We got to visit the home of Pierre Bonnard, one of the French painters who painted in an impressionistic style and was a member of the Nabi art movement.
We saw the balcony and view that Bonnard painted.
Bonnard painted many scenes of his wife bathing. The owners of his home have created recreations of both the basin and the tub his wife posed in.
Today we toured a chateau near Giverny. It was absolutely wonderful! The chateau has a lineage that involves Napolean Bonaparte's family. Currently one women occupies the chateau.
Marianne walked around the chateau's garden and her socks got a bit wet so she took them off and hung them over her purse strap to dry. She discovered later that her wet socks had dropped off her purse strap somewhere on the grounds of the chateau. We all wonder what will be the fate of her missing socks. The possibilities are endless. Our workshop ends tomorrow morning when we board the train to Paris. We are all a bit giddy tonight and full of wonderful, memorable experiences. This was a wonderful, talented group of artists and it was a pleasure to see all the beautiful paintings they did in their journals during our workshop. Bon chance (good luck) and happy travels everyone.
Today found us off to Honfleur, a harbor village on the English channel. We took the wrong exit on a traffic circle, crossed over a beautful bridge and almost went to Calais, where you can cross the channel on a ferry. Fortunately our skilled driver and navigator and grumpy gps got us back on course and home to Giverny. We painted in Monet's Garden during after hours tonight and were inspired by the beauty of the garden.
Top left: Carol and Ruth, top right: Sarah, Debbie and Carol, bottom left Sandrine, the owner of our B and B, Les Jardins des Helene and the most helpful woman in the world, and Debbie. Bottom right, me painting in Honfleur.
When we entered Monet's Garden to paint it was like being a kid in a candy shoppe. There were so many wonderful scenes to paint.
I decided to paint the above view. Monet was not at home that night so I couldn't show it to him to get his opinion.
We went to dinner tonight and some of the ladies were kind enough to stop and pose on the balcony before going in to dinner.
Annie Hooten finished up our workshop today and left for home. She shows us the gloves she brought for a dance party that never happened.
Tomorrow we are off to visit Honfleur.
Giverny, the home of Monets home and garden drew many American painters, who wanted to paint there as well. They needed a place to stay. So the local grocer whose name was Baudy started renting rooms. His hotel is now a restaurant with a replica of the painting studio and beautiful gardens where we painted last night.
The haystacks in the first photo on the left top are in the gardens of the Museum of Impressionism where we went to see a wonderful exhibit of Belgian Impressionist painters.
We visited the town of Roche Guyon yesterday and explored a huge chateau.
We met this guy. He was just hanging around.
Across the road is the garden for the castle. I understand that sometimes at least 300 people stopped by for dinner so they had to have a large garden to feed everyone.
Ruth explained to me alot of interesting facts about estate gardens. They are called parterre gardens and they contains walls of foliage for privacy so you could plot to overthrow the master or arrange a tryst.
One of the great things about traveling is that your senses are heightened and you notice things you would'nt notice at home.
In the picture above from top left clockwise is: a French manhole cover, a building in Soreze, Jane painting and a doorway vignette. What textures do you notice?
Tonight we painted in Monet's Garden during after hours when the garden is only open for artists to paint. There were only 15 or 16 people in the garden painting. Some people were painting the lilly pond and others were scattered throughout the garden.
Beautiful scenery in Giverny. To prepare my students for painting in the garden, annie Hooten, one of our workshop members showed us how to sit in a lady like fashion. Then we posed in front of the garden entrance
Monet stopped by to see how our painting was coming along. I painted the view looking down the grand allee path looking toward Monet's house.
We are really lucky to have Ruth Wolfe, a talented garden designer from San Diego in our group. She ably answered all our questions about the flowers we saw in Monet's garden and explained his principles of garden design.
Annie and Jane are still contemplating their flea market finds.
Here are some of my students showing their favorite journal pages on the last night of our workshop in Durfort. Everyone did a great job painting and drawing in their journals and I know they have brillant artistic futures.
Suzanne L'Hoste was kind enough to invite us to visit her farm Monday afternoon. Suzanne is an amazing artist in many mediums. I love her paintings and decorating skills.
You can learn all about her current project on her blog, Totibleu.wordpress.com. She is building her own horse drawn caravan cart to travel through France. She let us take a peek inside the barn where the cart is being constructed.
on the left is the barn and top right is the newly constructed wagon chasis and the bottom right is the back wall frame of the caravan.
Suzanne and Mark's house.
Everyone felt inspired by our visit with Suzanne, her husband, Mark and her daughter, Dana. It is amazing to meet such creative people with the courage, imagination and skills to pursue their dreams.
Today we went shopping at the local flea market in the town of St. Julia. This type of flea market is called a "vide grenier" in French, which means literally vacuum out the attic.
they serve the most delicious sausage sandwiches at the vide grenier.
We had a delicious lunch on the terrace at La Cascade.
we laid out all the treasures on our beds so everyone could see them. Nese made the most delicious cake for dessert and it just happened to be my birthday
There are wonderful scenes to paint everywhere we look.
