2007 France Trip Sketchbook – Samantha C George

France Trip Sketchbook, 2007
The sketches below are from a class trip I took to France in 2007, in my sophomore year of college. We basically frolicked (the other students walked) around museums Paris and the surrounding areas with be best guides you could possibly have, art history teachers. Hell yes. The only assignment for the class was to keep a sketchbook with a certain number of pages, to be turned in and reviewed at the end of the 14 day trip for a grade. I am pleased to say that I got full marks on my sketchbook.

Sketch of Art Nouveau bookcase in Orsay Museum — Favorite museum ever! This is a drawing of the side of a bookcase designed by Francois-Rupert Carabin with the Art Nouveau furniture. The heads supposedly symbolize massks of Vanity, Greed, Anger etc that are the enimies of intelligence and are vanquished by books. Of course, I loved the product design section of the fine art museum, lol.

ink and watercolor sketch of ducks and boats in Paris — I love this sketch because it is the first time I used my favorite fountian pen with watercolor. My Parker 51 and watercolor has become one of my favorite mediums. Back in 2007 I had not yet discovered waterproof fountian pen ink, so the black lines bleed wherever the watercolor touched.

watercolor sketch of a bronze stature of a woman — I think this statue is at the top of a set of stairs coming out of the subay entrance to the Louvre. All my friends that smoked (Art school: basically all of them) would congregate there.

ink and watercolor sketch of art in a museum

sketch of ornate details in France — I am very attracted to ornate details, espeshially in architecture.

sketch of the exterior of the Cluny Museum in Paris

sketch of stained glass windows, lion and angel making funny faces — I don’t remember where this is from, but I swear they were both really making those faces.

sketch of artifacts from the French Museum of Antiquities — Artifacts and windows from the museum.

graphit on toned paper sketch of gargoyles — I found these little guys on the sides of a big urn planter thing inside of a Chateau. They were among many ornate details in the house, but I just love them.

A sketch of the inside of a restaurant in Paris

sketch of Hammeau behind Versailles — Marie had a miniature peasant village (“Hammeau”) built in her private gardens behind Versailles. It reminds me a lot of “fantasyland” in Disneyland; an idealized, cute, rustic little village like we would all like to imagine peasants live in. These swans were in a pond there.

sketch of swans in a pond in Marie Antoinette's Hammeau — Everything about this faux little peasant village is the picture of Disney-style cuteness. Makes it easier to understand how you might imagine that the peasants would not riot and cut off your head.

sketch of a skull and text — There are a lot of plaques on the walls and I copied the text that I thought looked interesting. I have no idea what that says.

sketches of bones in the catacombs under Paris

This class made me realize a few things about sketchbooks:

1) I really really like looking at other peoples sketchbooks, art and blogs.
The “textbook” for this class was “Drawing from Life: The Journal As Art“. It is a collection of the journals of many creative people. Some are sketchbooks, others are more esoteric. I still flip though this book often. It got me interested in looking at other peoples blogs, and for similar books. “An Illustrated Life” is another great one.

2) I love drawing
Yep, a lot. And if you draw a lot, even for just 14 days you actually see immediate improvement.

3) I love writing.
I like writing down little thoughts almost as much as a like drawing. I find that I work out problems I didn’t even know I needed to in the process. Journaling is always on those “7-Habits-of-Highly-Productive-Geniuses that make you feel inadequate” lists that people link to on fb. There might be something to that.

4) I need a place to make a mess, there is no such thing as perfect.
I still work on remembering this everyday. Keeping this sketchbook helped me fully appreciate how much of a mess I need to make to create a single non-mess. (Incidentally same rule apples to beauty regimens, how much time do you spend looking goofy with curlers in your hair or contorting your face to apply mascara in order to look “perfect”?).

It also helped me realize that even “bad drawings” and “mistakes” are kind of beautiful in a sketchbook. It’s the nature of the medium. Sometimes the person you are drawing walks away, or your dog chews the spine. Sometimes you spill a bunch of what you are eating on the page, creating what I choose to call an “artistic patina”.

5) It is horrible to have to “fill pages” to meet a quota.
See above re: I hate homework.

6) Drawing in public is awesome and not scary.
Drawing in public takes getting used to. But in a foreign country where you don’t speak the language and are traveling with a group of people who all also have to fill a sketchbook in 14 days, it seems totally normal. Even here people have 3 responses: they either ignore you, are fascinated, or tell you you can’t sit there.

7) This is how I “create memories”.
Nothing takes me back to a specific moment like looking back through sketchbooks. I capture details I would never think to take photos of. I am also abysmal at photography (fortunately my boyfriend captures our life in photos beautifully. He needs to stop procrastinating making a blog for his photography, and when he does I will replace this nagging sentence with a link to it).