Malachite kingfisher

Things about this painting:

* I sold it a few weekends ago (yay!)

* It was painted on top of another picture I'd done earlier. I have a great fear of pristine surfaces. Go and look at this comic by Gingerhaze. And then go and read her entire tumblr, which to me is basically one great dramatic pileup of this:

* The style of this painting was inspired in part by the first Black Orchid graphic novel - the early scenes in the greenhouse are some of the most gorgeous images I have ever seen.

* Malachite kingfishers are among my favourite things. The second thing I drew when I began taking art classes, aged 9 or so, was a malachite kingfisher. (The first was a green pepper, halved.)

* They are much smaller than they look in pictures (malachite kingfishers, not green peppers). I've never seen a live one, sadly, but I saw a skin in the museum at the University of the Witwatersrand, and it was no bigger than a sparrow.

* Oh yeah, I've been working on and off in the museum at Wits, and if you're a fan of snakes, spiders, bugs, axolotls, or giant green iguanas that like hanging out on logs and watching people do aerobics (seriously) and if you'll be in Jo'burg any time between tomorrow and Sunday, you should attend this event.

* I know the last point has exactly nothing to do with my picture. But, the iguana! It really happened. I was coming in from lunch, and what appeared to be most of the museum staff were doing some sort of dance routine, and the iguana was on a log, sommer there on the floor, watching them. It was one of those great moments in life, the ones you know you'll treasure forever. And there was an enormous hi-fi, and an instructor, and I think some people had belly-dancing belts, the ones with the coins. And... and... the iguana. It was beautiful.

P.S. In case you're one of the 17 people in the world who haven't seen this clip yet, may I present another of those beautiful moments. I don't feel bad saying that, because the kid wasn't hurt. Just don't read the comments on YouTube. They are exactly as you would expect.

Busy busy busy

For the last while, when people ask me how I am, I've been replying "Busy". Then I hurriedly add, so as not to seem ungrateful, "Which is good. Lots of work, it's a good thing, when you're trying to make it, you know..." I generally tail off around there, uncomfortable with the entire concept.

On the one hand, I can't stand competitive busyness, the one-upmanship of how close you are to burnout and how very, very hard you work. Can you imagine what the reaction would be if you blithely said, by the water cooler perhaps, "Oh, I'm not particularly busy at the moment. Just taking it easy for a while." The fact is, in a work context especially, it's pretty much mandatory to be "busy" all the time, even when you aren't. And that offends my rebellious little soul.

On the other hand, though, "busy" is a one-word, catchall excuse that's invaluable in explaining yourself to neglected spouses, friends who've forgotten what you look like, clients who've been waiting months for their pictures, blog readers who haven't had a new post in weeks... you know. And when you are genuinely busy, everyone you know falls into one of those categories.

So I'm not entirely ready to give up going on about how busy I am. But the next time I'm being dreadfully, deliciously lazy, I'm planning to make a point of telling everyone about that too.

And this is what I've been busy with: a few of my favourites from that textbook/class notes project I've been working on for months. Over 200 ink drawings, most of them not nearly as detailed as these ones, though!

50 seconds of fame

If you are here in South Africa and you take a look at 50/50 this coming Monday night at 7:30 on SABC 2, you might just see me and my friend/doppelganger Daleen Roodt being interviewed at a book launch!

A lot of people haven't quite figured out that Daleen and I are actually two separate people, since we look kind of the same, wear the same sort of clothes (what this really means is that I am madly envious of her sense of style) and both did language degrees before going slightly insane and deciding to become freelance botanical artists.

For anyone who doesn't know me, here's how to tell us apart. It's quite easy actually: she'll be the one with long, wavy blonde hair wearing a really great dress with flowery patterns on it looking like a normal human being and I'll be the socially awkward one with a deer-in-the-headlights kind of expression who doesn't look anyone in the eye and talks nonsense in really bad Afrikaans.

Why am I encouraging people to watch this?

Bloom!

Sea Horse

A genuine seahorse on my blog! ...well, kind of. I sold this picture (I sold this picture!) to a little girl (her father paid for it), which I found extremely flattering, because if a small child likes something, she really likes it.

