67 Minutes for Mandela

3 July 2009 thanks to
SAinfo reporter

“Mr Mandela has spent 67 years making the world a better place. We’re asking you for 67 minutes.” Nelson Mandela turns 91 on 18 July, and the call has gone out for people everywhere to celebrate his birthday – and the global launch of Mandela Day – by acting on the idea that each person has the power to change the world.

The call by the Nelson Mandela Foundation and its sister organisations for the creation of an official global Mandela Day, to be celebrated annually on 18 July, Mandela’s birthday, is gaining momentum.

Mandela Day: make an imprintThe celebration of Mandela Day aims to serve as a global call to action for people to “recognise their individual power to make an imprint and help change the world around them for the better”, the Nelson Mandela Foundation said at the launch of the campaign in April.

“Nelson Mandela has been making an imprint on the world for 67 years, beginning in 1942 when he first started to campaign for the human rights of every South African. His life has been an inspiration to the world.”

Now, the Mandela Day campaign is calling on people around the world to commit 67 minutes of their time “to make an imprint and help change the world around them.”

* Find out about volunteer opportunities, pledge some of you time, make an imprint: www.mandeladay.com

Mandela, who turns 91 this year, said at the time of the launch that he would be “honoured if such a day can serve to bring together people around the world to fight poverty and promote peace and reconciliation.”

Tim Massey, director of 46664, a Mandela-inspired and supported campaign to combat Aids internationally, said Mandela Day was about “creating a movement for positive change, and establishing one day to reflect upon, celebrate and make manifest the values that guide Nelson Mandela.”

Former US president Bill Clinton said the core of Mandela’s example was that “the power of public good does not require public office, just a well-placed heart and a determined mind.

“In return for everything Madiba has taught us, we each owe it to him to support his work and legacy by doing and living our own as best we can, not just on this day, but throughout our entire lives.”

South African President Joseph Zuma, in his first state of the nation address in Parliament in June, threw his weight behind Mandela Day, saying it would give people “in South Africa and all over the world the opportunity to do something good to help others … Let us wholeheartedly support Mandela Day and encourage the world to join us in this wonderful campaign.”

46664 is working with its partner organisations, as well as city authorities, community associations and volunteers across the globe to create a worldwide series of Mandela Day events to honour Mandela’s life and legacy.

At the centre of the celebrations will be a massive music headliner concert at New York’s Radio City Music Hall on 18 July.

For more information, visit www.mandeladay.com.

Mother Nature’s spoils

I take a different look at nature, not how to paint it but rather how to appreciate Mother Nature’s spoils.

I have taken the liberty of using information from CC Africa RANGERS so as to be sure my info to you is correct.

I don’t really think you will ever need this trivia, except in a quiz, but it’s fun to know and just one of the ways our rangers are able to enhance your South African Painting Holiday with masses of African titbit’s and Ranger stories. So here goes:

Five useful remedies that can be found in the bush:

• Russet Bushwillow – makes a great herbal tea.
• Sodom Apple – the juice is used to treat fresh wounds.
• Acacia – the cambium is chewed and the juice swallowed to treat stomach disorders.
• Aloe Secundiflora – the inner plant can be applied on skin as protection from the sun.
• Lippia Javonica – crushing and inhaling the leaves will help to relieve colds and flu.
• Lions-paw – an extract from the plant mixed with pumpkin seeds is used to treat tapeworm.

Now wasn’t that really interesting? Next time you are painting a Lippia Javonica you’ll be reminded of this article and be able to act all knowledgeable. However, I’ve lived in Africa for years and have never met anyone using any of these cures, (well maybe the aloe even I use aloes) but then again I live in the suburbs of the third largest city in South Africa, with every amenity available to me, so maybe that’s why!

A Thought 4 U

“Don’t copy anyone else. You are the best one of you there is. Be yourself, and exaggerate yourself slightly.”
Paul Daniels, Magician
par exellence

Here’s how to do the diski dance

Forget the macarena. Forget the moonwalk, or the new move reportedly planned for Michael Jackson’s comeback. South Africa’s own diski dance is set to get the world jiving to an African rhythm when the football World Cup arrives on the continent for the first time.

The diski, comprising a series of choreographed soccer moves, features in the latest television advert from South African Tourism, aimed at generating excitement at home and abroad ahead of the 2009 Fifa Confederations Cup and 2010 World Cup.

The advert will air on global channels including CNN, BBC, Eurosport and Skysport between now and the World Cup kickoff on 11 June 2010, giving soccer fans a chance to learn the moves and “feel the rhythm of African football”.

Click here to play video.

Posted on SouthAfrica.info on 20 May 2009.

