Laurelines

Laurelines in Paris...almost!

Let me confess right now that, though I've been wanting a new banner for a long time, it was Paris Parfait's banner for her trip to Seville that led me to my new one for the month in Paris.  A wonderful web designer in my area, CyberScribe Web Solutions, made it from one of my last fall's Paris sketches and I like it a lot. I hope you do! Rod and I will rethink a permanent banner when I get back.

I've finally selected the art supplies I'm taking. I've got a palette I've put together from my basic palette, with some AMAZING new colors from Daniel Smith, like Blue Ochre,  Lunar Blue, Kyanite, Hematite, Zoisite. I've been using these all month and think they'll be perfect for October in Paris. My second palette is from Kremer Pigments. I have our charming and so talented Paris Breakfasts to thank for introducing me to these paints. They are like nothing else I've ever used, very saturated, very texturey---they are the caviar of commercial paints. I've kept them in their own tin because they really do act differently from other paints and I need to know when I'm using them.

I'll take my art stool and backpack wherever I go. I won't be the chicest person in Paris (as if) but I wll be a productive one!

AND I'll be a convivial person---I'll be meeting up with the aforementioned Carol of Paris Breakfast and  Sarah of the Red Shoes for  fun group sketching and other shenanigans. I'll have the great fortune also to meet Linda of Frenchless in France, as well as others whose names I won't mention until or if I get their permission to do so. A couple of close non-blog friends will also be in Paris for some of the time I am and that will be wonderful, too.

But my main purpose in going is to draw and prime the pump for some paintings when I return. And I won't forget it.

My flight leaves from the US tomorrow and I'll be in Paris early Sunday morning.  I'll be posting sketches daily, or nearly. I'm so glad you're coming along. See you there!

What the bride wore

Walking my dog this morning, I happened on a wedding dress made of tissue paper with a pink tulle veil in a shop window. It was so fun, so frilly, so flouncy, so frivolous, so fabulous---if I'd had a flute of champagne in hand, I'd have toasted it, then and there. If I'd had a flute of champagne in hand while walking my dog at 6am, I'd no doubt be telling a different story.

Salutations is a paper shop, filled with notepaper, wedding and shower invitations, and all manner of engraved cards and stationery and related accessories. And two nice young women, one the window designer, who let me come inside today--- to sketch. Now, don't I live in a nice town?

Click and scroll to see the whole image.

One or two more things

I want to assure you that the chair the guy is sitting in was one of those low, slouchy affairs with a deep seat. He was sitting mid-vertebra, which is always so good for your back. Either that, or I completely misdrew the chair.  I know which side I'm on in the matter ;D.

In these sketches and many other recent ones, I'm using different kinds of pencils from my usual lovely (to me), smudgy 8b and I'm practicing using a limited palette. Good thing you can't see me pouting.  Not a pretty sight.

The young guys who worked at this cafe were fun and sassy and loved my drawings of the motorbike.

Sweet Daddio

One year gone, to the day. Thinking of him makes me happy. He was a character and I'm fortunate he was mine.

Lucky me to have drawn him shortly before he died. I asked him to pose for me and he sat there with that Mona Lisa smile on his face, pleased as punch to be the center of my attention. Lucky me and my daughter C to have had lunch with him that day, one last time, before she went off to college, one last time, in any case.

Click on thumbnail to enlarge.

Hurry up and wait

At the DMV yesterday, waiting while my daughter got her latest replacement driver's license.  You'd think that the Department of Motor Vehicles was our favorite charity, if the number of times we've contributed to it over the past five years were an indication of our devotion.

The world can break your heart

I have been deeply moved by the World War I war memorials in small towns throughout France. Here in the US, small towns in the North and South have similar memorials to the Union dead and the Confederate dead, respectively.

  This is a pair of sketches of war memorials from a trip I took to Burgundy 3 or 4 years ago. There are many fewer World War II memorials. The pride of place in each town had already been given to those lost in that other 'great' war.

In the smallish southern college town where I live, there's a memorial to the Confederate dead. As I sat on the grass drawing, I felt self-conscious in a way I don't normally while sketching in public. I didn't want passers-by to think that what I was doing was in some way an attempt to glorify the Confederate cause. Nothing, you must know, could be less true.

The parrot phase

This building has been, since I've lived here, a Chinese restaurant, a Japanese restaurant, a Mexican restaurant, another Mexican restaurant.  Right now, it seems to be closed. On one wall, however, there's lots of activity still. The mural is recent.

A glass of chardonnay, a cupid

I know you think all I'm doing this month is eat and drink and hang around with sphinxes and putti. Not so! I also hang around with abandoned motorbikes! I'm trying out some cool new Daniel Smith watercolors, such as Blue Ochre, which I used for the underpainting here. All in trying to get ready for sketching in Paris!

Of course, I have to practice drinking wine before I go, too. This nice couple were at the bar just long enough for me to sketch in the basics. Then, the hostess called them to their table and they were gone.

One or two things I saw...

...this weekend. I love Cindy Woods' drawings of Richmond store windows. She inspired me to sketch a window display in Goteborg, Sweden when I was there last December. And her inspiration struck again today as I sat face to face with a sly cowboy in a thrift shop window.

And then there were the cafe moments. I snatched sketches of a few people in mid-bite or mid-word. The man on the right noticed early on that I was drawing him, so I had to stop. It was making him self-conscious.

La Belle France

This is a public service announcement. I woke up this morning to entries from two blogs that I hope you will go and see. In the case of the first, Wagonized, I hope you will listen, too.  La belle France Belleville is a wonderful artist, who produces beautiful and powerful graphite, pen and charcoal drawings. As if that weren't enough, she is also an immensely gifted singer who recently recorded a couple of songs with a friend from California. You can hear them here. I feel sure that there's a law somewhere prohibiting one person from having that much talent. I urge you, though, to rise above your base instincts, as I'm struggling to do, and refrain from alerting the authorities.

La belle France, the country, stars in Linda Mathieu's blog, Frenchless in France, and no more strikingly than in today's series of photos. Fall is coming to the south of France and bringing with it oranges, golds, ripening grapes, and the softest of light and air. Envy could raise its weasely head here, too, as you think how lucky Linda is to live amid such beauty. I'm still trying to be good. Together, we can do it.