Art from the South of Africa

In one of her first "Sunday in the Art Room" posts, Nicole wrote about some pieces of art she has that are from African countries . So today I want to show you a few pieces of art that my daughter brought back from South Africa and Malawi, a country in southeastern Africa.

The mugs on top are from South Africa. Through UC Davis, Kaefer did an internship in Cape Town in 2018. There she found the two mugs on the left - the elephant one is hers, the girafe one is mine. Both are broken, unfortunately, and when she moved to Germany she left the elephant mug for me. Both mugs now house my watercolor brushes and charcoal and graphite pencils. The mug on the right she bought for me in 2024 when she returned to Cape Town for an epidemiology conference. This one I use for my morning coffee - I am very careful with it because I don't want it to break as well.

The fabric elephant is also from South Africa. I have always loved the joyful colors of fabrics from African countries - the colors are actually a bit more brilliant in real life than in the photo. It usually sits right next to the mugs on my lazy Susan so that it doesn't feel lonely...

Art can be practical as you can see here:

Akshar is a heavy duty cement manufactured by Shayona Cement, Malawi's largest local cement manufacturer. Cement is filled into very strong sacks  and bags, and from these shopping bags are made with a strip of beautifully patterned fabric on top. I use this bag for my weekly shopping trips to Trader Joe's and as a you would expect from a cement bag, it can carry a lot. Recycling at its best!

But Kaefer also brought some paintings from Malawi where she goes every year for work for a couple weeks. This is one she gifted to us and I like it so much. She has three more in her home in Germany, one from the same artist as the one above. Unfortunately I wasn't able to find any information about the artist. Here are Kaefer's paintings, decorating her living room and kitchen.

All of these beautiful or practical pieces are for SITAR.

Another Portrait Challenge

 

After a week of "hiding" I'm back to blogging. After the murder of Alex Pretti I didn't feel like writing any posts at all. I was sickened, sad, angry, mad as hell - all at the same time. I don't know how you deal with all of what is happening in our country right now; I have a hard time with it. Long walks help, talking with friends, watching German movies, escaping into books.

Thankfully Nicole's new challenge was looming just around the corner and up to then I had successfully procrastinated. No more! It was the most welcome escape.

I had decided to try my portrait painting "skills" with the help of a photo of my daughter that I took during her stay with us in June of last year.

On Gene's blog and then on Nicole's I had read about a tracing method using oil pastels and I wanted to try it out. Wow, it works like a charm!

Unfortunately I didn't take a picture what the traced face looked like. Like with the self-portrait challenge I used watercolors again. It's a medium that I don't "master" at all, but I find it so fascinating. If I don't practice it, I will never learn it. That includes painting something that is not necessarily "good" or "pretty" or whatever word you want to attribute to it. There are only two progress photos.

The ugly stage:

This was the moment that I stepped away from it. How do you eliminate those lines and rough edges? How do you control the amount of water? Practice practice practice...

Better:

Those eye lashes are for real! Look at the photo - she is so lucky to have these long and dense lashes. She never uses mascara (like her mom, she doesn't use any make up except for a lipstick every now and then) since they always look so beautiful. She got these from her dad - it was one of the first things I noticed about him when we had our first cup of coffee together (thanks HP for those coffee corners).

Finally I thought I was done. I was afraid to ruin it if I would "doctor" it more. I'm not too unhappy with it. Here it is, joining FFO.

Nicole, thank you for this new challenge. It took me several days to paint, it was frustrating and fun at the same time. I'm glad that I did it even though there was a time in between when I was tempted to throw my watercolors and brushes out the window. Good thing I didn't!

Hummingbird Woman

 

Melanie Rivers, Dance of the Dragonfly

In 2024 I did a few classes of the Art Soul Gathering. One of them was by Melanie Rivers, an Indigenous mixed media artist from the Squamish First Nation in Vancouver, Canada. Many of you probably know her and her beautiful art. This class was called "Dance of the Dragonfly" where she showed how to create the portrait you can see above.

She used this photo as a reference:

I tried to create a textured background on a wood panel, using some paper package filling and also scribbled in the gesso. Then I traced the woman and painted with acrylic paints. I'm not super happy with it, but also not unhappy. Kind of neutral. Since I didn't have a dragonfly image and I really like hummingbirds, I decided to use the image of a hummingbird that I had found in a magazine. Instead of "Dance of the Dragonfly" I called her "Hummingbird Woman".

This is for Nicole's Friday Face Off.

I apologize for not commenting very much on your blogs at the moment. I got another big order that I hope to wrap up this weekend. Hopefully, after that I will have more time.

At 66, Life is just Beginning

 

Last week I turned 66 - in German we would say this is a Schnapszahl ("liquor number" meaning repdigit). There is a song by Austrian singer Udo Jürgens called "Mit 66 Jahren" (at 66 years) and one line goes "Mit 66 Jahren, da fängt das Leben an" (at 66, life is just beginning) - I take that!

I met with my good friend Lyz and we walked around the lake. The weather was mild and sunny and this was the first time in months that we walked together again, since Lyz had had knee surgery last year. We both enjoyed it so much to be able to walk together again, albeit slowly. But who cares? We had so much to catch up on anyway.

This Great Egret perched right on top of this tree and was observing his surroundings - he must have had a great view from up there.

Afterwards we went for lunch to a Mediterranean restaurant - I had half a chicken fajita wrap and sweet potato fries. It was so good.

