE got the hang of!), adding my art or photographs to back-ground textures, many available for free on the internet.

Above I have added two of my sketches to a back-ground texture by Kim Klassen, using PowerPoint. Below is an image from Country Roads on Pinterest, where I have added photographs of my chickens using PhotoShop.

'A walk down Memory Lane'

Watercolour forest scene with a wolf (clipart) added in using PhotoShop

Two of my watercolour Arums added to a back-ground texture by Kim Klassen
using PowerPoint

Watercolour daisies added to a back-ground texture by Kim Klassen 
using PowerPoint

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Saturday, November 30, 2013

See nature with understanding


Coffee back-ground (Nescafé instant) and colour wash on Bockingford 300gsm

I was actually trying for an abstract here, but it seems nature surfaces every time I put brush to paper...

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Thursday, November 28, 2013

Arum Beauty

W&N watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm 
Arum lilies in my garden (Tarlton, Gauteng, South Africa)

What could be more beautiful than a creamy white arum lily – whether in your garden, a pot, or the wild? Arum lilies (Zantedeschia) are native to southern Africa from South Africa north to Malawi and grow well in full sun near water, but prefer a semi-shaded environment when there’s no permanent water nearby.

The faintly scented flowers attract a multitude of crawling insects and bees, which pollinate the flowers in exchange for food, each one in its own way. The white crab spider, for instance, visits the flower to eat the insects. It does not spin webs, but makes good use of its paleness as an effective camouflage in the spathe.

Pocupines are crazy about the large rhizomes and will savagely destroy whole colonies of arum lilies. The good thing is that thanks to this brutal pruning, the plants regenerate fresher than ever with the most amazing flowers. It’s worth the massacre!

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