'La Tour' Page From the France Sketchbook

Another page from the France book.  This was sketched from a cafe table across the river from the tour (painted later). Greg says I should put a little 'cost' of each sketch in the form of adding our bar tab total in the bottom corner of each page.


Will post the book in its entirety soon.  I have a lot of bits and pieces I collected along the way that might still find their way in there.  Happy memories :)

Upcoming Show- 'Hey, You Got Lino On My Watercolour!'

This September I'll be having my first art show in ages.  I had months to prepare, so of course I spent all that time thinking about what I was going to do and left only exactly enough time to complete the whole project before I could begin (sound familiar anyone?).  I've been working like a maniac for the past week now.  I can't really show you anything, but I wanted to share my excitement.  I was having a hard time deciding whether I wanted to concentrate on watercolour or on printmaking when I had one of those 'you got CHOCOLATE in my PEANUT BUTTER!' moments.  Why not combine them?  I did some research with the help of mr. google, and discovered my new fave artist, Belinda Del Pesco.  She combines the two masterfully.  I looked through my old print stash and found a few images relief-printed on Stonehenge printmaking paper.  I tried throwing a little colour on them.   I was surprised at how well the paper took the washes, and that the ink didn't bleed at all!  I also really liked how the colour helped define the space. 


So now I've embarked on a carving festival, working on a series of 12 Vancouver images, mostly to do with community and gathering places.  I learned a cool way to transfer my drawings more accurately onto the linoleum - check out this video from artist Julia Forsyth.  All housework has ceased, our giant dining table is covered in test prints, inks, chunks of linoleum, breyers and reference sketches.  Our front and back decks are covered in tiny little curls of carved-out linoleum, and there are piles of heavy art books stacked around the house squishing things flat.  I sit outside and carve until my hands can't take it anymore, then come inside and work on sketches, ideas and research.  It's so FUN!

When I print at home I usually use Speedball Block Printing Ink.  It's water-based, easy to clean up and, it turns out, completely unstable if you add watercolour on top.  So now I'm waiting for a shipment of paper and ink to come from Curry's and will be carving away until it gets here.  Show is scheduled for September 15th.  More details to come. 

Moulin Rouge

Our month in Europe has come to an end and we've settled back into our Vancouver life. We have ten people coming for dinner tonight. That's actually a pretty typical Sunday here, but after a month of eating in restaurants, being cooked for and picnicking in parks, it was a brain shift to get back into entertaining mode.  

I took some time out from cleaning and prepping this morning to flip through my trip sketchbook.  Happy memories. This sketch is from one of our last days in Paris.  We sat at a cafe across from this scene for hours sketching and watching life come and go. While the Moulin Rouge has been completely gentrified (I'd be comfy taking my mother to the show) the street is still pretty red-light. One aging hooker working the corner beside our table came and went several times while I sketched this. The sky gradually darkened and the lights came on. It's such an iconic site.  Tourists kept stopping in front of us to take each other's picture with the  windmill in the background. After all the miles we've put on walking the street of Paris we're both pretty content to just sit, drink,our beers and soak it all in. 

Prinsengracht, Little Black Houses and Balls of Wool in Amsterdam

Did this skinny sketch from a cafe table just around the corner from the canal  house we're staying in here in Amsterdam. It takes a moment to see what it is, but its a peak over the shoulder of the building on the corner of our block.  It's not at all what I sat down to sketch. There was a great view of the whole canal, but after running home to grab my sketch bag I realized I didn't have a pencil. Greg went back to grab one and I started doing a little ink line drawing of this roofline just to pass the time. Two beers and a bowl of peanut chicken soup later this is what I had. Afterwards we took a canal boat tour. One of the million things we learned on the tour was that this city was decimated by the black plague. Thirty percent of the population of Amsterdam was wiped out by three different waves of it throughout the 1600s. When someone fell ill with the incurable disease their house was painted black. People brought them food and water, but they'd remain completely quarantined in their houses until they passed away. To this day those houses remain black in colour and will never be changed. This house in my sketch, now a popular restaurant, is one of them. Our house (not black), just out of view in this sketch, is sandwiched between two plague houses.  Theres no stigma attached to it now.  It was, after all, about 400 years ago. Now they're just beautiful, and one more interesting thing about this fascinating city. 