It's a small picture - maybe twice the size it's posted here - and it started as a simple watercolour doodle, playing with colours. I kept it for a year or so, not knowing what to do with it. I looked at it from every angle and eventually decided that it looked like a sea monster.

The surface was very rough, so my next step was to paint over it with a solution of gum arabic to prevent ink from bleeding. This made things difficult later, though. In retrospect I think gelatine would have been a better option. Then I drew in the "sea horse" with ink. The picture looked too empty.

Next I went all mixed-media and punched holes down the left side, stuck on those reinforcement-sticker things, and threaded them with shiny embroidery thread and beads. It still looked too empty. So then I decided to fill in the background with huge numbers of real sea creatures, past and present. Some of my favourites: the pansy shell, the Glaucus sea slug, the flying fish, and little Hallucigenia (the earlier interpretation, because it's more awesome) near the horse's eye.

All the background creatures were done in pencil, but the gum arabic made the surface so inimical to graphite that the process was more like engraving! It took ages, but the heavily textured end result made it worth it.

Happy St. Helena

On Saturday afternoon I returned from An Expedition. An Excavation. In fact, An Adventure. The reason why I put off posting about it until today is that on the way home the question came up of who, exactly, the patron saint of archaeologists is, and one of the awesome people I met on the trip later found out that the answer is Saint Helena. To our great joy we discovered that her feast day (in the Roman Catholic Church) was the 18th of August, just around the corner. So in her honour I decided to wait until today to publish my archaeological post.

Somehow, I managed to come back from the trip with lots of pretty pictures of birds and flowers, but none of people actually digging. Instead of posting my photos from previous years (which feels vaguely as if it should break some sort of Bloggers' Code of Ethics), I'll give you links. Go and look at this page for all the background on the dig and who we went with. Also take a look at this archaeology blog, which belongs to Lu, another of the awesome people I met on the trip. (Hi Lu!)

Here's our camp at night. What I'll miss most from this time is lying in my tent, listening to the night sounds: the hippos gronking in the river (that's my coinage for the noise they make, not some kind of obscure swear word), the Egyptian geese cackling, the haunting whoops of the hyaenas, and, every now and again and the best of all, the distant roars of the lions.

Isn't he gorgeous? I'm excessively pleased with the misty, hipstermatic effect in this photo. It comes from the golden light of early morning shining through the dust on our windscreen. I had to confess.

Elephants are the most photogenic of animals. Also the only ones you still need to be afraid of when you're in a car.

This is a Longbilled Crombec. He was so curious and unafraid.

Impala lilies! (Adenium multiflorum). I have them (only just) growing in pots at home. Here it's warmer and they grow wild, and all the camps have them planted in their gardens.

Nymphaea capensis, or Nymphaea nouchali var. capensis. People can't make up their minds. Either way it's our indigenous blue waterlily, closely related to the sacred blue waterlily of Egypt.

Look in the river for more elephants. Archaeology and Africa are similar in this: Traditionally, both have been wildly romanticised. Now, more often, you see people try very hard to dissociate from the traditional stereotypes of romance and adventure. It's not really like that, we say. It's actually boring to live here, to do this. I'm a serious person, take me seriously. And yet the romance, the adventure, are still there.

I mean, just look at it!

Stakeout!

So... the other evening I was sitting at the computer when my husband came home, said hello, wandered off to the kitchen, made himself tea, came back, and said "There are literally 11 police cars parked outside."

.

.

.

I think this particularly dramatic story needs to be told in the form of a, well, drama, and so from this point it will be.

ME: Literally as in "I literally died laughing" or as in literally literally?
HUSBAND: Literally. I counted.
ME: What?

ME peers out of the window. There is a police car. ME walks over to MOTHER.

ME: Mother, Husband says there are 11 police cars in the road outside. He counted.
MOTHER: Let's go outside and look!
ME: Are you mad?

We walk all around the house, peering out of windows.

ME: Let's go outside and look!
MOTHER: OK!

We open the back door, making sure that the dog doesn't get out, and creep round the side of the house. There are indeed a lot of police cars in the road. There are also heavily armed silhouettes standing in the bushes in front of the house.

