The Rand Club

Well, hello - it's been a long long time and I had almost decided that blogging was all in the past for me, when someone (thank you Ginny Stiles!) emailed to say she missed my posts, and someone else needed a link for my sketches besides Instagram - so here I am again. Not knowing where to begin as there's so much I haven't posted and so much has happened... so just starting at The Rand Club, where I sketched on Saturday, and have sketched a few times over the last couple of years... A music and story-telling event (at the bottom), a book fair in 2018 (these three colour sketches) and ending with the recent event for 1000Drawings where we donated A5 doodles or drawings for charity - both with our Joburg Sketchers group.

The Rand Club was founded by Cecil John Rhodes and Johannesburg's mining founding fathers with a very restricted admittance and membership policy - basically only wealthy white men were allowed in. When I was a very young art-director's assistant, newly arrived in Joburg back in the late 70's, I went with my workmates for drinks there at the longest bar in Africa - as it still is - and didn't realise at the time that the reason we circled the building to find a side door and not just walk into the main entrance, was because I, a Woman! was present - by then we were allowed into certain rooms, but had to go in the secret door! Since the 80's all may enter, but there's quite a struggle to attract enough paying members into the middle of the city to finance the upkeep and preservation of the quite beautiful building and its features. Now that the admission policy is more ethical, I hope they do.

Apologies for the poor quality of these images - they were snapped with my phone in dingy light before popping into the donation box. One of the reasons blogging became too much, was the time taken to scan and clean up images, and write and research blog posts (the upside being that I learnt a lot more about the city I'm living in) so I'm trying to find ways to do it faster. This post has nevertheless taken me forever, but it's good to be back!

10x10 Workshop 6: Watching, waiting, walking - People of Gandhi Square

I'm finally getting down to a report of the second workshop I presented in the series to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Urban Sketchers, on the 29th of April. (I missed out on workshops 3, 4 and 5 presented by Anni Wakerley and Lisa Martens, having been away from Joburg).

Photo by Leonora Venter

My focus was on sketching the people, and Gandhi Square being a main bus terminal in the city, was hoping for fairly stationary subjects waiting or slowly moving around there. We met at Joziburg Lane, which is in easy walking distance of Gandhi Square. Once again we warmed up with quick portraits of each other, but this time doing 'blind contour' drawings without looking down at the page - a little cheating went on but it produced lots of laughter and surprising, lively results.

Photo by Leonora Venter

After a short explanation and demo of 'contact points' and relating sections of the face or figure to each other and to the background - which in this case was to be minimal - and encouragement to just go for it - not to worry about results but to enjoy letting loose with line, we set off down to the square.




Of course such a large expanse of public space is overwhelming and intimidating to begin with, but it's surprising how quickly one feels right at home, once you've chosen a viewpoint and a perch, and concentrating on the task at hand helps to push curious onlookers into soft focus.

Photographs by Liesl Percy Lancaster of House of Lancaster 

 I was thrilled with the results (not all shown here) and varied attempts to capture figures who really never do stay still for more than a second or two. The act of looking hard and trying to put down some essence of them incrementally improves the ability to do so, most especially when you do it regularly and don't let the efforts of the previous day grow dim in the conscious and muscle memory. As I try to remind myself!

Here are are images from my handout booklet for the session. It covers rather a wide range of figure-sketching tips and approaches as my group consisted of a large range of sketching experience and skills.

 We also took the opportunity to record Urban Sketchers Johannesburg's happy 10th birthday message to Gabi Campanario and USk at this gathering, which was shown to him as a big surprise and tribute at the Symposium in Chicago in July. We're at 1:22 minutes in...

A peek at the Faraday Muti Market

Oh my goodness, blogging has got so left behind in the whirl of this fleeting year, I don't know where to start again...or whether...but I remind myself that if I don't record here some of what I've done/drawn/painted, chances are it'll all get lost in the jumble of events in my mind, and I'll be wondering what on earth I did with my life!
I'm not going to try and do a chronological catch-up, too much work and I have to spend less time on the computer - this sketch was done in May at one of our USk 10x10 workshops, 'Through the Windows' led by Lisa Martens, from Joziburg Lane (now called Hangout Jozi) where I did these sketches, only out of different windows, and looking down.