We spent the morning at the Van Gogh museum. It was my one 'must do' thing here in Amsterdam, and it was just as  magical as I'd hoped it would be. Four floors of his work, related works, and some really cool displays showcasing different aspects of his life and his art.  One of the cool unexpected little treasures was a wooden box of his where he kept little balls of colored yarn that he'd intertwine in skeins to see how the colors would interplay. There they were, all these little two-toned bundles of wool in the brushstroke colors of his palette that he'd wound together over 100 years ago.  Lovely. 

We're down the final night of our trip. It's been over a month for me. I have a sketchbook full of half finished paintings, ticket stubs, postcards and ephemera that will complete themselves (and appear here) over the next month or so, an extra 20 lbs of books to somehow stuff into a suitcase, a few little art treasures and about a kilo of bread, wine and cheese around my waist to work off after get home. I wouldn't change thing about this trip. The places we've stayed, the people we've met, it's all been perfect.  Sometime mid afternoon tomorrow I'll be anxious to get off the plane and resume my Vancouver life.

But in the meantime there's a moonlit canal-side restaurant out there somewhere  with our names written on it. Will update soon. 

Père Lachaise

We went to the amazing food market at Barbes Rochechoart in the morning, bought all the fixin's for a 'Paris Picnic', then headed off by metro to Père Lachaise to eat, sketch and wander. 

Text reads:

The last time I was here, on a gray midweek morning some 20 years ago, the cemetery was empty other than four still-drunk Irish boys stumble-dancing at Jim Morrison's gravesite. They were stripped down to their undies, drinking beer (and offering to share it with us) while their ghetto blaster warbled out old Doors tunes. Today it's a different scene.  There's a fence around Jim's grave.  Throngs of tourists press up against it taking photos. There are groups of school kids being toured about by guides.  I overheard two versions of La Vie en Rose at Edith Piaf's grave and a dum, dum dadum version of the Funeral March here at the gravesite of Frederic Chopin.  I've sat through several tour guide explanations while doing this sketch, and  if my understanding is to be trusted, his body is buried here, but his heart, as per his request, is enshrined in his native Poland where crowds of people come each year honorary their respects to his genius. Now that's spreading the love. 

l'Opera de Lyon

Sketched this sitting on the grass above the opera house in Lyon. I had a pocket of time before meeting a group from the school for a tour of the Painted Walls of the Croix Rousse. Just as I was about to get  up to go meet everyone around the corner at the Place du Terreaux the skies opened up and started to pour rain. My friend Julie and I felt it was a much better idea to sit on the terrace of the Opera House (on the left here) and watch some live music than to trudge around the rainy city like little ducklings behind our tour guide. Turns out it was an excellent decision, especially since my homework assignment that week was to go see some live entertainment and write an article about it.  Got the article written, avoided the rain, and was rewarded for good decision making with a beautiful display of sunlight on fresh rain-washed rooftops. 

Right now Greg andI i are sitting in the Gare du Nord, waiting to take the train to Brussels where we'll be greeted by our favourite Belgians, Flo and Brieuc. Bye-bye Paris, hello next chapter. 

Sacre Cour From Our Bedroom Window

Our time in Paris is winding down. We took the train out to Versailles this afternoon. So did every either tourist currently in France. If you come here, don't go to Versailles on a Tuesday. It's closed Mondays, and the Louvre is closed the following day, so all that pent up tourist traffic lands at the gates of the palace mid-day on Tuesdays. Lines to visit the castle were several hours long, so we opted to pick up a picnic, rent bikes  and explore the grounds. We watched Sofia Coppola's 'Marie Antoinette' the night before as a warm up. Wild to see how lavish and vast it really is. No wonder the townsfolk got cranky with them.  We picnicked beside the grand canal, full of people paddling around in little boats and overfed fish lumbering up to the surface to draw down chunks of bread people toss them.  We did hit the palace for a rushed visit right before close when the crowds died down. Afterwards we found a little tapas restaurant by the train station and feasted on paella, then trained back to the city and walked the streets of the Latin quarter until we could walk no more. 

Now, back at the apartment, I figured it's one of my last chances to perch in the bedroom window and sketch Sacre Cour. I will miss saying goodnight to this beautiful view every night before bed.  It's so close it feels like I could reach out and touch it from here. Magic.