A Whole Lot of Paris Sketches

We had a lovely trip to Paris and London in October. In Paris,  I did quite a bit of sketching:

Before we left, I sketched my books so I could avoid the dreaded empty sketchbook dilemma.

Like every sketcher, I had to sketch on the plane. (I know Oregon isn't as pointy as I drew it.) We had a late start which worried some of the passengers, like the girl in front of me who was going to meet her boyfriend before he was sent to a different army base. Her mom was accompanying her.

 When we got to Paris, we checked in at our Rue Cler hotel, and went right to the Parc du Champs du Mars where I sketched the Eiffel Tour. We were here after school was out and there were lots of little kids on scooters and playing soccer.

 After a trip to Giverny with friends, I had a lovely meal at Tera Cafe. The food was arranged on a plate that looked like an artist's pallet. It was delicious, too!

Here's the beautiful lunch.

 Michael and I spent a day in the Marais where we had stayed on our last Paris trip in 2008. Our favorite waiter at a cafe in the Place des Vosges  (Nectarine) recognized us from before!

In the Luxembourg Gardens, I saw a group who seemed to be having a sketching lesson. I figure it's always fair game to sketch sketchers.

 A couple of quick sketches in the garden at Les Invalides.

We had a hard time getting inside the d'Orsay this trip. Once we were there the wrong day and two other days it was closed because of the strikes, so I sketched this statue outside the museum.

What's Paris without flowers and chocolate?

This is the view from our hotel (Hotel Relais Bosquet) window! Each night, from my side of the bed, I could see the Eiffel Tour between a sliver of the curtains. The sparkly lights on the tower go off at 1:00a.m. btw.

This window was across the street.

And this was our window grill. Among other things, I love the ironwork in Paris.

I tried three days to buy macarons at a shop in our neighborhood. When I finally bought them, we didn't even finish eating them...but they were fun to paint.

                                      We did finish eating all this marvelous chocolate.

Here I'm in the park, sketching in my little moleskin, but that will be another post. Au revoir!

Figure Drawing Class

I recently took a 4 week drawing class at PNCA with Bonnie Allen called, Drawing the Costumed Figure. Both of these models have been art students, so they really knew how to pose. Here are some of my results.

Sketching Indoors

Here are a couple of sketches done while drinking coffee and nibbling on pastry. This one was done in the Daily Cafe that's inside Rejuvenation Hardware. I wanted to copy this recipe (even though it was only one day after Thanksgiving) and the old cabinet seemed like a good accompaniment to it. This was a fun place to draw, in part because the delightful wait-staff would sometimes break into singing and dancing to the Abba tunes being played. Even some customers were swaying to the tunes while they got their coffee additives from the cabinet.

This sketch was done at Kennedy School. I'm pretty sure I stole the the orange lantern composition from one Kalina did at a sketchcrawl a year ago. It's a great place to draw, but I left out a lot of what's really there.  There's too much for me to get into a sketch.

I Want an i-Phone

My son took a picture of my Floyd's sketch with his i-phone. What a difference it makes in terms of the color as compared to the scanner image. And unlike using the scanner, it took just a fraction of a second to take the picture and load it to the Macbook. If I had an i-Phone,  I might actually post more often, and I could use Brushes... Now, if only there weren't those monthly phone fees....

 

Sketching at Floyd's Coffee Shop

It was a rainy day to be sketching outside, so I stayed inside and sketched at Floyd's. Linda joined me to finish her painting. I used pens from a Pitt terra set and the results feel more like me than anything I've sketched lately.  There are definitely problems with the sketches, but I'm eager to try this method again.

Hollywood Sketchcrawl--Veterans Day

The Portland Urban Sketchers went to the Hollywood district to draw on Veterans Day. This sketch shows two of the sketchers drawing the Hollywood Theater. The flag is still up from the parade.

Hollywood Theater from the east side.