I felt like a rather illicit voyeur as I squinted down at a section of the Faraday Muti Market, which I've never had the courage to venture into myself. A traditional African healer's market, or hospital, it has animal - both common and highly endangered - and herbal products on display and traditional doctors that prescribe potions and lotions of herbs, spices, bones, flesh and more to cure every ailment or life problem. If you have a strong stomach you can read blogger 2Summers personal account, or google the market and find out more. Fortunately the area I could see below me consisted mainly of grains, herbs or husks laid out on mats in the sun and the 'bush meat' was hidden from my squeamish birds-eye view. People came and went to consult the sangomas and traditional healers for age-old remedies and spiritual and supernatural help; a Don Quixote-like figure poked and slashed at covered piles of who-knows-what with his stick as sellers sat calmly watching - and the 21st century rushed on past on the M2 highway above.

Joziburg Lane

After days of unrelenting (but welcome) rain and a forecast for more we headed for cover on our monthly sketch date last week and returned to Joziburg Lane in the city. This is a food, retail and residential refurbishment of some old buildings, including what was known as Motortown, where Chrysler, Rolls Royce and other car brands were based back in the day, before inner-city decline set in and they moved north to the suburbs.

I leaned against my car bonnet and sketched from the windows of the rooftop parking lot - I loved the curves, waves, angles and textures laid out beneath me, and the window shapes helped me to place them on the pages of my concertina Moleskine. As you may know, buildings and architecture are extremely challenging for me - I found myself getting more and more irritated with drawing all the details, when I knew I didn't want details, and my hand got more impatiently scribbly as I went along... until suddenly I realised I was enjoying myself again with almost handwriting-like shortcuts to describe the background buildings.

I decided I really wanted some of the many textures of the rooftops and used white wax crayon before going over with watercolour - not such a great idea as the effects were pretty unpredictable. When I got home I also added bits onto my pages to take some of the buildings up to their proper heights - what would Johannesburg city be without the Carlton Centre, once the tallest building in Africa?

With cramped legs from standing so long, I trekked down the 'Forever Stairs' - there isn't a lift yet - to the food court at the bottom of the building where I met the rest of our group for lunch. We left just before the afternoon/evening event was about to start, a pity as some pretty funky musicians were arriving that would have made great subjects for sketching.

I've just realised I haven't posted the sketches from my other trips to Joziburg Lane here, so for the record...

...some early musicians from their Birthday Bash for Joburg's 130th anniversary, and the huge birthday cake in the food court (also unfortunately before the crowds arrived - I think I'm getting too old for the hustle and bustle of these social happenings) and the last two from a quiet weekday morning...shopkeepers and restaurant staff at a bit of a loose end waiting for customers, in front of a wall mural that those little plants are eventually going to be trained up.

A Thursday Morning in Bertrams

The sketchers group has been getting a lot of invitations lately - as Joburg warms up (and then some!) and events are planned before the rush for the coast in December.

One was to sketch some Street Theatre in the little, poverty stricken suburb of Bertrams just south of the city. We decided to go to a rehearsal on a Thursday morning, but sadly it had been rescheduled without our knowledge - so we found ourselves banging on an unresponsive corrugated iron gate in an famously lawless area. We recklessly decided to unfold our chairs on a corner and start drawing in spite of warnings by concerned individuals to keep our car doors locked etc etc.

