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.

Rosemary and Parsley

W&N watercolour on Bockingford 300gsm

Herbs on a windowsill in my kitchen (Tarlton, Gauteng, South Africa)

I just love herbs in terra-cotta pots. Clumped together, they make a beautiful, as well as useful, arrangement on a window sill or just outside your kitchen door.
Rosemary, (Rosmarinus officinalis) is known as a symbol of remembrance and friendship, and fills a garden with aroma, flavor, and activity — busily pollinating bees love the blooms. The secret to beautiful rosemary is to give plants a hot, dry footing. Grow plants in well-drained soil or a raised bed and they look beautiful in terracotta pots.
Curly leaf parsley (Petroselinum) brings a crisp taste to salads, vegetables, and herb butters. The only maintenance this fuss-free herb requires is planting and harvesting. Give plants evenly moist, well-drained soil, and you’ll enjoy fresh green flavours in no time.

A cool Sunday morning outing...

A scene near Magaliesburg, Gauteng, South Africa - Ink sketch and W&N watercolour in Moleskine 200gsm watercolour sketch-book

Sunday morning dawned with clear skies and lovely cool weather, so hubby and I decided to take the MGB Midget roadster out for a run to Magaliesburg and have breakfast at our favourite countryside tea garden. A 20-minute drive with hair blowing in the wind and we arrived, chose a table in the shade and I ordered my favourite, Mince and Cheese Jaffel with salad. By the time we finished eating and lingered, chatting for a while, temperatures were soaring in the early 30℃! The drive home was hot and bothersome and I wished I had taken a hat!

Bloekomdraai

W&N watercolour in Moleskine 200gsm sketchbook

A scene a couple of kilometers from where I live - a gravel road through Tarlton (South Africa) on the way to Randfontein. It's a short-cut we often take past all the veggie and flower farms, the rubbish dump where all the Seagulls (600km from the coast!) gather and where tall Blue gum trees flank the road. This section of the road is known as Bloekomdraai. Here you will find many old farmsteads dating back to the 1800's and early 1900's, but unfortunately most of these have fallen into disrepair and neglect and are more and more making way for more modern and comfortable homes.

There is also a vlei (marsh) area here that extends for many kilometers all the way to Tarlton and the hills fairly sing with the sound of birds and waterfowl. I presume this was the original feed for the Tarlton Dam, which is now empty, broken and no longer in existence, although the water still flows down the course during heavy periods of rain.

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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