Ngoma Zanga is a restaurant in Livingstone, Zambia, close to where Victoria Falls are. It’s billed as the best traditional African restaurant (in Livingstone? in Zambia? in Africa?). I won’t argue – I was stuffed when I left. The food was absolutely delicious. The staff all wore traditonal tribal costume and paint and one waitress in particular caught my eye. I buttered her up by saying she was the most beautiful person I had seen for ages and asked if I could take a photograph. Well, who could refuse my boyish charm?!

This is scratchboard on a 16″ x 20″ Ampersand board and though it ended well, it caused me no small amount of frustration. I tried two different styles for the skin, I kept getting the eyes offline (which looks silly if you don’t fix things) and the material took about ten attempts to get to where it is now. In fact with the material, I used sandpaper to rub ink off but I went too far so I had to re-ink with diluted Indian ink. I had to keep adding more layers and then I created the texture simply by dipping a paper towel into a strong mixture of ink and water and then dabbing it on with the paper.

Ngoma Zanga means ‘My Drum’. She could be a drummer but I named this after the restaurant as I had such a great night there and I love the traditional clothes.

The hat and beads were challenges and took a long time but I got there in the end, but with lots of patience.