Working in oil pastels, I was rather taken with the effects achieved in an old scrapbook with pale brown pages. This book, already introduced in the previous posting, followed me for some time.
Because the pages are bigger than my scanner, I have had to crop the images quite radically. Anyway, this is a favourite view of anglers on the rocks just east of the Bonza Bay river.
Another view looking west towards the dunes at Bonzies.
Growing up at Bonza Bay in the late 1950s and 1960s, what we called The Esplanade was a favourite haunt. Running alongside the river, and protected from westerly winds, one can while away many hours gazing across the river or out towards the sea. Anyway, this character was sketched while seated on one of the many benches which line the river.
This composite comprises overweight bathers spotted in the shallows near the blind river mouth, while the lower image is of strollers dwarfed by the bush-covered dunes.
Done around 2004, this - again seriously cropped - shows my nephew Stuart and son Douglas at play on, well, a computer of course. It was drawn at Stuart's mom's house in Beacon Bay, during one of our umpteen visits.
As will have been noticed in preceding posts, we have also regularly visited a Karoo farm near Steynsburg, where my wife Robyn spent many a childhood holiday with her grandparents, Balfour and Joyce Elliott. This is a view of one of the "berge" on the farm.
More Karoo koppies.
And, with the evening sun accentuating the colours, more koppies.
Before heading on, just a look at something on the back of this scrapbook. Here I seem to have doodled a snail-like shape camped, as it were, on a tent flying the flag of St George.
We're back on the beach, at another time. I remember doing this sketch of my mom, Brenda, with her granddaughter Emily - my brother Don's only child - on her back, at a point midway between Bonza Bay and Nahoon. I think the lad with cap is my eldest son, Luke, looking none too happy.
Drawn from amidst the boulders at the same point, this is a view back along the beach towards Bonzies.
A young Luke Bentley, then aged about 12 or 13, at that same spot.
And a young Stuarticus Bentley, drawn about seven years ago. He is now a strapping young lad at Selborne College.
Another time, another beach. This sketch, later watercoloured, was done somewhere at Schoenmakerskop, just west of Port Elizabeth.
The rocks along the Schoenies seashore are magnificent. No sculptor could possibly have achieved what aeons of water and wind erosion have done. Here one of my sons is seated among the rocks.
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