On The Road - Carnet de Voyage - Watercolor Sketchbook 12 x 17 cm

 I did a quick line drawing in the car, when we were driving home from Germany to France, surrounded by lovely landscape. It is a synthesis of the quickly changing view, in fact the bridge was already behind us, when I drew it.

The alternative title of the picture “Painting My Vision” came to my mind, when I later colored the drawing and added the special light  – which was something from other times and places, something my eye had stowed away in my mind during the holidays. The very special light of May, enhanced by ever-present blossoming rape fields. We travelled on the freeway and you can imagine that there were lots of cars on the road, not a very interesting sight, in my opinion. So I added a little cute red car with a lone driver.

I can see myself driving in this little car, listening to the radio, travelling  to a  remote place somewhere in the month of May, under the strange light of a coming thunderstorm….Painting my vision….

Door of the Hotel Du Nord - 2nd arrondissement Paris - Watercolor 9,5 x 12 inches / 25 x 32 cm

The other day I was walking through the 2nd Arrondissement in Paris with two friends, taking pictures for THE DOOR QUEENS PROJECT which Kim at Creative Influences originated.

This door caught my special attention. I was tempted to wring the bell (you can see there is one, at the left side) to see what happens. We thought it looked like what we call “Stundenhotel” in German, which means a hotel where you can rent rooms by the hour. Someone once had plants in flowerpots outside a now walled-up window….

Entrée du Chateau de Versailles

Chateau de Versailles - La Galerie des Glaces - The Mirror Gallery

Chateau de Versailles - La Galerie des Glaces - The Mirror Gallery - Amoretto

Chateau de Versailles - La Galerie des Glaces - The Mirror Gallery - The Gap

In my previous post I talked about hordes of tourists, and here I stand in the most famous “Galerie des Glaces” in the Chateau de Versailles, seemingly alone. It was a moment of chance, because right and left of the borders of the pictures are many people, but I got this snapshot, a Gap in the constant stream of Tourists rolling through the chateau !

Chateau de Versailles - La Galerie des Glaces - The Mirror Gallery - View onto the gardens

Above is what Marie-Antoinette would see nowadays, looking out of the window on a cloudy day in early April….what would she think?

La Galerie des Glaces - The Mirror Gallery - Double-Doors

I didn’t know it at the time, but this picture is now part of an ongoing artist-project by the “The Door Queens” – if you’d like to know more about it, please check Kim’s blog CREATIVE INFLUENCES!

I found this door here intruiging, mysterious, so SHUT! You want to know what’s behind it, no?

Chateau de Versailles - Galerie des Glaces - Luster

Chateau de Versailles - Empty Hallways - Only for us

My Mom and my Dad, while we were led through empty hallways and wonderful salons, exlusively. Heading for the elevator.

Le Chateau de Versaille - Le Grand Trianon

After the visit of the Chateau (they don’t show you all the rooms in there) we went onto a little train which took us to the Queen Marie-Antoinette’s PETIT TRIANON, via the Grand Trianon, which you see on the picture here. I took the picture from the little open train, which scuttled along and gave us a good shake before we reached the Petit Trianon….

We had to walk a while to reach the little houses there, and on our way my dad said: oh look, a dragon…

Parc du Chateau de Versailles - Petit Trianon - Dragon

Parc du Chateau de Versailles - Le Petit Trianon 3

Parc du Chateau de Versailles - Le Petit Trianon 4

Chateau de Versaille - Le Petit Trianon - A Modern Queen

That’s my sister in law, resting on a bench at one of Marie-Antoinette’s houses. We talked a lot about the fact that one person could have built all this just for her personal amusement….

Chateau de Versailles - Entrance

I’m letting out some steam now, planning one week of just idling the time away at home, or sort of. Just doing the things I really want to do. One of these things is keep writing blogposts to share my views of Paris and life with you! I have some precious pictures of the Chateau de Versailles, where I went with my family a couple weeks ago.

I had visited the Chateau before, 32 years ago, on motorcyles, with a German and two French friends. Hey, I’m not that old?

