Two daisies

Bright flowers, whose home is everywhere

Bold in maternal nature’s care

And all the long year through the heir

Of joy and sorrow,

Methinks that there abides in thee

Some concord with humanity,

Given to no other flower I see

The forest through.

- William Wordsworth

Acrylic on primed canvas panel – 9″ × 12″

Some left-over blue paint from my palette when I did the lighthouse. I couldn't just waste the paint so  I was off on a new adventure again with my acrylics! 

Two daisies from my garden (Tarlton, Gauteng, South Africa) in a blue bottle on my kitchen table.

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Winter in Summer

“When you are older, you realise that everything else is just nothing compared to painting and drawing.”
— David Hockney

W&N watercolour in my Moleskine 200gsm nature sketchbook

Just as we thought winter had finally ended, we had freezing weather come up from the Cape with temperatures dropping to 12℃. That was on Saturday. Today it's starting to return to normal with beautiful sunshine and no wind. Nature certainly can be unpredictable...

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An African moon

Black ink sketch using Pilot Calligraphy Lettering pen and Artline200 black fine-point pen on DaleRowney 220gsm heavy-duty sketching paper

It was full moon last night and when I switched off the garden lights, my garden was bathed in a golden glow… and I could’ve sworn I saw the fairies hiding under the mushrooms... 

One website explains the full moon thus, “The moon and sun are on a line, with Earth in between. It’s as though Earth is the fulcrum of a see-saw, and the moon and sun are sitting on either end of the see-saw. Thus as the sun sets in the west, the full moon rises. When the sun is below our feet at midnight, the full moon is highest in the sky. When the sun rises again at dawn, the full moon is setting.”

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The first rain

“The rain to the wind said,

'You push and I’ll pelt.'

They so smote the garden bed

That the flowers actually knelt,

And lay lodged—though not dead.

I know how the flowers felt.”

― Robert Frost

W&N watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm

14th September 2013 

Step outside after the first storm after a dry spell and it invariably hits you: the sweet, fresh, powerfully evocative smell of fresh rain. 

We’ve had our first rain of the season here in Tarlton (Gauteng, South Africa), and the world has suddenly turned from brown and dusty to green and sparkling clean! And nothing on earth smells better than rain on our African soil!

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This Blue Gum

This blue gum tree greets me every morning as I open my studio curtains. She is always there. She has always been there, for the past ten years. She's the one I sit and stare at when I'm pondering or deep in thought. I've watched her swaying in heavy winds, watched as limbs have broken off and watched as veld fires have swept her base.

She stands across the road from our property, probably about 20m tall and offers a safe haven for all the birds in the area. I've watched as baby crows have fledged from her branches and yet, I've never looked at her properly.

Today I decided to look at her, with new eyes, and paint her.

I think she's wonderful. 

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