Lyz is a quilter and she had made these beautiful placemats for me. They are now sitting on our dinner table and are such happy color spots.

In the evening, the Geek and I had some bubbly - that's how we celebrate our birthdays. This is for Bleubeard and Elizabeth's T Tuesday.

My birthday wish was to have dinner with our good friends Bim and Patti - you have met them on this blog several times. They came on Saturday evening for cheese fondue. Only a week before they had returned from their annual vacation in Hawai'i and they had brought us wonderful Hawai'ian peaberry coffee. This coffee is so good, smooth and full of flavor.

On top of that, they gave me this photo that Bim had taken on Quadra Island, BC several years ago. Both Patti and I love rock cairns. I put it in a frame and it is now sitting on my work table in my studio.

Practicing Watercolor

 

Watercolor is a medium I simply love and learn to work with - very slowly. I probably should practice way more often and regularly, but I only have so much time. Whenever I can I do sit down and play with my watercolors.

I remember loving watercolors in school (many decades ago), but I never learned how to use them correctly - if there is something like "correctly". Maybe I should use the term "creatively". Beside the student grade watercolor I had in high school I never owned "real" watercolors until a few years ago.

I started out with watercolor pencils and watercolor crayons.

Although I did enjoy them, I missed the "flowing" of the colors with the water. So my first set was a travel set of pan watercolors by Winsor & Newton. You can see how heavily I used some of those colors.

Very soon I wanted a bigger set and thanks to my tutoring money I was able to afford one. This is also from Winsor & Newton.

I used and still use this set a lot. I learned to mix colors which I throroughly enjoy. You can also easily see which colors I feel drawn to - the reds and the earth tones.

After a while I became very curious what the difference was to more professional colors. Eventually all of my tutoring money went (and still goes) into art supplies, mainly those more expensive watercolors (thank you, students of German!).

This set contains professional watercolors by Winsor & Newton plus some metallic ones, also W&N.

Beautiful colors, but so far I haven't used them too often. However, they do make a difference to the "regular" pans.

My latest set is from Sennelier. Oh my word. These are honey-based watercolors from France and they are - yummy. I don't have a different word. Buttery and brilliant. I'm completely taken by them.

When Karen Abend offered a Sketchbook Revival get together with Kimberly Hyndman about "Delightful Doors in Ink and Watercolor" I signed up. Since I didn't have too much time, I only did one of the doors (instead of three), but I enjoyed it so very much. I mixed the bricks and door frame with Payne's Grey and Ultramarine Blue and the door with Alizarin Crimson and Burnt Sienna. I probably could have done better, but I'm quite content with my painting.

And I already have a new set of watercolors I want to try - a Schmincke set, a German company. And better paper. More tutoring...

I'm joining Nicole's Sunday in the Art Room.

Scenic Byway

 

While hiking in Arches (more than a year ago, can you imagine?), we had this fantastic view from one of the trails to the area beyond Arches where the fog was still hanging out for a bit longer. After we had left Arches it was still light and we decided to take UT 128 that takes you in that area. We had remembered it from several years back and were eager to drive along here again.

It is marked as a scenic byway which is quite an understatement. It is breathtaking and there was almost no trafiic.

The road follows the Colorado River which has cut deep into the rock. There are mesas and some buttes with steep cliffs and the incredible red rock that gives so much character to this landscape.

Every now and then we stopped by the side of the road just to marvel at this amazing scenery. I also wanted to look at the plants that I found quite fascinating (and I still don't know what they are).

The reflections of the rock in the Colorado were so beautiful.

How can you not feel small and insignificant in the presence of these giants?

It was getting late and the light ws waning, so we decided to turn around at this point and drive back to Moab. I think this was the exact same spot where we turned around several years earlier.

With the sun in the West, the rocks had lost much of their light and color. It was a very different experience driving back, but still exciting. I don't think we will ever tire of this desert landscape - it is written across my heart.

Back in Moab we drove directly to the Moab Diner for a delicious dinner. After a long day of hiking we were tired and hungry. Here is my contribution to Nicole's Friday Face Off - quite disheveled.

A Room of Her Own

 

Nicole has a wonderful new challenge called Sunday in the Art Room. While I may not be able to join every week, I will try to do so as often as possible. This week she starts off with showing our art space.

When we bought our current home almost 14 years ago, I was very excited because I would finally get my own room. Before that I was "arting" on the dinner table while we always had our meals in the kitchen - that kitchen was big enough for that. Only when we had guests would I pack away everything. But now I have my own room which we call the "studio", and most of the time it's a big mess. The photo above was taken a few years ago, but not much has changed since then. It's probably even messier now.

The window faces South and in the winter the sun shines right in, so I got a few curtains from my favorite Swedish retailer. They are light and transparent, and the sun is no longer shining right in my face.

The following photo I took from outside looking into the room - you can see the tree reflections. The two big boxes on the ground in the left corner are our grab-and-go boxes. The book you can see in the upper one is the most beloved children's book of both my brother and myself when we were kids, but also of my daughter. She was the one who requested that we put it in the grab-and-go box.

The book shelves mostly hold art, garden and nature books. I have put both mine and other people's artwork up there as well.

Just a couple weeks ago I did organize some of the mess on my work table. I placed the containers with my brushes, pens etc. on a lazy susan with my Talavera Frida catrina in the middle. 

On a different note. I don't know how you feel about the recent events in Minneapolis, but I am so furious that we spontaneously decided to join today's protest in downtown. This sign made by one of my German friends says it all: