High Contrast Grey.

The bar I have come to find as being my favorite in this town I was told has a 60s night every last Friday of the month.  I put on my black skinny tie. I look at my outfit in my reflection on the metro but still feel more 30s than 60s. The last Friday fell into the time frame of spring break and so the bar was dead in comparison to how I usually see it. Turn tables in the basement turning little obscure 45s. Pretty people in vintage clothing. Dancing in the basement, I keep trying to get out of the way for others meeting their friends and end up dancing next to the turn tables. Front row, center. A question in French about my bondage belt. I have no idea what the specifics of the question are and mutter some things. Agree. And start dancing again. The metro ends at 00.30. I look at my watch and decide 'fuck it.' The bar starts closing at 00.40. We hang out in the street. A huge crowd. Slowly dispersing. "After party chez moi!" We walk up a wooden staircase. P...

Since the castle was closed on Monday and Fougères was such a neat little town a return spur of the moment trip was planned. It still had that eerie feeling with no one about except a few old ladies who gave us odd looks as we walked through their neighborhood taking quick snapshots of their quaint little cottages. The doors had a je ne sais quoi beauty about them that I couldn't help but photograph. The weather was beautiful this time. Overcast. Tiny droplets hovering in the air to be caught by the lenses on my glasses. The castle was shrouded in a thin layer of fog. Old. Covered in moss. We were given a little electronic thing we held up to our ears to hear the history of the castle. Voices with unknown accents. Each voice served a role; dull history, military history, high pitched feminine. We would laugh unsyncronized at word choice. About halfway through the different things to listen to we gave up. The knowledge of the thickness of each of the towers was not exact...

 We left Rennes in the morning with the plan of hopping a few buses to go to Saint Malo, but as we rode the bus through Dinan we decided that we should just hop out and check out this town. Medieval. Steep hills with narrow cobbled winding streets. An antique store or artist gallery on almost every street (or so it felt). This was definitely an interesting little town. Sadly because of it being a vacation for most of the country a lot of the interesting little shops were closed. Peering into darkened store fronts. When we arrived it was right at lunch time so I thought it would be nice to find a little 'hole in the wall' restaurant to get some food. We wandered all over, tracing back over our steps until we came to Crêperie des Artisans just past the opening of the city wall constructed in the 14th century. When we walked in we were greeted with a collection of antiques and everything in a shade of brown, plus the unmistakable aroma of burning wood. They had a pot...

The other day I was told about how to use the bus system here in France. I kept thinking that it was something like the train system where one needed to find a ticket somehow beforehand, but I found that it is much simpler than that. A person goes to the station pays about €3 and then waits fof the bus, or else it is possible to pay for the bus on the bus. Anyways, I went by the station early Monday morning to figure out times and prices and found that for only €3,40 I could get a ticket for Fougères. So I get the ticket and wait at the bus stop for the next few minutes for the bus to arrive. A dull drive through the country side that has started showing the brown of winter. I kind of wish I had brought my mp3 player to have a sound track to the drive, but I hadn't planned on leaving town and sitting in a bus. The bus comes in to the town from the side that has all the medieval buildings. I wander off the bus at some random stop before the bus station to look at all the m...

A tradition I developed back in Seattle was that I would go for a long walk and admire the beauty of the city. October 2007 I go for a walk on Capitol Hill. Its raining hard. I put Hang Me Out to Dry by the Cold Wars Kids on repeat. Or rather I just pushed the back button each time it came to an end. A faulty download that ended a few seconds short. Mid breath. Last word lost. Thankfully the nights have started warming up again and allowing me to walk and see them once again. Cloud cover trapping the heat. The stars become lost and replaced by the street lights above. I have loved wandering Rennes at night. The inspiration it provides. The way the light dances off the buildings. The way the cobbled streets shine irregulary when wet from the latest rain. The mixture of colors of lights. The complex beauty that is a city at night. Where people are either illuminated by the lights around them or shrouded in darkness. The idea that one can become lost. One thing I have n...

One of my professors has been wearing an old fishbone suit jacket. Only 1.5 of the buttons remain on the cuff of his left sleeve. I found the patern to be interesting though and wanted to see how it would look applied as a texture. It seems to have worked for the most part (even if the detail is too small for the camera to capture properly), although initially my idea was to ink in the detail, paint a thin layer of color and then ink in the detail again but I kind of like how this is working at the moment. Mustache or no mustache. It is times like these that I miss having my tripod. It could make things so much easier if in the middle of the night I could take reference photos of myself.

One of the problems that I constantly run into when I have two art classes is that I don't always know how to divvy up my time so that I work on all projects at the same pace and intensity. I feel like my comic has been neglected as I have tried to figure out my painting. I over heard the prof last week say that there is a two page maximum so, my initial idea for three pages has been cut and repeating frames have dropped down a lot. The last four frames are still being repeated (with slight alteration of the last), which will hopefully make this go faster and help me finish by the deadline of tomorrow.

At an old château we wander the grounds to find part of the building old and in ruins, but an arch over head has a skull inbeded in it. Marking a catacombe. We open the cellar doors and decend. Pictures of pop culture line the way. Once down in the catacombes it appears as if everything is arraged like an antique mall. Little stalls of funiture and little trinquets. I find some little fabric button looking this. One of the people with me remarks their name and starts to take them off of the index card they have been placed on. I don't recognize the word that the other person used. I ask him and he repeats it. One of those things that perhaps only exist in dreams. Vaguely French. He goes on to explain that they are little buttons that are pinned onto one's collar as decoration. I comment that we should try to sell most of this stuff in a garage sale. I then come across a tall dresser with a small collection of asian figurines fornicating on top. Like the ivory figurines...