Combine football with a wonderful painting holiday tour of KwaZulu Natal to have the best of all worlds in one glorious package.

Bushman painting as documentary

ORIGINAL ARTICLE BY: Lucille Davie
30 October 2008

There were no Bushmen about to ask how to create the paintings, so artist Stephen Townley Bassett learned how to recreate Bushman paintings the hard way – by trial and error.

His dedication to the task over the past 18 years has led to the first major exhibition of his Bushman works – 30 extraordinary paintings assembled at the Origins Centre at Wits University in Johannesburg in an exhibition entitled Reservoirs of Potency.

“I threw away my penknife,” Bassett says, together with plastic containers and metal tins. And went out into the bush discovering. He learned how to use animal blood, saliva, ochre, cobra venom and ostrich egg shells to create pigment to paint the images, precise copies of Bushmen paintings from around the country.

He learned too how to use porcupine quills, buck horns, rocks, animal hairs, bird droppings, feathers and animal skins that would become his stock in trade. He made mistakes along the way but got it right.
‘I learned that fat is a good binder’

“I learned that fat is a good binder. I would make a paste which was easy to carry. I learned to liquefy it again with gall, saliva and blood.” Bassett also learned about the different quality of hair of different animals, giving him fine hair for a paintbrush, or thicker hair for a bushier brush.

He even made his own stone tools to skin spring hares and foxes he’d shot, to use the skin as a pouch in which to carry his painting implements.

The animals and people in his works, which Bassett calls “documentary paintings”, are the precise size of the originals. The works are done on 100 percent cotton sheets. Each piece, he says, is a one-off.

“So much has gone into each painting,” he explains. He would spend days at a site, deciphering the original, with a miner’s lamp on his forehead.

“The first thing is to document as accurately as possible, doing it with pigments available to them, absolutely life size. I would only record what I saw, making it a little darker, to take account of dust,” he recounts. Then back at home a painting would take between six and eight weeks to complete.

“The work is very exacting, very demanding. There is no debate, the work has to be right – everything exactly there. It is a blend of science, art and craft,” he says, referring to the tool-making as craft.
Endorsements

Such is his attention to detail that the professor emeritus and renowned researcher and author on Bushman art, David Lewis-Williams, comments in the caption of one piece that it was only after Bassett captured the work, the Leaping Lion, that Lewis-Williams noticed fish around the lion’s body.

“Often I return to the site with my half-completed painting to compare colours and overall appearance of my rendition to the original on the rock,” says Bassett. “All paint marks on the rock that are within the frame of reference of the chosen scene must be recorded. All marks must be acknowledged and recorded. The final product must be the next best thing to the original on the rock, a kind of historical document of what has been deciphered from the rock face.”

His paintings have brief notes or paint blotches around the edges which don’t distract from the work, but help to guide him as to colour and markings on the original.

And he has the full endorsement of Dr Benjamin Smith, the director of the Rock Art Research Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand, and Lewis-Williams, who describes the work as “wonderful” and “very special”.

“You must either do the work accurately or not at all,” says Lewis-Williams.

Smith says: “This is an artist like no other; he bleeds for his art,” referring to the fact that Bassett has used his own blood in his paint mixes.

Bassett doesn’t only do Bushman art – he produces landscapes and takes on commissions from local farmers, who, he says with a mischievous smile, can be very exacting in what they want.

A book has been produced to accompany the exhibition – Reservoirs of potency – the documentary paintings of Stephen Townley Bassett. In 2002, he published another book, Rock paintings of South Africa – revealing a legacy.

“It has been an extraordinary journey,” he exclaims. Bassett is keen for the exhibition to travel, around South Africa and overseas, on perhaps an equally extraordinary journey.

Bassett’s works are available for private viewing and purchase at the Bonair Road Gallery in Cape Town.

Source: City of Johannesburg

Star Gazing

Now is a good time to book your painting holiday in November to incorporate a spot of Star Gazing and painting, as in the southern hemisphere, November is a great month to lie back on a mountain slope, or on a sand dune still warm from the days sun and do a spot of star gazing. Here you can watch the antics of wonderfully named comets such as Encke and Tempel-Tuttle whose orbits pop through our earth’s orbit making it possible for us to see fantastic meteor showers producing spectacular shooting stars.

Every year around November 17, plus or minus a week the displays from these comets are truly spectacular with thousands of ’shooting stars’ flashing across the sky every hour. They are said to be linked to the formation of Stonehenge and the Star of Bethlehem.

When you join our South African Painting Holidays at one of our Berg, Bush or Beach lodges far away from the light pollution of the cities, you will see the night skies in all their glory, like nothing you will have experienced in Europe or much of the USA… so treat yourself to a luxury painting holiday you will never forget and enjoy natures own firework display in Africa this year.

