HIBISCUS ON LANA VANGUARD

I have now finished my second floral watercolour on Lana Vanguard surface of two hibiscus blooms. I photographed these in a garden in Port Elizabeth when I was visiting friends who have a second home there and they took me on a wonderful sketching tour of South Africa back in 2007. I had bluebird hibiscus in my garden at Cherry trees with many a photograph of the glorious blooms in my archives, but I wanted a contrast with the blue of the iris I have already painted in this trio.


Here is photo of early stages of the painting:







Thought you'd like to see an early closeup as well, so you can see the wonderful effect this slippery surface has on the many watercolour washes:








Finally, here is the completed work 12" x 16" to go in a 16" x 20" frame with nice wide ivory mount:





Now to number three - possibly the South African trip is inspiring me because I'm thinking of creating a very large strelizia from a watercolour I painted in my Saunders Waterford HP pad
in the garden in Port Elizabeth:








Here I am working on some kafferboom we picked from a tree just outside the bungalow where I was staying. When I painting the strelizia I picked one bloom but kept dashing back to the front garden to see how the leaves grew:




Ah! memories!

EASTERN OPEN

I have now finished my second piece from my travels for the Eastern Open and my is it different from the image I posted a few days ago!!! I've removed the images of the cave drawings I saw in the Cederberg Mountains as I felt they made the composition a bit messy. Instead, I concentrated on the vastness of the areas we drove through on long straight roads. So I had to have an idea for the bottom centre in place of some of the cave figure drawings, so I came up with a different type of Proteus I had found in Kirstenboch Botanical Gardens near Cape Town.

I developed Table Mountain in the back (ie the top) and decided on only one Artisian Well.

I think it makes a good pair with the Amsterdam Tulips.

PROTEUS FLOWERS IN SOUTH AFRICA

Needing a second artwork to pair with the TULIPS IN AMSTERDAM, I of course turned to my travels and sketches. I was looking for a similar idea of a flower particular to a country and I decided upon PROTEUS FLOWERS I had painted whilst on my 5 week SOUTH AFRICA trip in 2007.

I squirted large blobs of colours directly from large tubes/pots of ivory, apricot, Naphthol red (very orangy colour) and burnt umber on the 16" x 16" canvas and dragged them down and across to create a thick warm textured, coloured background - like this

Then whilst the paint was wet, I cut into the thick paint with the edge of a palette knife to place the proteus flowers, an African lady, shape of Table Mountain and some figures from my cave drawing sketches.

Then I developed them all and added Artisian Wells and some greenery.
This is as far as I have got to date but have plenty of ideas, such as placing another bloom central bottom in place of the cave figures which should improve the composition and developing the Table Mountain reflection and city buildings more. I had originally planned the background to be the colour of the rock in the Cederberg Mountains but it has somehow gone a bit pink, so I need to work on that. Wish there was room for some ostriches or penguins I sketched, but I think it will make it too cluttered.

Your thoughts would be welcome, but bear in mind it has a long way to go before I can say 'finished'.

ANOTHER DIP INTO MY SOUTH AFRICA SKETCHBOOK

This time I thought I'd post some of the scenery on our 3,000 mile trip. They are somewhat out of order though as the first one of Gariep Dam is on the Freestate and Eastern Cape border on our way back to Richard and Jenny's home on the south coast. The colours were so beautiful and soft as we came over the hill and this enormous dam came into our view.

The next double spread in my sketchbook is of our visit to the Kimberly Diamond mine. They still have the engines and gantry and a full village has been erected nearby including the restored buildings showing the times when the mine was hand dug in 1870s onwards. I got the view over the hole as they have erected a large extension off the tourist hall you can walk along - and it seems to sway!!!!

No 3 today is of my (I feel rather successful) sketch of Table Mountain. We had been up the cable car that morning and Richard drove us out of the city and round to the beach to look back across the water.