Europe09: Paris Day 01 - Sacre Coeur and Garnier Opera

December 9, 2009 | Leave your thoughts

BB – I am here in Paris!
           


I can’t tell you how great it was to have a week dedicated to sketching with a friend who is like my 2nd sister, who also loves sketching, also studied architecture, also loves walking heaps etc etc. The only big difference is that she does not drink tea or coffee – so not many morning and afternoon tea sketches in this sketchbook. But I am not complaining as it gave us more time to sketch Paris buildings.
Every we went back to our B&B room and drew maps and touched up our sketches – tiring work!

BTW the flower in the right corner was drawn by a waiter for me!
I decided that I should draw my first Paris breakfast… however disaster struck. I suddenly discovered that I didn’t have my paint tin – it must have fell out of my front pocket during the tuberlence in the plane. Thankfully I had a few watercolor pencils which would have to do till I found an art shop. A quick email via my iphone to Rick Tulka to ask for a location of an art store if we didn’t stumble across one on our travels, I could visit a store near Le Select on the next day.

I was a little rattled at my loss (I loved my paint tin) and found it hard to sketch Sacre Coeur (I added an extra bit to the tower) and even harder to colour a white building with my WC pencils!


Borromini supervising Eza’s sketch


Lunch time sketch…


just had to draw the free expresso given to us by the amused waiters….

Not only did I not have any paints but my ink pen was low on ink so I had to do this in felt pen. Both Eza and I had SO MUCH fun drawing the Garnier Opera.

It was a lovely warm afternoon, we had somewhere to lean/sit on and drawing a complicated building front on is not that impossible – no tricky perspective – just a matter of getting the framework right and then lots of scribbling (ok – I am an architect – this is what I love doing!)


Eza and I made a great team of sketchers – even with me slowing down as much as I can I still had time to do a second sketch on most occasions. This was looking the other way.


And I got interviewed for a documentary on European cities.


Of course we had to sketch during our first dinner….


This is a photo that I took by stretching out my arm up above the table….yes two lefties!

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