Could you see yourself seated in one of these spots, perhaps glancing out the window as you write and draw?
I found these desks in the home of my friend where I am staying in South, central France. Can we recreate spots like this in our houses?
I'm in France today. It's the second day of our watercolor travel journaling workshop and everyone is doing well. Pictured above from left to right: workshop lovely students, our street in Durfort, our two vans, and the sycamore trees.
The students come from Florida, Albuquerque, Washington state, California and Eileen, my assistant is from Boston.
Some of the travel sketchbooks I have made and purchased in search of the perfect travel sketchbook......
Have you found a sketchbook that works well for sketching while traveling? If you have, run don't walk to your computer keyboard to tell me about your sketchbook so I can get or make one to take with me on my trip next week.
I will describe the sketchbooks pictured above so you can get an idea of what sort of sketchbook almost worked for me in the past.
1. Photo copied an old book, punched 3 holes in sketchbook, raffine paper and Arches 140 lb wc paper. The binder rings are clumsy and get in the way when you turn the pages, but they do allow you to move your pages around.
2. Store bought in Italy Sketchbook, looks good but the pages are too slick for me.
#3. Old book with sketch paper coil bound inside. Sketch paper too thin to paint on and its difficult to find the right size book and paper to fit it without wasting a lot of precious wc paper.
4. Canson mixed media sketchbook, nice paper, but heavy and bulky to carry around and fit inside your suitcase.
5. Old book cover with Arches paper bound inside with a wire coil at the top, almost perfect but a bit heavy and bulky when you are painting on the run.
6. Paper is folded in half and bound to cover with string or rubber bands, ok, good idea in theory but looks tacky.
7. I love this sketchbook, but it does have a few drawbacks. The Cheese-its Cover is a reminder not to take your artwork too seriously. Inside are lots of different kinds of papers, maybe too many, that's why its not perfect. However, the sketchbook is nice and light and travels well.
8. Global Art Handbook, ok, but the paper isn't wonderful for painting and I don't like the portrait orientation, and Global Arts are beautifully bound, but don't stand up to the rigors of my travels.
9. Moleskine large wc sketchbook, wonderful in all ways but too heavy for me to travel with.
10. Newest purchase, a Canson bound sketchbook, full of 90 lb. paper. Doing some tests on the paper to see if this one could make it to France with me.
11., 12, oops I skipped 13. and 14. this is getting boring you've probably stopped reading by now.
15. Moleskine pocket size wc sketchbook, perfect for daily quick sketches, but I need something that is as portable as this one but a little bit bigger......
I found this cart in a heap of junk piled in a corner of a thrift shop. It spoke to me. I don't mean I actually heard voices coming from the cart. It was just I kind of had an odd feeling that I needed this cart for my studio when I saw it across the room in the thrift shop. I paid $15 for it. As I pushed it to my car, it lost a wheel somewhere in the parking lot. After some searching the wheel was found and I squeezed my friends into my car around this cart to get it home. Luckily, the friends I was thrift shopping with were artists, so they were totally willing to sit like pretzels around the cart on the ride home.
My cart cleaned up nice and now sits beside my painting desk in my studio.
Not long ago I found the photo below of the studio of painter, Georgia O'Keefe. Study the picture very carefully and see if you notice anything. Look closely at the rolling cart on top of which she stored her cans of brushes and other painting paraphernalia. Notice any similarities? I think Georgia had the same exact cart as my thrift shop cart!
Think about this matter very carefully.....and it's implications.....What does it mean? Probably absolutely nothing. However the possible explanations I can conjure up in my imagination to give meaning to this random cart purchase are keeping me amused on this Saturday night. For instance, could my cart actually have belonged to Georgia? Was there some kind of artist to artist spirit that spoke to me when I walked into the thrift shop and was drawn to buy this cart? Could it mean the vibrations in Georgia's cart will somehow rub off on me and my studio and I will be rich and famous like Georgia? Again, probably not, but it can't hurt to dream........
I am using the travel easel I bought to take to Vermont in my San Diego dining room. It works quite well.
Gouache can be diluted and painted in thin layers like watercolor paint and can also be applied in thicker layers. You can get wonderful results with thick white gouache. I like it's versatility.
the more or less finished painting
Gouache week painting # 2
I think I am in love with gouache.
Gouache is opaque watercolor paint. Somehow I aquired 41 tubes of it. "Who bought it? Oh, I did." I took all the qouache out of the closet and organized it on my desk. Then I made a color sample chart to see how each brand and color looked. I made some interesting discoveries. The Giotto brand of gouache I bought in France two years ago was dry and didn't have much pigment. The cheap Reeves brand gouache I bought at Michaels 5 years ago was fine. Both the Winsor Newton brand and the Holbein brand were excellent.
I am declaring this week, Gouache Week. To observe Gouache Week I plan to paint a picture in my sketchbook every day with gouache. Want to join me?
I had to say good-bye to Vermont and return to California.
It was very sad to leave some new friends I made while staying at Hollister Hill Farm
I am applying some of the new painting techniques I learned from Susan Abbott to my old subject matter, the beach.
