Parisian Days

In Paris we stayed at the Hotel Home Latin, near Notre Dame and the Fontaine Sainte Michel. Lauren's red hair started to become a theme between breakfast and a visit to the fountain...
...and kept on appearing after another visit to Shakespeare and Company, during which the piano was discovered :) Lauren played as I drew. One of the best moments of the trip for sure.

We went back to Shakespeare and Co. later on (for the third time) for a music performance by an expatriate American girl. While waiting for her to start, we got to sit amongst a crowd of interesting people milling about outside the store. The other half of the page was more coffee painting - with the discovery of using cocoa powder for the darks, courtesy of Lauren Duda!

Sainte Chapelle was beautiful, and so so difficult to convey in paint.

After spending the morning at Sainte Chapelle, we took the metro to Gobelins, the famous animation school. After a failed attempt to get in, a kindly student basically snuck us past the desk, and though after talking to the administration we were still unable to get a tour, we did get to walk the corridors and see what their workspace was like. They have these big sunny rooms with tall windows, and each student has a light table and a computer of their own to work at. It was so exciting just to be there! You could feel the energy in the air.

We were all kind of shellshocked by the sheer awesomeness of seeing Gobelins, so after leaving we went to the aquarium to draw some nice calming fish. Instead we got the ugliest and most unsettling horrors the sea could produce. But it was still pretty fun :)

We wrapped up the day with a fancy dinner at the Musee d'Orsay, followed by a visit to the glowing spectacle of the Tour Eiffel. Underneath the arch of the tower were hordes of guys selling cheap junk to tourists. Some were selling these light-up whirligigs which they'd shoot off into the air, creating glowing color trails in the night.


Last of the Paris sketches soon to come!