Final Project Process

The process of my final project for Travel Portfolio - 8 vignettes of memories from Venice.

Paris

Sketches from Paris, including gestures of people, Notre Dame, the Arc de Triomphe, the clock at Musee d'Orsay, my favorite Degas ballerina painting, sculptures at the Louvre, stuffed animals at the museum of Natural History and the outside of the Pompidou center.

People and Place

These are my 2 final drawings for our People & Place project. They are from sketches I did in Venice of street musicians, Carnival mask stores, and feeding pigeons in St. Mark's square.

Gordes

Our last Travel field trip was to another hillside town called Gordes. A little bigger than Lacoste (they have a grocery store), Gordes has gorgeous views of the valley below. We spent the whole 2 hours painting the same landscape again and again, it was too beautiful to capture but I had to keep trying!

Isle Sur de la Sorgue

The day of our trip to Isle Sur de la Sorgue was bitter cold and windy. The town was pretty, but no people were outside and it was far too cold to draw. There was a beautiful water wheel that was covered in ice, I'll post photos of that in a later post. Everyone quickly headed to a cafe, where we frightened all the French people in the cafe by drawing them.

Cafe Sketches from Aix-en-Provence

We took a field trip for Treasures of Provence to Aix. When we arrived at the art museum we discovered that it didn't open for 2 hours, so we spent some time in a little cafe drawing.
The art museum was awesome when it eventually opened, we saw an incredible exhibit by Philippe Favier, a contemporary artist I had never heard of before. After that we wandered around the city, which is beautiful, and found a great art store. We finished the afternoon with gelato on the main street - yum!

Project 1 Final

My final watercolor for the first project.

Drawing People in Class

These are 4 sketches from a class practicing drawing people in an environment.

Angouleme

These sketches are from our trip to the Festival de Bande Dessinee (Sequential Art/Comic Books) in Angouleme. We spent 2 and 1/2 days wandering around the city, and spent a considerable amount of our time in various cafes and boulangeries. I really enjoyed the Musee de Angouleme, which had several nice exhibits, and was next door to a lovely cathedral and view of rooftops. The terracotta roofs are one of my favorite parts of France, they have such a lovely texture and pattern and color, and so much character.

Sketches from Fontaine de Vaucluse

A few sketches from our trip to Fontaine de Vaucluse, including some more finished studies completed in class.

Fontaine de Vaucluse

On Thursday we took a field trip to draw at Fontaine de Vaucluse, home of the largest natural spring in France. The town around the spring is quaint and picturesque, but the best part was the water, which appears bright green. I think there is algae or something that grows on the bottom of the stream that gives it the color, but the actual water was completely clear. We bottled some and drank it, it was delicious! Several of us climbed up the hill to the ruins of a castle that look down over the town and the spring. The view was incredible. My favorite shot, and the one I want to use for my drawing (I think) is the one that shows a tiny bit of the green spring surrounded by buildings and roofs. I also just love the water shots, the colors are incredible. I also threw in one shot which is the view from Lacoste in the afternoon, it shows the valley spread out below, and you can see the nearby town of Bonnieux across the valley. The pictures I've seen of the valley in the summer are beautiful, but it has its own beauty in the winter as well, with the muted browns and purples. Besides, the weather is sunny and 50 degrees every day, so it hardly feels like winter!