South African Art Journal

ALL of this work is taken from a personal sketchbook/diary that I kept throughout my time in South Africa, these pieces are examples of what my journal looks like.

This is an acrylic painting created by myself for a friend during my Gap year in South Africa. The piece is very personal to me as it was the first that i had a deadline for out side of school. I also sold the finished piece. The little girl was taken from a photo that my friend had taken during his visits to India.

This was one of the first water colour pieces in my journal. On a trip to Nysna myself and a friend experienced a lot of the south African wild life, but one of the most memorable animals was a baby giraffe. This quick water colour painting mounted on a map of Nysna reminds me of that game lodge, one of my fondest memories of my gap year so far.

This is a Pencil sketch directly from my art journal, that took around 45 minutes. The little girl was inspired by a photograph I saw while travelling South Africa, her sad expression is what urged me to draw her. The most interesting element in the original photograph, was the girls desperate and troubled eyes.

In South Africa a topic frequently discussed is "Race" and "colour".
From my first sketch of the young African girl I created this, an acrylic painting on a piece of canvas board. I used only a two colour pallet (blue and white) to create this little girl. I wanted the girl to look younger, so I changed the shape of her face and moved her features slightly closer together.My inspiration for this was taken from the black and white divide during the apatite era.

This is a simple water colour collage painting of a township in Cape Town. On my arrival to the country we drove past this incredible township, I had never seen anything like it in my life, the houses where piled on top of each other and these man made shelters slanted and sloped in all directions. It radiated feelings of despair and poverty but at the same time the vibrant colours of the makeshift houses suggested something else.

This is a simple line illustration of a man begging in the street.
The R100 notes in the background are a metaphor alluding to the fact that there is such extreme poverty in existence, and only a few kilometers away there is massive amounts of wealth.

This line drawing is inspired by a day trip to Cape Town, as I crossed a bridge in the city a homeless black man put his hand out to shake mine, I responded by reaching my hand out to meet his. With this the man pulled me towards him and told me to give him money because I looked like a "Rich white man". Although at the time it was a scary experience it taught me a lesson.