This time we took the bus. And the metro first. We went early, to avoid crowds. I can’t remember if the central entrance was as GOLDEN as this 32 years ago. I bet not. I don’t know, they must have re-done the guilding recently cause it looks so very golden and new:) We had booked tickets via internet, which was fine because we got inside really quickly. Once inside, we and all the other visitors (there were already many of them, despite the relatively early hour ) were all equipped with those audio-players, tripped over each other while figuring out how those things worked…

We went from room to room, trying to admire the paintings and the furniture and the wonderful lusters. I must say that this was made difficult because we were stuck in a crowd of Japanese tourists firing their cameras at every little detail on the wall and in the room, (sorry Japanese fellows, I don’t want to offend anyone here but you gave us a hard time in there) and not letting us go by a little more quickly:) So I unfortunately didn’t look much at the wonderful things exhibited but rather looked out of the windows onto the gardens, and admired the vastness.

There were two stories to visit and my mom had to take the elevator cause she doesn’t walk so well. A nice person took my mom, my dad and me in charge and accompanied us to a distant, otherwise inaccessible elevator, while the others, my husband, brother and sister in law went on with the crowd.  Now came part of the visit which I loved: we had to follow the guard along several empty hallways, corridors and enourmous rooms, beautifully wallpapered, with marvellous lusters and furniture, and there was not one other tourist in there! I took only one picture, the one with the wide luster in a stairway, and I love it.

Chateau de Versaille - Inner halls with beautiful luster

During the second part of the visit on the second floor, we saw the famous Mirror Gallery, I’ll have to show some pictures of this in my next post. For today, we are heading out now to the gardens of the Chateau de Versailles, were we stop at the “Petit Trianon”, the Quenn Antoinette’s “Playground” a vast area with large lawns, ponds, little bridges, and 12 romantic little cottage-hamlets, which she had built so to be able to ran away from the court’s stiff etiquette as often as she was allowed to. Don’t think about the money it took to build that while her subjects were having trouble to earn their daily bred! No. Just walk and admire those perfect little farm-houses with read-roofs, timber-framing, external circular staircases, and little bridges integrated, passing over brooklet full of carps who come and beg for food when you look at them:). Ok, enough for today, take care, have a wonderful weekend. See you at the Chateau de Versailles soon!

Chateau de Versailles - Beautiful statue at a fountain in the gardens

Chateau de Versailles - Miss Doodle getting dressed for the ball

Chateau de Versailles - Le petit Trianon - Queen Marie-Antoinette's "Playground"

Vue du Pont Alexandre III et du Pont de la Concorde - Watercolor 39 x 35 cm / 15,4 x 13,8 in

©estandrea – Parisdreamtime 2010

On a dark and cold morning in early April this view was offered to me.

I was on the upper open deck of a sightseeing double-decker tour through Paris with German friends who had come to visit me in Paris. My friends and I were frozen and dishevelled, but happy because it didn’t rain. Pont Alexandre III.  is one of the beautiful Paris bridges, offered to France by Tsar Alexander III. of Russia, emphasizing the French-Russian Alliance. It’s structure is made of metal and was finished in 1900, on schedule for the World Exhibition. In the background you can see a much older bridge, the “Pont de la Concorde”, finished in 1791.

The technical aspects of this painting were challenging for me, due to the perspective and also to the characteristics of the paper I used. This paper has a very uneven, rough surface, although when you touch it, it’s smooth at the same time. You better not get obsessed with detail when you use rough watercolor paper. Once you are beyond wanting details, you will be fine:)…

I wish you a nice week.

PS: On the original artwork the top of the lamppost has more space left around it:)

I didn’t mess it up and will now move on with this technique, which I love. Put only ever so subtle layers of pigments, much water, dry it with handdryer, then go on like this, letting it sit for some days perhaps, get away from it and then put on more color to obtain depth.

