God willing, these are the last pictures I have been able to find done during my two years' military conscription from mid-1979 till mid-1981. If others crop up, I might include them later, but also bear in mind that I was still facing one- and three-month camps through the 1980s. That was the lot of my generation of white males, currently deemed to have been advantaged by apartheid. Many a career was stifled by the military's hold on our lives.
The signing fetish, noticed on my last posting, seems to have continued with this sketch of my colleague, Mr Selkirk, mentioned earlier, who seemed to have injured a leg, hence the pair of crutches behind him.
Some damage has been done by light to this drawing, but I think it shows again that my work has come of age after this long period of practice.
This seems to be the same Mr Selkirk with his leg in plaster, and the suggestion of crutches just behind that bloated foot.
The two-year sentence seemed to go on forever, which might have been behind this attempt to show me doing a drawing of a drawing I was doing. Or something like that.
Worn out by waiting for the end to come.
Former colleague Mr McIntyre as the end approached.
No idea who these were, but I quite like the contrast between the quick sketches and the figure study.
I did a few weeks standing guard at a place called Jan Kemp Dorp north of Kimberley. This, I think, was a bungalow among the trees, done on blotting-type paper. The ammo dump we guarded was said, at the time, to have been the largest in the southern hemisphere.
While at Jan Kemp Dorp I recall having this yellow writing pad. Again, I quite like the contrast between the main figure and the one suggested to the left.
No comments:
Post a Comment