Purely sketching

 

Working on getting my confidence back. Just a few pencil lines will be my practice for today — maybe I’ll add some colour at a later stage.

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Trying again

It’s amazing how insecure about my colours I’ve become since not touching a brush for almost four years. And as I might have mentioned before, my colour palette is still stuck on Highveld (Gauteng, South Africa) colours, quite apparent in this tree sketch I did yesterday afternoon. (But as soon as my Muse returns from her hiatus, her and I will go on a coastal adventure!)

Going small

 A collection of sketches in a hand-made sketch-book with hand-crafted satin-finish linen paper. 💚

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Going back in time

 

Seeing as I haven’t particularly been painting for a while (my Muse let me know that she’s on her way), I am looking back in time — memories of my gardener, Chrissie, and sunshine days gardening and painting in, what feels like, a previous life-time.

Chrissie doing her Autumn chores

Chrissie and Tappeltjie off to do some shopping

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Whats on my easel today?

 

I have not been painting as much as I should. Fullstop. I don't actually have an excuse except to say that life happens. And boy, did it happen over the past four years! We retired from Gauteng to the Dolphin Coast, KwaZulu Natal in December 2017 and it took a while for us to find our next forever home and to get settled in. So that's my one excuse for not painting, feeling unsettled and trying to get my groove back. 

Then, in December 2019, my husband was diagnosed with a Meningioma, a benign brain tumour that had to be surgically removed. After 6 weeks in hospital and 4 weeks in rehab, hubby was finally ready to come home. But all was not sunshine and roses -- the pressure of the tumour on the frontal lobe of the brain had taken its toll, causing loss of memory, several strokes and a certain amount of loss of movement. Adjusting to this new challenge in our lives took up all of my time and energy, and even during some quiet moments that I had to myself, I was unable to find my muse and my brushes and paints stayed in the cupboard, patiently awaiting my return. That's my second excuse.

My third excuse goes like this ~ the colours here at the coast are all wrong! Everything is either blue or either green. And there's no grass here. I kid you not. Only sugar cane fields. Lots and lots of sugar cane! and there are no Blue gum trees here, or very few, and they are the wrong species. Long empty branches with tufts of leaves at the end of each branch. Now I'm no stranger to painting with blues or greens, I have even done many beach scapes during my visits to the coast in earlier years.

And now my muse seems to be stuck in Transvaal and bushveld colours ~ browns and yellows, oranges and reds, browns and greens, even black, and my eye keeps looking for waving fields of grasses, green in summer, yellow in winter, but lots and lots of waving fields of grasses! And the Highveld trees ~ oh my! Acacias and Karees, Blue gums and Stinkwoods, Cussonias and Combretums. Even the Aloes here are different!

But I am slowly and surely learning about all the coastal trees and one thing the Coast has in common with the rest of the country, is that succulents thrive here. I can already feel that the Highveld is relinquishing her hold on my muse and soon we will be at it again full throttle!

For practice, an old painting given a fresh new look.

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