24 Jun 2011 Leave a comment
This Sunday we leave for Grahamstown to take my work to the Com/Mix exhibition. I spent yesterday packing my dolls and their glass bottles into heavily padded boxes. For some reason this makes me feel ridiculously pleased with myself 🙂
I still have to pack the framed pictures and oh! Did I mention that the coloured versions of my Antjie Donder and Mevrou Karwatz drawings came out looking fanTAStic? So good that I wish I had them framed. Cant wait to get there to see everyone else’s work .
22 Jun 2011 8 Comments
in Myself
Last night was the longest night, deep in the heart of winter. It was a bad one for me. I found myself lying awake and slipping down the worry slope. What was I thinking, giving up my full time job and salary? What am I doing, going off to Grahamstown on an expensive trip? The more I tried to sleep, the more that voice in my head went on and on.
Eventually I got up, and lit a fire in our new fireplace. At midnight. In the middle of winter. The worry voice just faded away.
19 Jun 2011 7 Comments
in 2 Work in progress, All my drawings, stories Tags: drawing
There are worse things than spending a rainy winters morning drawing while listening to an audiobook. I had fun with this drawing too, although it was more difficult choosing the colours for this witch. She is more civilized than Antjie Donder, and needed colder colours.
I cant wait to see these drawings printed. I’m planning to sell digital prints of both the black and white and colour versions at the Grahamstown exhibition. One more week before we leave so I’ll have to get moving if I want to get these printed in time!
Here are some details. The crows were supposed to be the indigenous “Wit Bors Kraai” we get here in South Africa. But apart from not having white breasts, these birds are not nearly bulky enough to be the indigenous kind. I think these crows come from Europe, like their mistress.
I did manage to work in some roses into the drawing. The drawing is based on a story called “Thorn Rose”, so the roses are quite important. Roses and thorns are important, I should say!
18 Jun 2011 11 Comments
in 2 Work in progress, All my drawings, stories Tags: drawing
I finally got round to adding colour to my Antjie Donder drawing. I wanted to use a method similar to a colour lino-cut print; layers of colour overlapping, with the gaps in one colour revealing the colour beneath.
I put a “multiply” blending mode on the linework layer to knock out the white areas but keep the black line. Then I created 10 solid colour layers under it, and used layer masks to hide each layer. Then, I painted with white and black on the layer masks until the whole image was filled with colour. Some of the top layers are partly translucent. I discovered a useful keyboard short-cut: “X” while using the brush swops foreground and background colours. This is great when working on the layer masks because it means you can switch between black and white while you paint.
Here is the (possibly) final coloured version:
Some details:
09 Jun 2011 3 Comments
in 1 My books, 2 Work in progress, All my drawings, books, stories
I’m about to publish my collection of short stories as an ebook. It’s been a very interesting process so far, lots to learn. I’ve just completed the cover designs. The stories will be available as bundles of three or four stories each, or you can buy the full collection that includes illustrations.
Designing ebook covers has some specific challenges as they need to read clearly at thumbnail size and also in grayscale , to look good to potential buyers browsing for books on their Kindles.
Here is the cover for the first bundle:
I like the way they look as a set. Here are the rest:
30 May 2011 4 Comments
in All my drawings, Colour, stories
I’ve managed to add colour to the Nameless Girl’s story that I’m working on for the Co/Mix show. They came out rather different from one another, but still intriguing. Here is the first one:
And the second one:
22 May 2011 1 Comment
in All my drawings, Inspiration, stories
Another drawing for COMIX. This one is based on the doll called Mevrou Karwats. In the story I wrote to go with the doll, she has a different name: Mrs Muller. I wonder which one suits her best. Here is the first draft of the drawing in pencil:
Here are the first few paragraphs of her story, which is called “Thorn Rose”:
“It had taken her long enough to ring the doorbell. Now Tanya stood hesitating, half hoping that no one was at home. Just as she was about to run back down the hallway to where the lift still stood open, the doorknob turned and the door opened a hand’s breadth. Then it closed, a chain rattled, and the door opened.
Tanya stared. This was the closest she had ever been to Mrs Muller. She could only just make out the old woman’s face in the shadowed doorway. Light from the hallway glinted in her large, heavily lidded eyes. Her dark eyebrows were drawn down in a frown. Tanya could feel the carefully rehearsed words begin to drain away. She took a deep breath:
“Greetings, wise woman. I come to consult you in your wisdom on a matter of great importance”.
She was sure those were the right words. It was important to be polite when speaking to a witch. And Mrs Muller was a witch, no matter what everyone else said.
Mrs. Muller’s eyebrows lifted in surprise.
“A child.” Her voice was harsh with a flat, foreign accent. “A child who wishes to consult.”
“Yes, please” said Tanya.