HEAVILY ARMED SILHOUETTE: Hello?
MOTHER AND ME: Hello?
HEAVILY ARMED SILHOUETTE: Hello?
ME: Sorry, can you tell us what's going on?
HEAVILY ARMED SILHOUETTE: We're the police.
ME: Yes, um... what's happening?
COP: We're looking for a suspect.

Points towards a house. Happily, not our house.

ME: Thanks. Well... erm... I guess we'll go back inside now...
COP: I think that would be a good idea.

We slink back indoors.

And that was basically it. The cop cars stayed where they were for a couple of hours while we tiptoed around our house with most of the lights off, trying to get hold of my father and tell him to come home by the other road, and then they quietly drove away. We have no idea what happened, whether they got the suspect, who it was, what they did, or anything else. I just need to add two important things:

One, this is mainly for my international readers: Nothing like this has ever happened to me before! It was a really dramatic occurrence, particularly because it was so unusual.

And two, dear polite cop silhouetted in the bushes: Thank you for not shooting at my mom and me when we loomed out at you from the darkness. I would totally have shot me if I had been you. And much gratitude and support to all our police officers - your job is dangerous, difficult and disgustingly underpaid. And all the cops I've interacted with have been sweet, lovely people (see above). So yeah, thanks!

Sometimes,

nothing much interesting happens for months on end.

Other times, you get a rock concert and a stakeout in the same day.

Fanart, sorta

Somewhat obscure and oblique fanart. I get very oblique when I'm at my most fangirly, to try and protect my dignity.

This is part of my ongoing attempt to learn to draw people properly. I started with the quote underneath. It took me ages to get the lines perfectly misaligned, by feeding the page into an old typewriter at a slightly different angle for each line. I discovered that the typewriter has a setting where it doesn't use the ink ribbon. I'm not sure what it's for - possibly cleaning the keys - but I used it for the last line, where it produced an attractive blind-embossed effect. Of course the scanner didn't approve of that at all, and I spent hours on GIMP with the clone tool, trying to recreate the letters.

After the words were typed I drew in the figure. Originally the plan was to colour it and go mad with ink and so on, but now I like it so much that I'm afraid to touch it again. I figured that if I scanned it in and posted it it would gain some sort of permanence, so if I mess it up completely after this it's not a total waste.

Out of the attic: That thing you did in primary school

No, not the time you caught an outsized locust and kept it in your uniform dress pocket, so that when you had to say goodbye to the deputy principal who was moving to another school, you tried to shake hands with him using your left hand, because your right hand was fully occupied preventing the monster insect from escaping and jumping all over him. Oh wait, that wasn't you.
That was me...

No, I'm talking about that thing with the wax crayons, where you fill in the whole page with brightly coloured crayons, then cover it in black crayon and scratch through the layers to make your picture. Well, you know what?

Crayons suck.

While for the most part growing up tends not to be as great as we think it'll be (mainly, I think, because kids are never really taught to make meaningful choices, so as adults we just kind of drift into things), we do learn certain liberating truths, and this is one of the best: The art materials they give to kids are really horrible. The paints, the brushes, the coloured pencils, the crayons, all might as well have been specially designed to make us think we were no good at art. Those of us who persevered, learned something wonderful: out there, in the non-kid world, are proper paints. Proper brushes. Coloured pencils that actually leave a mark on the paper. And... no, not crayons. As far as I know, crayons pretty much always suck. But there's something much, much better - oil pastels!

So, if you're an adult and you don't think you're any good at art, try this: Go to an art supply store. Buy a box of oil pastels, or coloured pencils, or watercolour or oil paints and a brush or two. But here's the difficult part: get the most expensive brand of whatever medium you choose. Your well-behaved self will try to tell you that you simply can't. Don't listen to it. You're all grown up, you've probably blown more money than this on a haircut or a restaurant meal. You have no idea what difference quality makes, and here's the thing: it probably makes a bigger difference to a learning artist than to an experienced one. Picasso could create a masterpiece with one scratchy pencil, but bad materials quite likely taught you, way too young, that you're not an artist. Treat yourself to one box of really good oil pastels.

Now go home and play with them.