CHEERFUL COLOURS

I stood in a shop by the art supplies last week, looking for a warm, yellowish red. What caught my eye, was a flourescent orange red! YUM!!  ☺ My first reaction was, 

"I'm not allowed to use that colour in serious artworks." 

What??!! Who said that???  I bought it!! 

Later that day, in a gallery, I saw abstract works by a very well-known South African artist, using...fluorescent colours!!!  Yeah!!

And today I got to try mine out!

Art Journal Entry. 21 June 2019.

Acrylic, permanent marker, pencil, collage. 

For my artwork today, I finished a commission I started last week. It's the view from a friend's back garden. Sort of. Enhanced. 

"View from a Zululand garden". Acrylic on panel. 

450 x 275mm.

I used mostly a palette knife for the painting. For the palm leaves I used a little flat nylon brush. It works very well. 

NGUNI at the TUGELA

I firstly have to thank local journalist/photographer, Larry Bentley, (find his Facebook photography page here) for his kind permission to use his photograph of Nguni drinking water at the Tugela, as a reference. I saw the picture in the newspaper and asked him for permission to paint it, after which he supplied me with the original on a disk.

I spent about a month on this one - MUCH less time than the previous BIG Nguni painting. :-) 

Here it is:

Nguni at the Tugela River

1500 x 900mm

Acrylic and Oil on Stretched Canvas 

Zululand and its People

Some of the typical scenes one comes accross in Zululand:  a basket seller, next to the road:

Basket Seller.

Acrylic and Oil on Stretched Canvas. 230 x 300mm

SOLD

We came accross this lady carrying her washing near Lake Sibaya, in Northern KwaZulu Natal: 

The Washing's Done.

Acrylic and Oil on Stretched Canvas.

230 x 300mm

SOLD

FORT NONGQAYI

This is a new card design I did of the local FORT. I did it in collage and mixed media (Modge Podge, ink, acrylic, home made rubber stamping) and had quite a lot of fun. The ink drawing I did a long time ago, for a commissioned letterhead. I printed it on transparency and it is fastened onto the mixed media background with bronze brads.

FORT NONGQAYI, Eshowe, KZN. Mixed media. 250 x160mm

Eshowe was the British military headquarters, as well as the capital of Zululand, after the Anglo-Zulu war of 1879. FORT NONGQAYI, the striking white, mud-brick, three- turreted fort was established in 1883 as the base for the most unusual peace-keeping force, called the Nongqayi (Mounted Police).
The territory used postage stamps of Great Britain and Natal overprinted "ZULULAND".

******************

The disadvantage of men not knowing the past is that they do not know the present. History is a hill or high point of vantage, from which alone men see the town in which they live or the age in which they are living.

G. K. Chesterson

Warm Autumn Days

The hot, humid days of summer are gone now. The sun shines warm and friendly and glistens bright on rainless clouds and sugarcane. This is the best time of year in Zululand. The (still) green outdoors beckons and that explains why I had to take a roundabout trip on the district roads surrounding our town after dropping off a parcel at a farm. The following three small watercolours are a result of that:

Canefield Contours near Vuma

Watercolour, 190 x135mm 

Matchstick Hill

Watercolour, 190 x 135mm

Farmhouse with Cane & Cabbage

Watercolour, 190 x 135 mm 

Two Completed Commissions

I am happy to have completed two commissions recently!

The first one was for a friend of mine, who has a Bed & Breakfast near Rustenburg. She has named it after a bird, the Southern Boubou, for its beautiful call. She wanted something half abstract, half realistic. It had to contain the elements that make her B&B special: the boubou (of course), the thorn trees, the African sunset and the magnificent nightsky.  After a number of preliminary digital compositions,  sketches, and finally a collage, we arrived at a concept that she liked.  

The painting has been finished for quite a while, but we were hoping to combine its delivery with a visit to her B&B. As that possibility faded, we finally sent it via courier, so here it is:

Acrylic and Oil on stretched Canvas - 1160 x 810mm.

The painting contains collage underneath the top coats of paint, so that lettering (of her B&B blurb) shows through in places. It has a very tactile surface and gold coloured paint has been used, especially near the borders and in the sky .  

The second commission was a repeat of a painting I had made some time ago. Although I offered several other compositions and suggestions, the client preferred the original composition. It is a scene of some Nguni at a waterhole, with the Ubombo mountain range of Zululand in the background. So, with a few minor changes, and a slight change in technique (more use of the palette knife), here is the final product:

     

Oil on artboard. 760 x 500mm.