Young and growing

By the late 1990s, sons Luke and Douglas were in Herbert Hurd Primary School in PE and shooting up. I did a few - too few - sketches of them at this age, while the school holidays saw us venturing around the Eastern Cape.

A young Douglas takes his guard, as young SA boys have done down the generations, as they lap up the summer sun.

Play outdoors often entailed the use of water. We had no pool, only a paddling pool. Here Doug, I think it is, carries a little bucket of water on his head - to pour over Luke, perhaps.

A kinda lazy life. Doug, left, and Luke, soak up the sun.

The same culprits, different poses.

One of our trips took us to the quaint, historic, town of Bathurst. This is a view of the old Anglican church there, viewed through some of the many trees which make the place somewhat mysterious.

The people who put us up - relatives on my wife's side - had an interesting dog.

On other occasions we would head into the heart of the Karoo to stay on the farm of my wife Robyn's uncle, near Steynsburg. This is a view of a gate and fence, with one of the marvellous koppies behind.

Also viewed from the farm are the distinctive Teebus and Koffiebus koppies.

On the farm, halfway up a mountain, is a cave about two metres deep and four or five metres long. On its wall are interesting San, or Bushman, paintings, including this section, which I decided to draw. As Robyn's uncle, Bill Elliott, explained, this is a record of the San people's experience of the white man, armed with rifles, who came on horse-back to drive them away.

Ironically, in the same drawing book - for these are all from one book - I did this series of sketches of our boys learning to shoot with a pellet gun on the farm. Food for thought.

Also on the farm, a composite of images, with Harry Baxter, in the middle, reading a book. A Yorkshireman, he married Robyn's mom in the mid-1980s, and the two made regular visits to SA from Leeds over the ensuring couple of decades. On the left is either Luke or Doug with goggles on his forehead.

The farm, Spring Valley, features some wonderful fruit trees, including pomegranates.

I tried my luck at drawing the surrounding mountains with oil pastels.

A quickie of Harry (HB) done on the back of that drawing book.

Just to show I still had a bit of quirkiness left in me, a bird from my imagination.