Still on a light note (pun intended )
Here is my favourite BUMPER STICKER for artists..
“2b or not 2b”
From the artist network forum

Gill’s Perspective

Here is a snippet from a conversation I had with Gill regarding perspective. Gill said that fundamentally perspective relates to the eye level or horizon line of the viewer, parallel to the ground plane. This therefore varies according to our personal height above the ground. When sketching landscapes most often the actual horizon is obscured by hills or other objects so the artist must begin by establishing the horizon in the minds eye, simply by locating it
at eye level.
When this is established it is easy to determine where objects such as buildings fit into the composition in relation to the horizon line.

Perspective relates to the angles of lines which appear to converge in the distance i.e. The vanishing point The parallel lines may be building lines or a line of trees or simply the road which apparently vanishes in the distance.

Buildings, trees and other objects become smaller and closer as they recede. They also apparently meet at the eye level mark. Buildings may also be viewed from a two or three point perspective, this occurs when viewing a building from the corner, you have two angles “moving” away from your eye. You now have a vanishing point on either side of the building. It can also happen that you have both or either of the vanishing points falling off the edge of the paper. When sketching windows and doors remember that the tops of the doors or windows may be angled slightly differently to that of the roof as the window is lower than the edge of the roof.

For more of Gill’s FREE Tips visit the Art Cafe

Tip 2 Remember
When placing people in a painting

All heads are at eye level

The tops of doors and roof lines go down to eye
level
and

The bottoms of doors and pavements go up to eye
level

Join Gill on a South
African Painting Holiday and get her to help you reach your
true painting potential while you paint in an amazing African
landscape

Painting in mountains where once dinosaur walked

Facts courtesy of KZN Wildlife Rhino Club

The Drakensberg Mountains, meaning “Dragon’s Mountain” in Afrikaans and called uKhahlamba, “barrier of spears” in isiZulu, are the highest mountains in Southern Africa, rising up to 3,482 m (11,422 ft) in height. Geologically, they are formed from basalt and sandstone resulting in a combination of steep-sided blocks and pinnacles. The sandstone layer was deposited as the remnants of a gigantic sea that occupied much of what is now Southern Africa some 500 Million years ago. The Basaltic layer which overlies this was deposited about 220 Million years ago in what many geologists think was the largest volcanic eruption in the history of the world linked with the splitting of the tectonic plates of Africa and South America.

In these mountains we often find fossilised sea shells and wonder how they could be here when we are so far above the sea. Even more curious are dinosaur footprints on the roof of a cave at Giant`s Castle! These footprints were left in the silt of the ancient sea. The Drakensberg is one of only two mountain ranges (along with the Simian Mountains of Ethiopia) to have been formed in this geological way, which accounts for its extraordinarily distinctive formations and colours. The landscape is dominated by extremely steep cliffs, some of them amongst the most impressive cliff faces on earth, such as the Amphitheatre Caves and overhangs are frequent in the more easily eroded sandstone It is here in the caves and on rock faces that the ‘First People’, the San Bushmen, lived and where they painted their view of life in these mountains.

You can come with me to see these extraordinary paintings and paint a few of your own in this amazing part of the world, while enjoying a South African Painting Holiday

Photographic help from David Peterson

Today some photographic help from David Peterson

David discusses exactly how to use his technique in lesson 2 of his free Image Editing Secrets course. He has a tutorial for Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, Paint Shop Pro and the free Google Picassa.

Have you had a problem when shooting scenes with both inside and outside subjects.

Either everything inside is dark in the resulting photo, or everything outside is too bright. When a photo has a high dynamic range. That is, they have bright sunlight and dark shadows. It is impossible with current technology to have both parts of the photo correctly exposed.
While you can’t eliminate the problem entirely, there are a couple of choices you can make to minimze the problem.

Recompose The Photo

This is probably the simplest solution. Take a photo of a scene with very bright and very dark parts, move your camera to eliminate one of the extremes ie either close curtains for the shot, or take the photo from the window looking inside.

Use Exposure Lock

If you can’t recompose the photograph, instead tell the camera what part of the image you would like to see. The rest of the photo will be either over or under exposed (too bright or too dark) but at least you will see your subject. You can do this by placing the center of the image at your subject; half depressing the shutter to lock the focus and exposure; move the camera to re-compose the image; and fully depress the shutter.

Some cameras have an option called ’spot metering’ to set the part of the image you’d like to be correctly exposed. If your camera has this setting, enable it before using the technique above.

