Touw River

On Wednesday, as prepared to return to Somerset West from George I took some time to wander up the Half Collared Kingfisher trail to do a painting.  Actually I would have been happy to sit in the Winter sunshine and watch the cormorants working up and down the river.  But I found a pleasant view looking downstream from the lookout on the river-bank.  The forest glistened as the sun rose above the hills overlooking the river.  I took a video of the watercolour as I worked.  I am getting used to working around the camcorder.  So here we go:

The painting it 280x190mm on Arches Cold Pressed (300gm).

I am reading Nita Engle on how she creates forest and river reflections.  Soon I want to give her technique a whirl.

A new site

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Visit my gallery

at

SJQ Watercolour

This is the site I launched at my exhibition at the end of 2009

Quite how the two sites will interrelate is still under consideration

bridge on the Olifants river

So my short adventure drew to an end.  On the way back I was keen to stop in at Clanwilliam for coffee and a snack but chose instead to gone on further to the Algeria road to have a dip in the Olifants river.  The water was lovely and cool and I sat on a sand bank and painted this watercolour of bridge:

I was keen to get the water right which I think I have improved on.  The shapes in the river bank were MUCH more interesting than I have shown.  This is a kind of cross composition.  Definitely one for the studio.

And then it was on through the Swartland to home.

While I stayed with Basie and Annette we watched a discussion about poetry between Andre P Brink and Breyten Breytenbach, two giants of Afrikaans literature.  Andre Brink spoke with such heart about his love for poetry.  It was awe inspiring in a gentle ordinary kind of way.   I had been looking at the mountains all the through the Olifants valley and stopping to take photos.  And when I returned, on the road between Stellenbosch and Somerset West I was struck by the great beauty of our little corner of the Boland.    And I thought of the words of TS Elliot from “Little Gidding” :

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

watercolour down memory lane #2 – forest pool

Here is a painting of  a pool in Newlands forest that I did long ago.  I found these 6 versions, but there were more.  I was battling to show water and leaves and rocks.

version 2

Version 3 – here I got frustrated:

version 4 I like the saturated French Ultramarine in this one.

And here is version 5:

And here is version 6.  The previous versions were all 12 x 15 inches and now I decided the way forward was to go bigger (double size):

I did at least two more of these but I could not find them in my tidy up.  I think I painted on the other side.  I think there is progress but there is a lot of the same sort of stuff.  I remember sitting down to reflect on what was working and what was not – I think there are some lessons on the learning process here like Quantity has a Quality of its own and the need to look at the body of work.  This was a lot of work and I suppose I worked hard.  But painting never feels like hard work to me.  Which is the gift – I think.   I think talent takes a lot of work.