Nguni cattle form a vital part of the Zulu heritage. The uniqueness of each cow’s skin has been catalogued and forms part of the Zulu oral poetry and storytelling. The interaction between the tribe’s natural surroundings and the patterns on the Nguni hides led to the formation of over 300 illustrative words in the Zulu…
Portrait of a Zebra
Portrait of a Zebra is the beginnings of a wildlife series I will be doing inspired by where I live. St Lucia is a small village with a population of about 1000 permanent residents. It is the gateway to the iSimangaliso Wetland Park, South Africa’s first World Heritage Site. It is located on Zululand’s Elephant…
Donki ko lo football jersey
Donki ko lo football jersey is the fanagalo name for a Zebra. I have always found it aptly descriptive. Fanagalo is the linga franca language used in the South African mines, composed of frequently corrupted elements of the Nguni, English and Afrikaans languages. Zebra’s have always had a very specific significance for me. When I…
Nguni cow
The Nguni (a type of breed of cattle) is unique to southern Africa. A hybrid of a number of Indian and later European cattle breeds, they were introduced by Bantu-speaking tribes to southern Africa during their migration from the north of the continent. They are characterised by their multicoloured skin, which can present in many…
A lemon, an onion & a pear…
A set of three quick still-life studies with a limited palette. LEMON Stretched canvas – 30cm X 30cm Paint Colours: Titanium white, raw umber, burnt umber, cadmium yellow light, raw sienna ONION Stretched canvas 30cm X 30cm Paint colours: Titanium white raw umber burnt sienna burnt umber cadmium yellow light raw sienna permanent Alizarin crimson…
Painting with a palette knife
Reference photo – A little village on the Scottish coast I have zero experience with painting with a palette knife other than wielding it with gusto when applying the mixed media textures for all those camel paintings. I always felt a bit like I was icing a large cake with butter icing, which is all…
Building my art studio….
Five countries and 12 moves later my first priority after settling the family into our new home is my work space. Taking over an already functioning guest house didn’t allow me the luxury of making a work space for myself inside the home so Phil had something custom built for me. That too had to…
Quick study – lemon tree
I used a 7 x 5 inch canvas board that had been pre-prepared with a colour ground of Yellow Ochre Acrylic paint. For the sketch, I used a Burnt Umber watercolour marker, as it’s water-soluble and allows me to blend sections using just a water brush pen to softly indicate the shadows. Acrylic paint colours…
4 Seasons
Winter, my absolute favourite of all the 4 seasons! Summer, as bright and beautiful as it is, it is probably the least favourite of my seasons because of the heat in the tropics! That said, the flowers and colours summer produces are magnificent in their brilliance! Spring has an almost fluorescent brilliance to it which…
Venice
It has been a while since I had the chance to get involved in any form of painting since our move back to South Africa and coming to grips with a new business. Phil shoulders the greater responsibility and the bulk of the work with regard to our business, but I also needed to learn…
Portraits – A brother and sister
I love drawing portraits, and these two beautiful children were such fun to draw. I got their Mom to take the two of them to the beach where Phil took some magnificent photos of them running, and playing along the shore in the shallows. The result was I had plenty of bright animated faces to…
Botanicals, botanicals and more botanicals….
I love drawing flowers and especially botanical drawings. What I have recently been trying out is water soluble pencil crayons. Watercolour or water-soluble pencils crayons are a unique cross-over between drawing and painting. You draw with them as you would with any pencil or crayon, but then you run a wet brush over your drawing. This…
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