Along The River - Paris watercolor

Another Paris watercolor for my sketchbook, measuring 8" x 5 1/4". The Seine was extremely high while we were there, so many of the walking paths under the bridges along the river were flooded over. This was the view along the Seine facing towards Notre Dame.

Walking In Paris

Tonight I made a little color painting in my sketchbook, based on photos that we took while walking in Paris during our first day in the city. I want to go back, especially now that it's springtime.

Paris Street Art

While I was in Paris, I saw a lot of interesting street art. There were a lot of the Banksy and Shepard Fairey variety, as well as some interesting other little bits.

I had a lot of fun keeping an eye out for the little 8 bit video game characters that we started to notice around the city that someone has been making out of little glass and ceramic tiles and attaching high up on the sides of buildings. I looked it up when I got home and found out that the tile street art movement was started by an artist who calls himself Invader. Apparently he's been posting his tile art around Paris and the rest of the world for a few years now. I also found this post on another blog that shows more tile art in Paris, including some that I saw.

Paris - part 3

On December 30th we went to Montmartre for a second time with the intention to do some drawing and painting. The day started out nice and sunny so Jeff and I grabbed a seat outside Cafe des 2 Moulins, ordered some cafe creme, and got out our sketchbooks. I drew a picture of the little grocery store across the street. Jeff also took a lot of reference photos of Montmarte for us to use later on for artwork.




The Cafe des 2 Moulins is the one used in Amélie. We had breakfast there earlier in the week.




After the sunny morning, the weather turned rather gray and cold so we didn't really have a good chance to draw or paint outside anymore. The last drawing below was done while sitting outside Saint Severin cafe by Saint Michel at night. The weather was cold and rainy, but sitting under the awning and heat lamp at the cafe made for some good people watching.




While the weather in Paris may not have lent itself well to drawing outside, I do have 1500+ reference photos to use for doing art from home, so you can definitely count on seeing more Paris themed artwork from me in the future!

Paris - part 2

On December 26th we went to the Eiffel Tower. It was very cold but luckily it was one of the clearer weather days, which worked out perfectly for some sightseeing. After going into the Eiffel Tower we wandered over to the little Christmas village - Village de Noel, I think - that had been set up in the big plaza area across from the Tower. There were a lot of booths selling food and knicknacks, as well as music and an outdoor skating rink. We found an empty table next to the skating rink to sit and rest at, and since the view of the Eiffel Tower was pretty good from there I decided to try painting. I was determined to do at least one on location painting while we were in Paris.



I had to work fast because my fingers were getting really cold, and the sun was rapidly setting. The orange lights on the Eiffel Tower turned on as we were sitting there. While I was painting, a small group of kids stopped by the edge of the skating rink and watched me. They started talking to me, but since I don't understand French I could only smile and shrug. The kids had a hastily whispered conference and then attempted to talk to me again, with the lead girl haltingly saying, "You draw bee-yoo-tiful!" I laughed and thanked them. They giggled and skated away. Cute kids.




After finishing the little watercolor painting, we went inside one of the food tents so I could hold my sketchbook by a heat lamp to get it to dry. The cold was what kept me from doing much painting outside - too hard on the fingers and the paint just took too long to dry. Once I could close my sketchbook, we walked around and took some more photos of the Eiffel Tower.





And the next morning Jeff asked me to marry him. Definitely the best Christmas break ever!

Paris - part 1

Over the Christmas and New Year's holiday, Jeff and I went to Paris. We did some sketching and painting while we were there, but not too much on location artwork because it was so cold outside. We did take a lot of reference photos, though, to use for paintings and drawings once we got back home.

For the next few days I'll be sharing the few pages from my sketchbook that I did work on while we were there.

The first day we were in Paris was actually Christmas day. After much walking around and exploring, we ended the day with some dessert and people watching in this cafe. The name of the cafe was Cafe Panis, across from Notre Dame Cathedral.