Use Fill In Flash

If your scene has a sunny background, but your subject is in the shade (or has a hat on), turn on the flash. I know it seems wrong but it really does work! By using the flash, your subject will look as bright as the background.

Use a Filter

If your scene is of a bright sky and a dark ground (for instance at sunset, or on a cloudy day), you can use a graduated neutral density filter. This filter cuts out some of the light from one part of the photo (the sky). This will correctly expose the ground and the sky. These filters can be complex to setup, so I don’t usually recommend them for beginners.

Fix The Original Photo in an Image Editing Program

Finally, if you can’t take another shot at the same location, you can fix the original image by changing the levels using a paint program. This works best when your subject is darker than the rest of the photo (because cameras lose detail in over-bright areas). The darker the subject, the harder time you will have fixing the image.”

MY PAINTING TIP FOR TODAY

Techniques are useful tools to learn but your style will become apparent as soon as you understand that you need to produce not the likeness of a scene or object, but an account of how you as an artist, relate to it
Thanks to Bob Brandt, issue: A&I March 2006

P.S. Accept our warm invitation to join me on a painting holiday I promise you will remember – forever!
ALSO: Remember there are only a few days left to book your holiday with South African Painting Holidays if you want to take advantage of
My Amazing 10% Off Discount Offer

If you would like a friend to receive these tips Please Click Here

Frogs in my garden

On the 2nd of February it was World Wetlands Day which commemorates the signing of the RAMSAR Convention, an international agreement on wetland protection.

As we have a lovely couple of days painting in iSimangaliso Wetlands Park it’s a good time to reflect on the wet world of our froggy friends and their cheerful cacophony and the enormous good they do in controlling insect pests.

They are apparently some of the most sensitive indicators of environmental damage and any chemicals or pesticides in their habitats have a devastating impact on frog populations.

There was a time a few years ago, when the whistles, chirps or croaks of frogs were rarely heard in the suburbs, even though many gardens had pools or water features. But, that certainly isn’t the case today. Our rather strange weather, wetter than normal, has proved a sheer delight to the frog populations in my suburb and on warm and wet nights they are regaling us with very loud frog serenades.

I hopefully presume that this is a good indication that the message is getting through to Joe Public to use substances that are environmentally friendly.

Walking a wilderness trail

The ultimate experience in the bush veld is walking a wilderness trail.

If you like a bit of the rough, you can experience the unspoilt beauty of the natural bush without any of the trappings of civilization by walking out each day from a base camp, returning to your creature comforts only in the evening.

Or you can walk from wilderness camp to wilderness camp, where a bucket shower is your only luxury to wash away the dust of the day.

Or if extreme hardiness is your style you can carry the bare necessities on your back and make camp wherever the days adventures take you and then stand solitary guard through the night acquainting yourself with the sounds of the African night.

Truly soul cleansing, or so I’m told!

I am not that hardy but I still enjoy viewing our amazing African wildlife in their own environment so I enjoy the safer route of a guided walk with an experienced field ranger who works in the bush every day, and whose senses are attuned to the comings and goings of the natural world. This way I can be exposed to things I would never see on my own and be a whole lot safer than if left to my own devises.

I also enjoy a game drive in the mornings and afternoons as each time of the day has its own special characteristics with light and shade, smells and the wildlife that is active.

You can join me and our own Ranger John at John’s Big 5 conservancy. John is used to watching over us painters and allows us to partake in the wonders of animal viewing amongst hills which change colour from green to brown to blues and greys in the distance. He tells us ranger tales and animal facts all in a thoroughly entertaining way. He takes us to beautiful spots to paint and gets us as close as possible to the animals for that photo opportunity that will become the next painting. Then after all the excitement we get returned to our luxurious 4* lodge where we are pampered and fed and left to enjoy the vistas and the painting opportunities.

This is my way to enjoy the privilege of game viewing. Not too many hardships for me! All you need is a shady hat, loose clothing, a stout pair of shoes, binoculars a sketchbook of course and a camera for those special shots which will inspire paintings for a very long time.

Are you ready for your walk in the bush?

The opportunity to walk through natural bush or grassland, where you can touch, smell, feel the African veld with all your senses is really special. Take the time to experience it on your next South African Painting Holiday.

SMILE FOR THE WEEK…

Bumper Sticker’s for painters..

“I used to think in black and white….then I met an artist”
and
“Artist’s keep it in perspective”

Accept my warm invitation to join me on a holiday I promise you will remember – forever

You are reading “Painting Tips”.
If you would like a friend to receive these tips
Please Click Here

The back issues are at the following URL…
http://www.paintingholidayskzn.com/Painting_Tips-backissues.html