Paris Paris, qu’est-ce que c’est Paris?
In retrospect, I suppose this title should be “France” instead of “Paris”, since not all of the structures we will be talking about are located in Paris… but these are the lyrics to a song, so I’m leaving it alone. I digress… Let’s go on a little visual voyage to France, shall we?
This is an 11” x 17” piece that I finished recently, that has three separate images on it of, you guessed it, places in France.
The top is the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris (which makes the blog post title relevant, thankyouverymuch). The last time I saw Notre Dame (back in 1998), it had no scaffolding, and there was no fire damage to repair. Fast forward a bunch of years, and I really hope it is getting back into a healthy, structurally sound state of being again, post-fire.
So… Here is the line phase. As you can see, each image was made with its own single line, but I did not connect the three together (and yet they all seem to get along on a single page.
Here is a closer look at the cathedral.
Mont Saint-Michel is next in this piece. Depending on the day, this place can look completely different (water? sure! No water, ok we can do that, too). I remember walking it, and shopping a few stores. And a visit to the cathedral, bien sûr.
I like drawing places like this, because there is a lot going on. So they can either to our like a jumbled mess, or they can stay more organized so that you can actually decipher what the place is (pretty sure I accomplished the latter, in this particular case, non?)
To round out this grouping, the Sacré-Cœur, located a the top of the hill of Montmartre in Paris. Again, my memory of actually visiting this place is rusty (because it has now been over two decades since I was an exchange student - how did THAT happen?).
However, I can tell you that the structure itself was fun to draw. So… Violà:
Honestly I don’t know why I started using painters tape, but the best part of doing these lately is taking the tape off and seeing the big reveal. Trust me, it’s fun.
The tape comes off, and here’s the final result. I find that I work with blues and yellows a -lot- in my artwork. These actually all tie together nicely and I think having similar colors helps in that regard.
Here are just a few closer-up shots of each structure.
Next up…
And lastly…
This piece is available on my website; you can peruse it here.
Thank you for reading through this art adventure (hopefully I wasn’t a terrible tour guide!)
Where should my art travel to next?