I searched for a poem for this painting, and found this one here by Rilke, whom I love. I can read this poem many many times and still probably don’t understand it fully, but it’s so beautiful…

A WALK

Already my gaze is upon the hill, the sunny one,
at the end of the path which I’ve only just begun.
So we are grasped, by that which we could not grasp,
at such great distance, so fully manifest—

and it changes us, even when we do not reach it,
into something that, hardly sensing it, we already are;
a sign appears, echoing our own sign . . .
But what we sense is the falling winds. (Rainer Maria Rilke, 1924)

Trocadero on a cold and misty day - Watercolor 24 x 30 cm - 9,5 x 12 in ©estandrea 2010

Spaziergang

Schon ist mein Blick am Hügel, dem besonnten,
dem Wege, den ich kaum begann, voran.
So fasst uns das, was wir nicht fassen konnten,
voller Erscheinung, aus der Ferne an—

und wandelt uns, auch wenn wirs nicht erreichen,
in jenes, das wir, kaum es ahnend, sind;
ein Zeichen weht, erwidernd unserm Zeichen . . .
Wir aber spüren nur den Gegenwind. (Rainer Maria Rilke, 1924)

Le Pianiste Place de la Contrescarpe - Paris V. Watercolor Painting, 9,5 x 12 in - 24 x 30 cm

©estandrea 2010 purchase information: you can buy this original waterpainting, please contact me cestandrea at gmail dot com if you are interested!

Today, January 7th, 2010, snow has fallen during the night, all the cars in my street are white, a very unusual sight. It’s minus 6° C, which is very cold for Parisian standard. People have packed their Christmas-window decoration away (we did too), and you can see discarded Christmas trees in the streets, waiting to be picked up by the garbage removal. A friend of mine always says: “January is the longest month”, she means that it seems to stretch out forever.

Yesterday was the 6th, which means that many families celebrate Epiphany, buying a “galette des rois”, a fine filo pastry cake, with a filling of marzipan. This cake traditionally comes with a golden papercrown and hides a “Fève” which means “bean” but is not a bean. Probably it has been in former times, but now it is a little ceramic figure, representing the miniature holy Mary, or a bottle of wine or a little animal or whatever. So,the person who picks the part of cake with the “Fève” in it, will be the king. King of the day.

Yesterday was also the start of the winter sales here in Paris. So, again, the metro is crowded with people on a shopping trip, hunting for their favourite designer clothes at a reasonable  price. In my favourite little boutique “Cinabre” on Boulevard Voltairebought a calf-long plum colored wool skirt, and a fine black wool top, made by a Japanese designer, plus two bonnets (hats), one rasperry colored and flowerpotshaped:) , the other grey and more like a “casquette”, oh and a pair of earrings, all at a very reasonable price. I’m wearing this now, and will soon brave the cold outside. Waiting for spring already….. Have a wonderful week!

PS: just an information which might interest you, if you also promote your art via Zazzle: I stop working with Zazzle as one of my readers ordered postcards with my prints, and was very disappointed about the bad quality of the paper.  I then decided only to sell my original art or original prints on demand, do the printing myself on first quality art paper and deliver a certificate of origin with it.

Vide Grenier Place Monge Watercolor Painting 9,5 x 12 in - 24 x 30 cm

click on image to enlarge it

Yard sale means “vide grenier” in French, which means “empty the attic”:)

There are always still lifes to discover when you visit yard sales. All those objects people have loved for a time before getting too used the them. When you get too used to an object, you have to make place for another one? I loved this composition here, positioned on a corner of the street.

I’d love to know the Wooden Native American Chief’s thoughts about all those people passing by, some see him some don’t. And the owl, made of wood too,  looks as always, beautiful and wise. Peculiar:  those two ceramical objects, the brownish car with the soldier and the two women and the green solder in uniform who holds one hand up, “victory”. Nostalgic: the three  red wooden little Oldtimer cars, , the white porcelaine swan and the mauve dog, a Spitz. A puppet or kind of clown with a red nose, a pair of brown suede shoes (had no place to paint the pair of them:), (empty) picture frames and old yellowish books. Perhaps one day this year’s Christmas presents will end up like this? Then I guess they will be lucky, cause they hopefully don’t end up in the waste bin…

Happy Holiday Times to you all.

click on the picture to enlarge it

Tomorrow: LOTTERY RESULTS, report and pictures about the IRON LADY.

Today: You can sign up if you want to receive Parisdreamtime News in your mailbox, subscription option in the left sidebar:)

See you tomorrow,

love

Andrea

love

andrea