She was relieved. Mrs. Muller must be a witch after all, if she understood the ritual greeting. It wasn’t just her imagination. You could see she was a witch. Those long, grey dresses with the high collars that buttoned up right under her chin and the way she wore her hair, scraped back from her face and coiled up in a hairnet. And then there were the black birds that flew in and out of her windows of he flat.”
And here is Mrs Muller / Karwats as a doll:
18 May 2011 7 Comments
in 2 Work in progress, All my drawings, stories Tags: drawing
Oof. I’ve finished my Antjie Donder drawing. It’s too large to fit onto my scanner, so I had to stitch it together in Photoshop. I love detail when drawing, but fiddling with digital details just gives me the horries.
I got some suggestions for what to put into Antjie’s pocket in my last post. It turns out that she keeps a candle, some pencils, and what is probably a little bottle of Kloktoring in her pocket.
This drawing has been in my head for years. The imagined drawing generated a story, a doll and finally, the drawing itself.
03 May 2011 Leave a comment
in 2 Work in progress, All my drawings, stories
As I explained in a previous post, the work I’m doing for the Comix show involves written stories, dolls and drawings. In some cases the story came first, in others the doll did. Antjie Donder came to life first as a doll, and then I created a story for her. Here she is as a doll:
In the story she introduces some chaos into the life of a lonely little girl called Lauren. A bit like the “cat in the hat”, which I used to thoroughly scare me. Here is an extract from “Chasing Frogs” in which Lauren first sees Antjie Donder coming down the road pushing her trolley:
Lauren climbed onto the couch and opened the window. She pushed her face against the burglar bars. The voice was coming closer. There was a noise like someone shaking a cutlery drawer and the tinny thumping of a small radio. Somebody was singing:
“My naam is Antjie Donder, Antjie, Antjie Donder”
First came a shopping trolley, filled to overflowing with bags, newspapers and various bits of junk. Behind the trolley was a woman,broad as an oak tree and dressed in an ancient ball gown that strained across her chest and shoulders. Layers of plastic sheeting was wrapped around her waist. She sang as she came.
“Antie, Antjie Donder!”
She stopped when she was level with Lauren’s window and switched off the hissing radio. Lauren looked down at her in fascination. She had never seen anyone like this before. The woman’s face was as brown as leather and looked as tough as an old shoe. She had a great beak of a nose and her hair stood away from her head in coils like knotted horns. She looked up at Lauren and smiled.
“Good morning, Madam! Got any broken things for me? Toys? Electric?”
Lauren laughed. “No, I’m not the Madam!”
“So where’s the Madam, then?”
Oops, thought Lauren. Not supposed to speak to strangers. But what now? It would be rude not to respond.
“My mother is not home.”
The woman smiled. She turned her head a little, peering past her hooked nose like bird looking at a worm. “Not home? That’s sad.”
Antjie’s outfit changed quite a bit from her initial doll form, to the story, to the drawing which I just started today. Somehow what is possible to create on small-scale in scraps of fabric is different from what works in words, and needs even more adjustments when you turn it into lines on paper:
Looking at it now, I think I need to exaggerate her nose a bit more. I want it to look like a hatchet blade. Her hands also look far too genteel. I need to make them rougher. Maybe it’s the nails that are the problem… too manicured:
And that’s all for now 🙂
09 Apr 2011 1 Comment
in Myself
Today we drove past Wynberg Place, where we used to live. It’s been about a week since we moved out – and in that time, the new tenants have made some changes. They ripped out most of the plants in the garden I made there, including the bougainvillea that had grown all the way up the front of the house.
I was proud of that bougainvillea!
Here it is when it first began growing, when it was just over a meter tall:
And here it is about two years later – stretching up all the way past the second floor window:
It made a frame for the front door:
And here is the view from the kitchen window:
I’m not as sad as I thought I would be, but it is difficult to understand. They could just have trimmed it back a little, if it was in the way! Sigh.
30 Jan 2011 Leave a comment
We went to the Mardi Gras carnival on Saturday night. Has it really been a year since the last one? It’s great – warm summer evening, kids running around, loud techno music, the clanking and churning of the rides, the people screaming, and above all the coloured lights flashing and strobing everywhere.
These pictures came out great, blurs and all. I’m still not brave enough to take my big camera to events like this, but the cell phone has its uses…
The Ferris wheel was smaller this year:
Coloured lights and the strange imagery: More
12 Nov 2010 3 Comments
in Myself
I’ve been helping my father to create two ponds in his garden. The ponds are on either side of the path leading to the front gate. We started with a rough sketch. :
Then the digging began:
The blue pipes were put in to make it possible to connect the ponds to a filter, if my father ever decides to have one put in. At this stage, the ponds looked very like two graves, although a neighbour joked that he thought we were creating moats to keep the moles out of the lawn 🙂 More
Masha du Toit 
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