As is usually the case when we venture out into Joburg's vastly varied streets, we soon felt part of the furniture as locals passed us by, some stopping to look and chat about drawing, some taking no notice; a father ushering his two sweet little boys to say hello to the gogos (grandmothers); an undoubted illicit exchange between a young chap and a passing mini-bus taxi driver; a woman coming to tell us her story of being kicked out of the nearby home for vulnerable people and being taken in by her kind friend, who came to join the conversation; men changing their car oil and pouring the old stuff into the empty plot next to us (ulp! - sometimes you have to just keep your mouth shut!) Only one very interested look into my sketching bag...luckily he wasn't interested in pens and paint. In the distance a corner café was bustling with activity, the peeling bark of the plane trees leading to it reflecting the surfaces of the decaying but still beautiful buildings.

It felt like street theatre in a way, even without the actors.

[And hooray, my blog list is back!]

Playing with Inks

Urban Sketchers Johannesburg (yes, we're now an official chapter!) was invited by Assemblage, a local visual arts community organisation to join a challenge to use only Lamy products to produce artworks or in our case, sketches. Lamy provided a range of their pens and inks to share among the participating artists. I have my own much-used Lamy safari pen plus a spare for just-in-case, so filled those and took a few extra colour cartridges...a cool pinky red, a viridian-ish green, another luminous yellow-green, purple, and a few drops of a dark prussian blue and turquoise in containers.

A shed at 1Fox - old industrial warehouses now restaurants, bars and event spaces... note the chandelier!

Most of my sketches ended up looking purply-green and I discovered that the luminous green was the only warm shade I had, and mixed with the pink had to serve to make skin tones and browns. With a high pigment load the intensity of the inks is amazing though, a little went a very long way.

Sketching friend Leonora and I sat on a busy street corner in the city and I sketched the traders. The guy selling cosmetics, combs and sundries in the "two Rand shop" never let up his call for a minute of "pondopondotworandi", interspersed every now and then by his neighbour yelling "Walalawasaba" which, I believe, means "you snooze, you lose!"

The same corner, slightly different experiment with the pens and ink. I tried swapping cartridges in the pens to see if they would show a progression from, say, green to purple, but as the pigments are so powerful, I would've had to put in a few km's of line to show the complete changeover.

Dismal attempt at the lovely old building on the opposite corner... need some architectural drawing workshops!

My Blog List has disappeared from my sidebar... I have no idea how - I reported it to Blogger Help and someone(?) said they were aware of the problem but so far nothing has been restored. Anyone else had this happen?

Braamfontein Cemetery

Our sketchers group went to the historic Braamfontein Cemetery on our last Saturday outing - a place I've driven past hundreds of times, vaguely wondering what was behind the dilapidated fences. Doing some research, I was astounded by the number of significant events and people in Johannesburg that are commemorated here. 

It's divided into sections, including an Anglo-Boer War section, Jewish, Muslim and Chinese sections, firemen & policemen, priests & nuns, and the School of Mines section holding 12000 miners - now represented by a green field and a single huge granite cube which guards the remains of Enoch Sontonga, who wrote our national anthem 'Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrika' - as well as many other graves of early Johannesburgers. Also a Dynamite Memorial for when a train, loaded with dynamite for the mines stood in the hot sun and exploded in 1896, destroying 1500 houses and killing hundreds of people, horses and donkeys.

One very moving grave was that of 24 year old Chow Kwai For, who registered under a new law requiring racial registration, unaware that the Chinese community was refusing to do so as a protest against it (he spoke a different dialect and hadn't understood). When he realised what he had done he committed suicide. His letter of apology is engraved on his headstone in Chinese. Sadly looking a bit derelict as are many, but still with a bunch of dried flowers placed before it.

We - and especially me, I seem to be a magnet for them - had been plagued by mosquitoes the whole morning and at this final stop in a remote and neglected part of the cemetery (not sure what section it represented) I found the mother-lode. Trying to draw as fast as possible while squirming and swatting at mozzies made for some interesting linework. Though I quite like the result, I wouldn't recommend it as a sketching technique!

