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| My cousine, Marie, has joined us from Paris. What a sport! She loves all the crazy mixed media ideas I have. Got to love that! |
The River Sorgue surrounds the charming town, Isle sur la Sorgue, as if to hug it. Walking along the canals you will notice how they run between the narrow ancient streets. There are little bridges to cross and great wheels to look at with mossy blades turning in the river. It is also a wonderful place to paint reflections. We find a fabulous restaurant, Les Terrasse du Bassin, which turns out to be a perfect spot for enjoying the cafe as well as the perfect painting spot for painting on location. The river seems to be calmer here so the reflections on the water are perfect for painting.
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| The view across from Les Terrasses du Bassin with wonderful reflections in the water |
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| Helen’s wonderful painting of the reflections at our favorite spot. |
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| Sunday can be a fun day in St. Remy de Provence and this particular Sunday is the local waiter race. |
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| Waiters dressed up as chickens race too! |
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| Glasses on the trays are are filled with liquid at the beginning of the race. They are then measured at the ed of the race and lose of liquid is counted against the waiter. |
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| Just a question for you – How does one walk on these cobble stone streets in these shoes???? |
We use our library voices once we enter the grounds because we automatically experience a feeling of reverence and awe. We are literally walking on the same grounds where Vincent Van Gogh walked, stood and painted. He lived here for a year and produced almost 150 paintings!
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| Painting out back |
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| The lavender rows gave us great practice on perspective! |
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| Our lesson for the day was how to draw and paint arches. |
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| Suddenly a flock of French school children descend upon as and give us painting advice. |
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| First thing – Coffee! |
Our first stop was Gordes where we found a wonderful place to stop to take photos.
Gordes is a very beautiful old village, perched on the southern edge of the high Plateau de Vaucluse. The stone buildings built in tight against the base of the cliffs and those perched on the rocks above, including the 12th-century castle, are made of an beige stone that glows orange in the morning sun. The view from the village is a southern panorama out across fields and forests and small perched villages to the Montagne du Luberon.
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| We stop here to take photos of Gordes, one of France’s most beautiful village |
We arrive at Roussillon, famous for it’s red ochre with its red rocks, red stone buildings and red tile roofs. We spent several hours here painting.
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| Mary Ann, Kendra, Sharon, Helen and myself with Roussillon in the background |
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| I can not resist a “boule” of lavender ice cream! |
It is fun to see all the colorful baskets. Everything here has a glow of red that bounces off the stone walls. I feel like I could spend 100 days here painting!
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| Sharon’s Poppies! |
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| Kendra’s Paintings-on-the-go! |
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| The View from our painting spot under the wisteria at the Hotel du Soleil |
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| Helen’s water reflections |
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| Sharon painted this in less than an hour! What a colorful spontaneous feel to this field of poppies. |
First day of our workshop! The sun is shining and we walk to the Place Favier in St. Remy de Provence to paint on-site. It is a lovely town square with dappled light and the fountain is trickling and sure enough the town drunk is here too. He has stationed himself at his favorite park bench and his bottle of rose wine is more than half gone and it is 10:00 a.m. He was here 1 1/2 years ago when I brought my other group to paint and so I warn my students that it is best to stay away from him because the little bit of English that he can utter is not very pleasant. We, though, pass a very pleasant morning working on our paintings-on-the-go. I had the students put a watercolor wash on their sketchbook page prior to venturing out, so that we were ready to sketch on top of that on location.
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| Janviere, Mary Ann and Sharon exploring La Place Favier, St. Remy de Provence |
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| Janviere finishes her beautiful poppy painting! |
We enjoy a pleasant afternoon painting at our peaceful Hotel du Soleil. We have the whole place to ourselves!
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| Kendra and I show our paintings |
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| Sunlit wall in St. Remy |
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| Here is my journal painting of the sunlit wall in St. Remy |
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| Tired but upright we await the train from Paris to Avignon |
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| I try to capture some little hill top villages from the train window. I end up with lots of blurred photos! |
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Helen’s cute drawing of me taking photos out the train window
 Our train is going over a hundred miles per hours. We reach Avignon in just three hours! The French really know how to travel |
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| I am so happy to be out on the ground again. We spend time walking around Isle sur la Sorgue |
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| Isle sur la Sorgue |
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| Friday morning we take our trusty little Renault, Kangoo for a tour of the countryside. |
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| Colorful window dress display |
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| We meet some wonderfully nice French people. This lady is showing her Obama hat that someone sent her. Everyone is exited to talk to us about Obama and “Bean Ledanne” (Bin Ladin). |
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| We come to a screeching halt in our little Kangoo to take this photo of one of France’s 100 most beautiful villages, Gordes |
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| Finally we start to see what we came for, Poppies in Provence! |
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| More Poppies! |
OK, this is the part I agonize over even more than the choice which palette to take on my travels (see part I). There are only an limited amount of watercolor wells on any given palette. So which lucky colors will get to go with me to France?
First I start with a warm and a cool of each of the primary colors. Here are my thoughts, starting with the yellows. Hansa yellow medium, of course, because it is a cool yellow and plays well with cobalt and cerulean blue for great greens. It replaced Aureolin on my palette years ago because it is not fugitive. My warm yellow of choice is always New Gamboge. My cool red is Permanent Rose and the cool blue is Cerulean. My warm red is Winsor Red and the cool blue is Winsor or Phthalo blue. Here I run into my first delimma – should I include French Ultramarine or not. It is suppose to be the warmest of all the blues which intrigues me but I think it looks a lot like cobalt blue. It does make great darks but then so does Phthalo blue. It has bounced back a forth from being on my palette and then getting ousted. Sad day for French Ultramarine Blue – it stays behind!
Which colors are always on your palette? If you were stranded on an island, which colors would you absolutely have to have? These are the six that I could not live without!
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| My Daniel Smith Metal Palette |
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| Heritage Brand, also know as the Mijello Fusion Air Tight Palette |
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| My tiniest of all! |
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| Pages in my journal prepared for the trip |
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| First page in my new journal with inspiring quote. |
Well, this year I decided to quit complaining about the (crappy) watercolor paper and tore my Strathmore Sketchbook apart. I kept the metal coil and the black hard covers. I filled it with Arches 140 paper alternating with Strathmore 400 series drawing paper. I prepared the drawing papers with colorful backgrounds and finished the first page with an inspiring quote for my upcoming trip: “To Paint…. to travel…. the combine the two is to celebrate life” (Jack Brouwer).
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| The cover of my new “Strathmore” journal now filled with Arches watercolor paper! |
Stay tuned for my upcoming article in Cloth, Paper, Scissors magazine’s special edition, PAGES, on how to prepare these your jouranl pages with mixed-media and watercolor.
How do you prepare for your upcoming journeys? I would love to hear what special techniques and ideas you have!
