Watercolor Sketch at the Albert Kahn Museum and Gardens in Paris

I haven’t posted a watercolor travel sketch for a while so today I’m sharing one I did when I lived in Paris.  One nice thing about living in a city that one normally just visits is that once you have gone to all the museums and sites that are the most popular and that you would see as a tourist,  you start to discover and explore places that are off the beaten path.  The Albert Kahn Museum and Gardens in one of those places.

Albert Kahn was a 20th century philanthropist who made it his mission to document the planet.  He financed many discovery missions all of the world.  The museum houses his archive of autochrome Lumière photography (color photos on glass plates) collections from 60 countries.

The thing that is the most spectacular about the museum is it’s gardens.  Comprising 10 acres it’s organized in sections modeled on gardens from around the world: a contemporary and village style Japanese garden, a rocky Vosgienne forest and English and French Gardens.  There is also a Japanese tea pavilion where on certain days you can participate in a traditional Japanese tea ceremony led by a tea master from Kyoto.

I went to the gardens a few times in the spring because it was so such a relaxing place and was hardly ever crowded which made it the perfect place to sketch.  This sketch was done overlooking the Japanese bridge.

If you are interested in going, the museum and gardens are located in Boulogne-Billancourt at 10-14 rue du Port.  One can easily get there by metro or bus.

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Work in Progress of Gate of Reverence, Watercolor

I've completed the details on the gate's ironwork.  Next I'll be adding details on the background, and then finally adjusting values overall until they are where I want them.  I'm happy with the gate so far!  I'll be taking a break from this one to work on another small painting.  Stay tuned!

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Work in Progress, Gate of Reverence, Watercolor

More work in progress of this painting, Gate of Reverence.  This is still in the block in phase.  I'm not concerned about being super tight and getting things exactly how I want them at this point.  All of that will come later after the initial color block in is complete.

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Work in Progress, Gate of Reverence, Watercolor

More progress on this new painting.  I'm approaching this one similar to the last painting, Paris Passy Gate, and also to how I would do an oil painting.  I'm doing a block in of all the color first, and then will go back and add details and value changes.  This is what I call the teenager phase of the painting!  I hope it grows up and turns out.

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Work in Progress, "Gate of Reverence", Watercolor

Last week I designed and started a new painting also inspired like Paris Passy Gate, by the area where I lived in Paris.  This is the third in a "Gate" series.  I'm very intrigued by the design of gates and metal work, and like focusing on a detail that lends itself to the composition having abstract qualities and the mystery of what lies beyond.

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New Work Paris Passy Gate

Paris Passy Gate

$2,500.00

Watercolor on Archival Handmade Paper, Framed

22" x 19," (56 cm x 48 cm)

Framed Size 30.35" x 27.5," price includes frame

Accepted into the 2015 Pennsylvania International Exhibition at The Carlisle Arts Learning Center

Inspired by the Passy area where I lived in Paris. For more information please visit my blog by clicking here.

Email me for purchase information.

Purchase

I’m happy to post that Paris Passy Gate, c’est fini!  If you have been following my blog or Facebook pages I have been documenting the work in progress on this painting.  The last post I had all the block in completed and needed to analyze the painting for value and add details.  I hope you can see what a difference value makes!  There is a saying among artists and no one I’ve talked to seems to know the origination of the quote.  “Color gets all the credit, but value does all the work.”  This is so true.  You can paint something in a completely different color scheme than what the original subject is, and it will work if the values are correct.

My goal for this painting was to experiment with getting a lot of texture from the pigments and work with a grayed palette.  I’m very happy with the outcome.  I’m always nostalgic for Paris especially in the spring time, and wanted to capture a place in the area where I lived which is also down the street from the apartment of a very dear friend I met while living there.  When we met she was 90 years old but seemed like she was in her 70’s.  We met by chance in a cafe and she started speaking with me in English because she had been married to an American man whom she met in Paris on V-day after WW II.  From the day we met we got together almost every week for lunch and we are still friends and speak on the phone often.  I thought of our special friendship a lot while working on this painting.

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Watercolor Sketching in the Parc de Bagatelle, Paris

A little gem in the Bois de Boulogne is Parc de Bagatelle.  I was determined to go on a lovely spring day with my sketchbook right after we moved to Paris and thought I would brave the bus system for the first time.  For those who have never visited the Bois (forest), it is HUGE and some areas can be a bit dodgy, which I won’t get into in this post!  Needles to say because it is so big there are many lovely areas to explore and families flock there on the weekends to commune with nature.  One of the most popular ares in the Bois  is the Parc de Bagatelle. It was created in 1775 and is one of four botanical gardens in Paris.

One of the most popular features of the Parc is the rose garden, boasting over 10,000 bushes from 1,200 different species.  In the spring the peonies and the iris garden are just as spectacular.