Newtown Fridays

I've re-instated the 'First Friday in Newtown' sketch date for our Joburg Sketchers group after it fizzled out rather apathetically last year. I admit to feeling a little apprehensive before these gatherings as we stick out like strange pale objects in the bustling, noisy, lively African space - even though we've only been ignored at worst (apart from one vendor once, upset at me drawing his stall) and joyfully welcomed at best. This time we had some new faces join the regulars - a few followers of our Facebook page and newsletter who at last took the plunge into the city, visiting sketcher Fiver from Brighton, and a whole fresh bunch of young men and women from a nearby architect's studio who made me feel optimistic about the future of urban sketching in Joburg, if they only keep on coming!

I started sketching the lovely Museum Africa building, sadly deteriorating again after a new lease of life a few years ago. Apparently it's down to its last curator who is leaving, or has left after trying gamely to keep the collection going and safe with no resources or help. The wooden heads which line the streets of Newtown are also showing signs of neglect and vandalism; a ragged Rasta man scratching in a bag of rubbish for scraps next to me who it felt too intrusive to draw...
But back to happier observations - a truck driver pulled up alongside and asked what I was doing... "But this is great!", other passers by stopped to look, chat and laugh with the sketchers, the young architect's group was enthusiastic and once again we're encouraged to do this again - once you're there, it's always, always worthwhile.

The War Museum and a Park

Skipping around from one thing to another, I returned to some urban sketching after rather a dry year... I just didn't get out much. I met up with friend and ex-Joburg Sketcher Barbara Moore at the Museum of Military History on Sunday and we sketched and nattered in the shadiest courtyard we could find on a scorching heat-wavy day - we've had too many of those! We quite logically thought the red and blue zigzags on the flag were W's and M's for War Museum, but my husband, who was a Gunner in his long ago National Service, recognised it later as the Gunner's or Artillery flag!

On Tuesday the Joburg Sketchers were supposed to meet with art counsellors from Lefika and children from Hillbrow to draw and paint together on World Aids Day in the beautifully treed Pieter Roos Park near the city. Only two of us made it there - Leonora and I looked around and listened for kid's voices but no sign of them, so we sat up at the top and started sketching the Hillbrow Tower overlooking the park, feeling out of place among rather a lot of unemployed men sitting about (actually the men with guitar in the middle sketch were from another sketch day in Newtown, but I had such a big empty page around them, I drew the park scene as if it were background, they could just as well have been there... and seeing it's confession time, I didn't fit the top of the tower onto my page so drew it alongside and photoshopped it to the top afterwards, as you can probably tell!)
As we packed up to leave in time to avoid heavy afternoon traffic, we spotted the Lefika group down at the bottom of the hill, just stopping for lunch - a pity our paths crossed too late in the day, I hope we can get together some other time.

The Old Post Office

Sketches from a few weeks ago when I went to an art exhibition in an old building that used to house Johannesburg's Post Office processing site. Enormous sorting sheds where trains and buses would offload piles of mail, buildings that used to be stables for the P.O. horses, strange machines whose purpose is a mystery (to me anyway). This all hidden behind walls that I've driven past so many times and vaguely wondered if there was anything interesting behind them. We went back to draw before it's all changed - the City Library still uses some of the premises for storage but loft apartments are in the planning stage for others.

In the meantime, Summer has arrived! Gardens are buzzing, jacarandas are in their full purple magnificence, birds and frogs are calling and swimming pools are sparkling in an early heat wave. Why is it that enormous mountains of work - absent and leaving me twiddling my thumbs all through the winter months, when sitting in a sunspot and ploughing through it would be an appealing alternative to sitting on icy windswept pavements - suddenly arrives in truckloads, just when all my urges are telling me to go outside and paint, sketch, experience. Moan, moan, moan and I shouldn't when work is often hard to come by, but really...

Trees in the City

On a gorgeous Spring morning last Friday, a few sketcher friends and I met in Braamfontein to record a 'Parking Day' event where artists and activists were supposed to take over parking bays and transform them. It had been cancelled at the last minute and not an activist was to be found. Lots of cars in the parking bays, students to and from nearby Wits University, some vigilant security guards steering a few beggars away from the streets and cafés - I decided to try and draw the row of public art tree sculptures that runs all the way up Juta St, but all these things got in the way. I added the colours so you can spot them among the other activity!

