“There are three ways,” he said at last, “by which a very ordinary person like me can improve himself – or at least partly rise above insignificance. Through religion, through public service, or through study and reflection on the natural world”.

The Ten Thousand Things by John Spurling ( published by Duckworth Overlook).

As a professional political cartoonist, working to a deadline, I have always done the bulk of my drawing at my studio desk. Sketching out in the open, direct from nature – en plein air as the French call it – I left to the Fine Artists (who I have always regarded as a separate species from me.) That changed on holiday in Mpumalanga. Watching my sister, the landscape artist Sally Scott, sitting down by a river drawing – a study in intense focus and concentration – got me thinking I wanted to try my hand at what she was doing.

And so I did.

I found it a singularly liberating exercise. I have always liked to think of myself as a fairly observant person but you don’t realise how much you are not seeing until you try and draw it. Drawing, in situ, trains the eye wonderfully. It forces you to concentrate your mind on what is happening in front of you.

Sitting there, on a rock or a log, with the swallows wheeling overhead like World War Two fighter planes, you come to view the natural world differently. You start to see your surroundings in a minute and comprehensive detail, noticing all sorts of little things you had overlooked before. The jagged shape of a rock, the dark texture of a strip of bark, and the rumpled sky overhead – all excite.

There is also spontaneity, fluency and freshness about drawings done like this; that is something which you often lose in a cartoon or a painting you have laboured over for a long time. There are, I was further pleased to discover, other benefits. I have always believed in the value of physical exercise and sketching outdoors has allowed me to combine my two passions – walking and art.

Armed with a satchel containing my sketchpad and pencils, a boyish exuberance reasserts itself. My old passion for ‘expeditions’ and boarding school-style ‘exeats’ comes to the fore again. I am like an excited schoolboy with a secret.

Already I can notice the difference. As a cartoonist, confined to my kitchen/studio I grew flabby and pallid. Since I started walking, the surplus kilos have melted away and I have picked up something resembling a tan. I feel as fit as the ubiquitous fiddle.

Moving up to Kusane Farm, in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands, has, of course, helped me in all of this. There is something to draw at every turn of the path – a gappy stone wall, a stream, a tumbling waterfall, a few ancient pine trees, a collection of farm buildings. Kusane has become my new heartland. It is beautiful country to walk in and also to draw. The views take your breath away. The land rises and falls in long swells and because it has not been farmed for years you can still get a glimpse of its beautiful past.

In pursuing this new way of life I have anointed myself with the title of gentleman artist although I still bristle at any suggestion that what I do is a ‘hobby’. That strikes me as a strange and utterly inappropriate description for an intensely felt passion. Extending my range has made me more conscious of my lack of experience in outdoor drawing. While each completed drawing brings its particular feeling of triumph there is invariably some detail I am not happy about.

There is nothing unusual in any of this, of course. I have been a newspaper cartoonist for over thirty years and I still obsess over the small imperfections in my technique and seek ways to improve my style.

Such is the nature of art. A ratio of failures is built into it.

What I strive for, above all, is a naturalness of style; I don’t want my work to be overly-intellectual, too-clever, pretentious or contrived. By the same token, I don’t want it to look like it was done by some amateurish Sunday dabbler. One of the important lessons I have finally learnt is not to get too anxious about mistakes. For this reason, I no longer carry a rubber with me. If a drawing does not work out, I will scrap it and start again.

I have also had to break the habits of a lifetime. As a cartoonist, hunched over my drawing, I have always worked with a fairly controlled line. Now I am deliberately trying to loosen up my style, ignoring the superfluous and working as quickly and as intuitively as possible. Remembering what my Scottish art teacher, Jock Forsyth, told me at school, all those years ago, about squinting enabling you to make out the key points more clearly, I sometimes try that. Often it is only on the third or fourth attempt that the picture begins to take a coherent shape.

All of which leads back to a fundamental question – why draw? I obviously can’t speak for others but in my case, it has always felt like it was something that was passed down to me. It is an in-built compulsion. A trust bestowed upon me. My vocation.

There is a blank piece of paper in front of me and I must fill it.

Like Wang Meng, the famous Chinese artist who lived during the last days of the Mongol occupation – and is the central character in the book quoted above – early on in my life I decided I did not want to follow the paths that led to either religion or public service. That left art and the contemplation of nature as the only way open to me if I wanted to rise above my insignificance. Like Wang Cheng, too, I don’t do this primarily for commercial reasons (although I am happy to accept payment!). For me, it is about solitude, contemplation, observation and the sheer joy of self-expression.

It is a reminder of what makes life precious…