Light is Sweet October covers some high watercolour activity, some merch and some great news.  As you may expect from a two-month edition, it is full.

There are a couple of mega-news items (remember the cliff-hangers from the last edition?).

Well here is the first one:

The corporate gift version of the 2025 Fine Art Watercolour Calendar is on its way to the recipients. This is my fifth annual calendar. As I review my watercolours of the last decade I realise I have produced some of my best work ever in 2024.

Drop me a comment or send me an email if you are interested in a calendar as a gift from your company. These calendars get great feedback from recipients.

And remember: The bottle of whiskey or smartly packaged wine is gone within a month. But with this calendar, each month there is a new Fine Art Watercolour Print. And right there, associated with this positive feeling, is your company logo.

You can click on the button below to order your calendar. I have made all orders for local collection so please drop me a note to arrange delivery options

And there is another mega news item.

I have completed the watercolours for the 2024 Lanzerac Wine Estate Collection. The work will be exhibited in the White Wine Cellar in the classic Lanzerac Wine Estate – opening 01 December 2024.

Here is the final watercolour I added to the collection:

The slave bell on the estate.  This has been another wrestle with subtle hues in the lightest of shades to create sparkle.

Oh yes.
Earlier in the month I completed another painting for the Lanzerac Collection.

This is the Eerste River as it flows past the bottom end of the Lanzerac Wine Estate.  And that is The Pieke in the background.  (Pieke means ‘Peaks’)

Eerste River

Actually I am completing one more (hopefully today) which I will post on the collection as soon as it is done.

Click on the button below to see the whole collection:

My 2024 Rivers and Rocks Collection is also complete.

I love painting rivers and rocks in watercolour. Rocks are so solid. There is so much happening with each individual boulder. The shape speaks of cataclysm and attrition. The position tells a story. I remember a testy professor explaining “imbrication” to us as students next to a river on our first year field trip when I studied geology. Rocks in a river orientate themselves according to the flow of water. And of course the water in rivers is impossibly complex. watercolour, reflections, refraction and the transparency produced by shade. Perfect for watercolour.

There are some rather different paintings in the collection

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Till Here

Last month I headed up to the Cederberg with a group of men from my church. I was working hard on my Rivers and Rocks collection up until I had to pack a sack and head out. Aura had bought me snacks. I packed a jar of butter and a jar of coconut oil. Aura picked a cute little cabbage from her veggie patch. My pack was way heavy as we were expecting snow on the hill. And as it happened on the hike all I ate was a high-fat hot chocolate in the morning and a quarter cabbage each evening with a sachet of tuna, some fresh tomatoes and some of Aura’s olives (which are the best in the world – no really – they are THE BEST).

So that was my hike. We walked 80 kms in the five days. Most of this was on paths I had walked in the past but also a beautiful route past the Maltese Cross, via the Sneeuberg Hut to the trailhead on Uitkyk Pass. My starter pack was really too heavy and after the first three days I was broken. But I was able to offload (more than half) the weight. This helped a lot.

I took my twaksakkie and completed three little watercolours. One pleased me greatly and I was happy when one of my hiking partners bought it from me when we got back to Somerset West.

This is my watercolour of the view from Sleepad Hut looking West over the route we had walked the day before. The valley extends down to the plains towards the West Coast.

Watercolour on 300gm Arches Hot Pressed – 260 x 180mm

The view from the base of the Maltese Cross, back down the trail. I sat there while some of the team headed out for Sneeuberg hut.
Watercolour on 300gm Arches Hot Pressed – 260 x 180 mm

It seemed like every time we crested a rise or went around a butress we were face with scenes begging to be captured in watercolour.

This month I have started a new group on the watercolour journey. The regular advanced class have agreed to meet one afternoon in the week to allow the Kitting Up to meet on Saturday mornings – for now.

It just is really important in watercolour to incorporate a set of foundational skills. Without knowing how to work with a brush, water and colour this delightful medium can drive you bananas. Also there is such a broad range of colour you can achieve with a limited palette if you know how to mix colours. I like to focus on these two areas with all new students.

The advanced class have asked me to prepare some sessions on how to let watercolour flow. Which is very exciting. We have just spent a few weeks working with DARK darks (I don’t use Black), how I paint rocks and the mystery of whites and how to let lights sparkle.

No not the reader. Long long ago I did a short course on the Scanning Electron Microscope when I studied for my Masters (Oh My). The Electron microscopy department on campus had a great slogan “The Resolution Revolution”. Well, I thought it was neat. But the point of the story: The old hands called it a ‘Knobs Course’. I thought they meant we were the ‘knobs’. But actually they meant they were teaching us the essential knobs to set, without a whole lot of physics overload I suppose. All I wanted was a set of micrographs of the surface of the plough-shears I was studying. So… There was THAT rabbit hole story.

There are mugs.

Now you can drink your morning brew from a mug with a fine art watercolour. You can pick up your mug at Ohana Cafe in Kalk Bay or Sage and Thyme in Somerset West. Or drop me a note.

OK
Light is Sweet
September and October

In a year that continues on a strange path

Next Stop Lanzerac