James Hall Transport Museum

It was International Museum Day on Monday, and to mark it, on Saturday our sketching group motored over to the James Hall Museum of Transport on the other side of the city. As we wandered around the halls crammed with metal, rubber and chrome I admit my heart sank a bit at the prospect of trying to draw some of these mechanical beasts with all their precise angles, lines and engineerings. But down one rather dusty row of cars waiting for restoration I spotted a curvy, lumpy old character that took me straight back to my childhood and my grandparent's home and car in the (then) little seaside town of Hermanus.

My mother stretching to see over the unfamiliar wood and leather dashboard and straining to turn the big circle of steering wheel, my sister and I bouncing around the roomy back seat excited to be the first to see the blue of the sea, smell the smells of Sea&Ski suntan lotion, icecream, salt and sand, peering through the slatted blind of the tiny back window... I'm not even sure it was the same kind of car (I am of the ilk that describes cars as 'red' or 'black') but I was away, drawing and appreciating the beauty of these relics at last. Such craftsmanship, attention to detail and solid gravitas, the more you looked the more there was to love.
Joburg Sketchers produced an impressive set of sketches of a fraction of the collection of this wonderful museum - another place we'll just have to go back to!

A Heritage Home and Hotel

Two sketches of buildings from the same era in Johannesburg's history - the top one is of Northwards, an Arts and Crafts Movement home built for mining magnate and randlord John Dale Lace. His flamboyant wife, José took milk baths and had her coach pulled by four zebras to go shopping in town; was allegedly proposed to by Cecil John Rhodes, and was mistress to King Edward VII. More about this fascinating lady here if you're interested! Sadly they ended up in abject poverty - how does that happen!? 

Our sketching group went to draw in the gardens after a week of scorching heatwave, but this day was chilly and drizzly and we eventually had to go and find a café to warm up in. It's still cool - surely summer can't be over so suddenly and so soon?

The other sketch was done after visiting William Kentridge's enormous and wonderful tapestries at the Wits Art Museum, over coffee at a restaurant that had a good view of this little inn which dates back to the Boer War. It was used as a watering hole for British troops, and a stopover for postal riders, and where British High Commissioner Sir Alfred Milner met commander of the British forces General Lord Kitchener for talks in the bar, which gives the hotel its name. 

I have to say, I learn more history from sketching and having to look these things up than I ever did as a dozy student doodling at the back of the class in school!  

Maboneng

We went sketching on Saturday in the Maboneng Precinct, an area on the East side of town that was once a no-go but which has been mostly reclaimed from crime and urban decay by private developers who've built galleries, shops, studios and restaurants . It was a nightmare getting there and back, as much of Johannesburg was experiencing one of our now frequent power cutting programmes, trying to save us from total blackout in the near future - so all the robots (traffic lights to you in the rest of the world :)) were out. A few of us managed to make it all the way there, and once our jangled nerves were calmed, we found a lot to draw - the most interesting being the street life and characters.

 Uncle Merv's serves coffee and smoothies and hires out bicycles if you're brave enough to take on the taxis, jaywalking pedestrians and other surprises.

A different kind of Food Truck - an old Chevvie with a container on the back serving customers on the pavement. I had two little boys accompanying me for this one, first gleefully setting off firecrackers all around me till I complained, then sharing the tyre I was sitting on (lost my little sketching stool) one very helpfully holding my palette for me.

And a last few squiggly sketches of passersby - there were so many interesting characters wandering past, and a beautiful old building in a bit of a sad state that I wanted to sketch but couldn't spend the hours that it would take me. The squiggle on the left was a recycling collector surfing expertly past on his home-made trolley with his huge sack of plastic behind him - SO fast downhill on his tiny wheels - one of the surprises you wouldn't want to collide with on a bike!