One of my optometrist clients requested a poster to advertise three different types of lenses: Single vision  – one prescription covering the whole lens; bifocals - you know the type of specs associated with grannies and grand pas; and multifocals – the kind you might need in the office – offering a range of focal areas [...]

If you got a puppy for Christmas and are now regretting the midnight pee runs, imagine if you had suffered a mad moment and purchased a yeti? Massive hairballs under the sofa and lots of broken furniture await you in 2013…. How do you toilet train a yeti? Any suggestions?  

This cartoon was created for my optometrist clients quite a few years ago…. The idea was that Santa needed to keep his eyes in good health or else he might not be able to distinguish the Naughty list from the Nice list. Naughty or Nice is a relatively old-fashioned concept in this age of wimpy [...]

I was at the zoo, drawing the elephant family and they weren’t taking it lying down. In fact, once you try to pin down a pose you realise that these supposedly slow giants, move all the time, and not necessarily slowly. This was demonstrated recently when an elephant in the Kruger National Park objected to the proximity [...]

I previously posted about my struggle to loosen up and throw paint around. It seems like I used to be able to go wild. Going through a stack of old work, I found these loose watercolour studies from an Art College assignment. At the time the college was spread out all over Johannesburg in different buildings. The [...]

Taking part in the Santa’s shoebox charity drive is one of the most rewarding annual activities we do as a family. The santa’s shoebox charity collects donated boxes of essentials and treats for over 100 000 underprivileged babies, children and teens across South Africa. They are super organised and very careful that each child gets [...]

Monkey doodle. He is a bit naf, but he has a sweet face. As opposed to this chap who is really not behaving well….

  Whenever I have to wait for something, I end up doodling. But when a sketchbook is not at hand, I doodle on any handy piece of paper. Which usually means that I stuff the paper into whichever bag I happen to be carrying and it sits there un-loved and unnoticed until I do a [...]

In an earlier post I described the team of tiny netball players who named themselves “the Wicked Witches”. One of the team members just happens to be the daughter of a preparatory school librarian. Her mother is one of those people whose looks belie their character. She LOOKS like a librarian. She breathes flames and shoots [...]

It has been an interesting 24 hours… School started for the final semester of the year, and with it, a borderline insane level of activity. Day Two brought the news that the Grade 11 group would be starting to take over from the Grade 12 group as they have final exams looming. First on the [...]

  In my previous post I described the beginnings of this very satisfying project. Here is the final painting. The border was by far the most challenging and rewarding part of the project. In order to get a sketchy feel to the critters on the “pages” I decided that black would be too harsh, so opted [...]

 I was asked by Lapalala Wilderness School to create a map for display at the school. Their old one was created back in the year of the Rinderpest (or thereabouts) and was looking decidedly weather-worn. I would have a week in residence at the reserve to complete the painting, as it was easier (and nicer) than [...]

  Youth Day (June 16) and Mandela Day (July 18) this year were two days spent with the Heronbridge College community outreach programme, building a preschool in the Diepsloot informal settlement north of Johannesburg. The teacher at the preschool is a graduate of the HeronBridge Training and Resource Centre, a much-needed pre-school teacher training programme, aimed at uplifting [...]

    Changing the whole look and feel of a wine label is akin to re-branding a company. In the case of the Painted Wolf Wines’ most popular range, it was a result of feedback from distributors around the world who felt that the old labels were just not friendly enough. And I would have [...]

One of my daughters coached a grade 1&2 netball teams as part of a school holiday programme at school. It’s the funniest thing to see an extraordinarily tall teen surrounded by these tiny girls, it looks like a giraffe being attacked by a whole tribe of pygmies. The theme of the week was ‘fairy tales’ and [...]

  I have long been fascinated by the strange colours that have emerged in my children’s eyes. They have a blue-eyed father and a weirdly changing grey/green/blue-eyed mother (so I’ve been told, I have no idea as I cannot see them). The weird seems to have won, but in a different way in each child. [...]

I was recently asked to be the designer for Painted Wolf Wines.  My little heart went “wheeeeee!” and the designy side of me started salivating. Not because it’s wine, although they do make some very delicious tipples. I was excited about the whole package. It’s always brilliant to work with people who think the same way [...]

I am climbing in with a few opinions on the recent furore over the Trump offspring, their manly Big game hunt in Africa and their ensuing defense of their actions. They are not apologising. In fact the twitter-verse is full of Donald jr’s defensive responses to public opinion. Here are some of his prime justifications: [...]

One of the things I like about HeronBridge College is that they are building traditions as they go along. The school has been in existence for 12 years and every year, something new becomes part of the rich tapestry of the HeronBridge experience.  A couple of years ago, it was decided that the leaders in [...]

Part of the plan for this holiday was that my sister and I would have some time to paint together.  I do people and animals. She is a dab hand at very loose watercolour landscapes. Problem! (for me) Her approach is to blithely throw paint on wet watercolour paper and develop the results. It is [...]

Another victim for my holiday drawing was my daughter. Her chosen pasttime while being subjected to the torture of the pencil was to paint her fingernails, which is why I didn’t even bother drawing her hands. The wind had picked up as we were sitting at a table outside and it made the sitting quite [...]

moving day!

If  you find this blog and go “what the heck, this person has fallen off the planet” because there are no more posts – please know that you can find this blog and soon other stuff on my new personal website.

Which can be found here

Come and see what’s new!

In my previous post, I talked about designing the backdrop for the school play which takes place in a circus.

After a rather slow start, we got our 2m x 4m canvas backdrops stretched and primed. The designs were scaled up and sketched onto the canvasses, before colour washes were applied to add some zing where the painting wasn’t perfect.

Of  course, with the teenage cohorts assisting – chaos and mayhem broke out all over the place!

paintbrush wars break out when painting with teenagers!

Apart from the paintbrush wars, work continued well, but was cut short by a month long holiday imposed because of our country hosting the Soccer World Cup. This meant taking a few whole days out to go back to school and paint. Not a bad situation as it would eliminate all the rather self involved acting bods who would come and watch us in their breaks and ask inane questions like: “Shouldn’t the tiger be orange?” Hard not to sarcastically answer: “Its a pretend tiger, sweetie. If we had real tigers, seals and elephants, PETA would be camped outside the building“

Thankfully, my dedicated team turned up for two full days during the vacation to complete the panels. Thanks guys (and random parents) your support and hard work was appreciated!

Four days after returning to school, the first performance was staged, so the first day back at school was a chaotic blend of construction, final adjustments and on my part, a lot of ladder climbing and serious muscle work.

I had taken the day off work to just “lend a hand” and as it turned out it was totally essential. Every one of the staff involved were up to their eyeballs in other stuff, so it became my responsibility to get the canvasses from their storage space and put into place.

Some strong armed help was briefly provided by an ex student before he got whisked off to fix the sound equipment, the student teacher assigned to me is scared of heights, so I was scaling great heights behind the scenes to lash the canvases to the one and only load bearing beam at the back of the stage.

The final effect was quite pleasing. Making the decision to keep the palette limited was a good one. With all the actors on stage, they blended in more and had the effect of being more like posters a la Barnum and Bailey.