Roxanne in Watercolour

A great big thank you to all of your for your get better messages!  I am much better, but missed the Important Rugby Game last week!  Oh well - watched it on television and we won!  So there is a semi-final today and I'm definitely going even though I have to climb up thirty thousand steps - ok, maybe not that many, but there are a lot.

And the last time I did a watercolour, dear Dean of Deano's Den, an artist I so admire, said I mustn't be so hard on myself.  So Dean, I am really quite proud of this one!  I did it in stages allowing it to actually dry, and I think my patience paid off.  Her name is Roxanne and she's the granddaughter of a painting friend of mine.  All that gorgeous wavy red hair!  Hope you like it.

Swallow Tailed Bee Eater

Birds again.

I did this last week while I was still 'alive'.  At the moment I'm half dead with the dreaded winter 'flu!  Serves me right for always opening my mouth and saying 'I never get sick!!'  Cough, cough, splutter, splutter, not fun.  Must get better by tomorrow as there's a really Important Rugby Game on!

But back to birds.  This is a Swallow Tailed Bee Eater which is indigenous to my part of the world, although you don't see them in the Cape.  Another of John Kennekam's beautiful photos - thank you John, I loved the colours and the 'evil eye' the bird gives you.

The G&T Ladies

It was still in Velddrif for this one. 

Barbara and Jinty, two fellow artists, came along as well.  Two wonderful women originally from England, they were pottering around discussing the various garden plants that don't do too well in the salty, hot, dry atmosphere of Velddrif.  It was almost as if they were posing for this pic it was just so perfect!    I've tried to do them justice and I've achieved quite a good likeness.

The reason for the title?  Wherever South Africans go, they usually take a bottle or two of wine with them - Capetonians usually have the red variety on hand in the evenings, but the two of them had to have their evening gin and tonics before supper!  Very Colonial!

Bokkom Lane Pelicans

I love my new digital camera!

When we went up the West Coast last month to Velddrif, I took picture after picture after picture!  It's quick and easy, not like my old one which seemed to take an age between photos and then run out of battery before I could get into my stride. 

So while we were ambling around Bokkom Lane in Velddrif, I was happy snapping this group of pelicans.  They suddenly seemed to take off down river to inspect something, and this painting comes from after their inspection, before returning to point A.