I got off the bus at what I thought was the closest stop only to realize after I’d walked more than a mile, I still had a long way to go!  My option at that point was to turn back and try to get back on the bus and hope to get closer or keep on walking, which I did.

I finally made it to the entrance near the Chateau and parked my self on a bench near a gorgeous row of peonies and did this sketch.  The Chateau was built by thebrother in law of Marie Antoinette.  She wagered that he couldn’t built it in three months and he won the bet! From start to finish it took 64 days.

WhenI sketch architecture I like to combine watercolor with a permanent ink pen.  I had gotten a set of sepia color Pitt pens which I tried out on this one.  I like the brown tone to the pen which doesn’t seem as harsh as the black.

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Birth of Impressionism and the Musee Marmottan Monet in Paris

Ahhhh April in Paris!  What a better month to hold an art exhibition. On this day exactly one hundred and forty years ago was an exhibition that changed the art world forever.

On April 15, 1874 a small group of artists put together a small independent art show to buck the establishment of academic painters and salons.  This exhibition led by artists Claude Monet featured other works by, Edgar Degas, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro and Berthe Morisot.  They called themselves the Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptures, etc.

It wasn’t untilfrench art critique Louis Leroy entitled his nasty, scathing critique in a french newspaper, “Exhibition of Impressionists”  for which one particular painting by Claude Monet inspired this title, that the group would eventually be coined the “Impressionists.”   It was his, Impression: Sunrise.

When I lived in Paris I was so fortunate to see this painting many times as well as other works by Monet, Renoir and Morisot at the Musée Mormottan Monet, which is in the 16th arrondissement only a few blocks from where I lived.  Originally a hunting lodge on the edge of the Bois de Boulogne, it is a gem of a museum.  It has been bequeathed with many beautiful works of art over the years, most notably in 1966, Michel Monet’s collection of works inherited from his father.

What I love about Monet’scollection here is there are works that seem to be works in progress and those that weredone during his later years when he was afflicted with cataracts.  With these one can get a sense of his painting process. And the color palette from the cataract years is much warmer with golds and yellows,  not typically Monet but are gorgeous.

It wasn’t until the third exhibition by these plus other independent artists that they gave in and officially called them selves “Impressionists.”

Today on the birthday of this major art movement I wanted to pay homage to the “Artists Independent” who later became known as “Impressionists,”  the painting that coined the term, and the Museum where it currently residues!

A side note, Impression: Sunrise was stolen from the Musée Marmottan Monet in 1985, recovered in 1990 and has been back on display since 1991.

These are the artists that participated in the first Impressionist Exhibition:

• Zacharie Astruc

• Antoine-Ferdinand Attendu

• Édouard Béliard

• Eugène Boudin

• Félix Braquemond

• Édouard Brandon

• Pierre-Isidore Bureau

• Adolphe-Félix Cals

• Paul Cézanne

• Gustave Colin

• Louis Debras

• Edgar Degas

• Jean-Baptiste Armand Guillaumin

• Louis LaTouche

• Ludovic-Napoléon Lepic

• Stanislas Lepine

• Jean-Baptiste-Léopold Levert

• Alfred Meyer

• Auguste De Molins

• Claude Monet

• Mademoiselle Berthe Morisot

• Mulot-Durivage

• Joseph DeNittis

• Auguste-Louis-Marie Ottin

• Léon-Auguste Ottin

• Camille Pissarro

• Pierre-Auguste Renoir

• Stanislas-Henri Rouart

• Léopold Robert

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Work in Progress: Paris Passy Gate Now the Magic Happens

The block in for this painting Paris Passy Gate is complete and now I’ll move onto the next phase, pushing and pulling value and adding the details.  I’m very happy with the initial washes and the texture I was after to convey the patina on this bronze gate.  But over all the values are pretty mid-tone.  I want to darken areas and lighten areas.  That is what I mean by push and pull.  I will pull lights out and forward and push darks back.  The details I’ll add will be more emphasis on shadows and elements of the design that come after an initial wash.  I really love this part of painting, it’s when the magic happens and it starts to come to life!

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Work in Progress: Paris Passy Gate

I am always fascinated with details, behind the scenes and the logistics of doing certain things.  I think that’s one of the reasons why I became a designer.  In the past I have shown some work in progress photos of a painting after I had completed it.  This time, I thought I would share them while I was actually doing it!  It’s great for me to actually see the progression too.  When you see the image on the computer monitor, it can be more obvious what tweaks or modifications need to happen!  I hope those that are following my blog are enjoying this step by step process.

This phase of the painting I call the “block in” phase.  I have not gone over very much of this a second time to make adjustments.  Watercolor artists paint with this medium in so many different ways, wet on dry paper, wet on moist paper, wet on wet paper, glazing, etc.  That’s what makes it so exciting to work with.

I like to try to get everything the way I want it the first time, however nine times out of ten that never happens!  Therefore when everything is blocked in, I go on to the next phase. That’s when all the magic happens.   Stay tuned!

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