An Exciting Trip!

Carolyn and Brooke

I am going to hold, cuddle and breathe in that lovely baby aroma of my sweet little granddaughter, Brooke on Wednesday! I held her when she was two weeks old and now she is almost 6 months. I see and hear her on my computer screen fairly regularly using Skype – what wonderful technology – but she feels like a “virtual” baby.
I have bought a cheap ticket to the UK and am going just for a week!



Our Plein Air exhibition this weekend was a real success. We held our show at the home of Noeline McMaster and our artists set up their easels and painted in Noeline’s spectacular garden throughout the weekend. Our visitors were delighted to watch and interact with the artists at work. Here are some photo's of some of the artists explaining their work.
I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, people were so interested to see what we were doing. I had many people complementing me on my paintings hanging on the show and even had two people ask if I could teach them to paint in watercolours! One lady brought some paintings from the boot of her car for me to give her some advice!
Before me was a profusion of pink roses tumbling over a low stone wall which really appealed to me, I love roses! I was aware that I was there to demonstrate painting outdoors, so decided to take a more figurative approach to the painting.
I started with watercolour on some smooth hot-pressed watercolour paper. I decided to experiment with rubbing watercolour pencil on a piece of sandpaper, letting the small particles fall into the wet paint. Oooh, it makes star-shaped speckles in the transparent paint. Then I had fun flicking on various colours into dry and wet areas.
I dipped watercolour pencils into the water and played around with making various marks. Next I had fun with oil pastels, using them as a resist for a further layer of watercolour. Mmmmmm, I had such fun!

Lost in Translation

My dear friend, Kim, asked if I ever use photos as a memory aid after a painting session outdoors. I used to do this when I first started Plein Air painting, but found I often mucked the whole thing up in the process! I find that when a painting is in its final stages, it needs me to do the problem-solving thing – I stare at it for ages, from quite a distance and in different lights (dawn light is great) and I allow the painting to speak to me. Ideas of contrasting light and dark, warm and cool, hard and soft edges come to me and I go with them and complete the painting in this way.

I find painting outdoors a most meditative and healing practice. It so fits in with my need to paint intuitively. We find calm and peaceful locations, where all the worries and anxieties of the world seem to slip away for a few hours. There is a feeling, an atmosphere about a real location that is “Lost in translation” when using a photograph. I just breathe in the visual, auditory and sensory stimuli of the location and then I am thrown into the process, trying to visualize that feeling on the canvas or paper. Since I made the transition from rendering a purely figurative image to allowing the senses free expression, I feel this amazing sense of freedom.

Kim asked about dust and dirt adhering to the canvas, when acrylics outdoors. I quite enjoy texture and so am quite happy to add a bit of sand and grass to the mix! It gives the painting a sense of authenticity, a little bit of the location forever locked into the painting! You have to wait to do those lovely clear glazes back in your studio, Kim!

On Monday, I sat under a canopy of vine leaves swaying in the breeze, with the light shining through the leaves, making them translucent. I left with an unfinished watercolour, due to the antics of the baboons. In my studio, I decided to try out some of my newly acquired oil bars on the painting, thinking it is such fun just to experiment and see what happens. The contrast between the watercolour and oil bar is intense, highlighting the transparency of the watercolour. I might continue and add another wash to the piece.

Our dear friend Suki recently lost her mother and I would like her to know that even though some of us live very far away, we are thinking about her and are there for her on the www.

More Plein Air Admirers

More interested bystanders at our Plein Air group on Monday!

The baboon found a good vantage point on the wall lamp behind Gerda and once Doreen is immersed in her composition, nothing much will disturb her!

So we decided to do a spot of "Life drawing", African style but the models were not very good at keeping still for any length of time!

Our sandwiches at lunch time started a flurry of interest, so we retreated into the kitchen to eat in peace.......

I took my watercolours with me and had a great time abstracting the essence of the leaves on the vine growing over the veranda. I was unable to complete it, due to the above visitors. I will work on it today, using my memory and imagination.

Those of you who will be wondering at our apparent lack of concern for our safety .... our hostess, June, says these baboons are frequent visitors only on the lookout for food. A couple of days ago, she found a large male in her kitchen, he calmly opened the freezer, pulled out a drawer and took a loaf of frozen bread and some chicken. She flicked at him with a towel to get him out, he calmly turned round and ambled out onto the veranda. He took a frozen slice of bread out of the packet, patting it and blowing on it before popping it into his mouth!

Reality to Abstraction

I have been quite frustrated with my “Plein Air” attempts lately. I would like to be able to abstract what I see and am finding this very difficult. I have been painting what I see for many years now and my realistic paintings just don’t excite me, they are very ordinary and repetitive. They don’t say much about anything, they are just a faithful recording of what is in my line of vision.
I decided to change my medium and take my oil paints with me. I left all my small brushes at home, I only took 1 inch and larger (wall brushes) and a few palette knives. If I have small brushes with me, I start to fiddle and put in all the details. I also decided to work with a limited palette. I had a go at painting those Stone Pine trees again. I seemed to get in an abstract mode when I started playing with the paint and experimenting with texture. I don’t think this is really “Plein Air” painting, since I merely breathed in the idea of the trees and then allowed the paint and canvas to take over; still, it is wonderful to be out in the fresh air with my painting buddies. We share a very special kind of friendship and are very supportive and encouraging of each other.
This is an attempt at abstracting from reality, it is still quite realistic but I definitely felt a shift away from complete realism. I am so often seduced into producing a “chocolate box” image when faced with Cape Town’s wonderful scenery!

Painting in Stormy Weather, Cape Town

On Monday our Plein Air group braved the freezing cold weather to paint on Rondebosch Common looking towards Table Mountain. Instead of a mountain we were faced with voluminous, heavy clouds swirling around us, we were standing in the full force of the north-westerly wind. Only the die-hards were there, this type of Plein Air painting is not for the feint-hearted!
Cape Town was formally called, "The Cape of Storms" in years gone by before the harbour was built. Ships avoided stopping in the bay during the winter for fear of running aground, (a frequent occurrence) on Milnerton Beach during the fearsome weather.

Various paintings gathered extra texture as they blew off easels onto the ground. Wow! The amazing atmospheric conditions conjured up wild thoughts and ideas. How was I going to portray this powerful force with my watercolour paints and a small pad of paper? Oh well! I painted the Stone Pine trees swaying against a bit of mountain and cloud and can perhaps use this to create a larger storm painting in my studio.