I have found that the encre de chine is not actually water proof so as I try to paint in where the chinese lanters will be going the black ink mixed in with the white paint. Hopefully this will stop happening once I build up a few layers of paint. I like the direction this is going so far. I just wish I knew how to make the colors of buildings with yellow street lights shining on them at night. The contradictions of light shining on dark. All of this is still very loose as I paint it. Finding the right colors for now to come back later and bring the detail back/add more. Taking breaks I took out my tarot deck to show it to Inga. I deal us both a couple of hands. Past, present, future. I think the first card I drew for my future was perfect to explain the fears and anxieties surounding my future of returning to the states. It was one of the darker cards in the deck that doesn't come up too often. Not shades of gold like the others, but black and blue. The image was of a hand ...

Bringing a bit of Paris with me, in the sense of simple breakfast food. I made myself a bagette with butter and jam for breakfast. A bagette that has lasted me days in making the same meal multiple times. The crust has become hard and crumbly, but the center has remained soft. Last night I started to make myself some ravioli I bought cheap from the carrefour, but as I poured the noodles into the water beginning to boil I noticed that mold had started to form on them. (The downside of buying things on their day of expiration.) Let down and left a little hungry I decided to treat myself to a nice sunday brunch the next day at L'épicerie. One of the few places open on sunday. It has a cozy interior. /I noticed them selling antiques at one of the local antique markets once/. Paying attention to when being seated I ask to be sat in the back room with Inga. Filled with antiques and coated in wallpaper. The menu is rather limited to just tartines (the specials of the day always ...

I worked most of today on this, but yet in looking at it so little of it looks changed. Perhaps it is just the calm before the storm. I was hoping that the mixture that I had made with my acrylic would be more of a wood grain color and not this blue green hue, but oh well. It is just the initial layer for the shutters. I am not too sure what color I should go with for the shutters at this point as I am thinking that the store front will be green and the canopy will be blue, if I should try to play up contrasts or not. Perhaps I will paint over the paper that I use for the canopy and give it even more layering and depth, perhaps not and the paper will just be perfect how it is.

A cold night and bar hopping around. The enterior if this bar is always so gorgeous. The wooden walls. The low beamed ceiling. The old picture frames on the walls. But the dance music last night just didn't fit, but like many things, perhaps that is why it fits. A pastis served in a tumblr. Dark yellow brown like the absinthe in San Francisco. Stiff.

I decided to move my blog that had been on Tumblr over to here. Perhaps give another community a try. It seems like Tumblr is more for just posting random images, so my attempt to use it as a blog was me fighting to make something that it wasn't. Now I just have to go through and resize all of my photos stretching back to 2009. It seems that the transfer cut off the first few posts that I had made way back then.. oh well.

Still working in this painting and feeling as though I am moving 'at a snail's pace,' which I believe my prof thought the same since he said that it seems like I haven't worked on it too much since last week. I really look forward to reaching the point where I will be able to begin to use my acrylic paint, but first I need to finish planning everything out in ink so the perspective stays correct.

I am not sure what is going on here, but as I walked by this rather modern building I was taken back to see the salon style setup of art on the walls inside. Voyeuristic tendencies. This is the same place that will be hosting the broadway musical Cabaret in less than a month after it leaves Paris. I should really get on trying to get tickets for that becfore it gets to be too late.

It seems that none of the architecture, nor the city planning is straight in France. The nights have been cold and where the ability to take reference photos of Rennes at night was presented, I had to cut it short as my fingers began to freeze so much that even the simple operations on my camera became difficult. J’ai lu une article sur le sujet de… I have a feeling that when I return that all these photos that I have taken will become my lifeline for artistic inspiration. I still have 800 some photos left on my SD card.. it feels strange that I will have not cleared the card for almost a year by the time I return to the states. A collection that I hope to never lose.

At one point a local street artist had taken a marker to give her a speach bubble with “sexe=$” I feel as though this Delacroix reproduction represents the problem with white consumer culture and the rest of the world. It doesn’t help that a few of them look like they could be extras for Jersey Shore. I will admit that I do like that I am able to see exposed breasts while walking around in France for the simple fact that people shouldn’t feel ashamed of their own body. We are all human and we all have either one set of sexual organs or another (sometimes both..).  Things to miss when returning to a conservative america. A contradictive conservative america.

The moon rises over the trees as I run out of my room to catch the metro. Hot chocolate with something mint flavored and alcoholic. A silent film addresses the emergence of the talkies. A culture of reflection.

For my comics class we have been assigned to make a short comic about an object that means something to us. Since I came to France with just the basics I thought that I would do it on the little Tintin figurine I used in my architecture class last semester to represent me while I am roaming the country of France taking photos.

Continuing down the long path of getting this painting’s line work before the paint done. There are so many little details to do that it is getting a bit tiring that I can’t just jump in with the acrylic paint right now.

Sunday lunch. Jessye sent me a few packets of asian soup flavorings and some dried seaweed, which she said goes great with rice. A lot of white to match the snow covered ground outside. I thought I was going to be able to get away from winter while I was in France, but I guess not.. At least it seems to be melting quickly. All last night the sky glowed a golden yellow as the street lights reflected off of the snow and the clouds.

Using ink to establish all the darkest areas. I have been enjoying the results of playing with the colored gel pens. Sadly the metalic aspects just don’t photograph so I can’t really share it with my friends back in the States.

Establishing the figure. He feels a bit emotionless right now, and I am not sure if I am wanting to play that up some more, or to add some emotion to him. I’m thinking I will try to give him some heavy eyelids to play up the drink in his hand.. hopefully that will give me the emotions I am looking for.

The troupe that puts on the shows of Rocky Horror Picture Show in Paris came over to Rennes for a free show. The film was shown in English but the jokes being said by the performers were a mixture of French and English. This was probably the one time I have seen the show in public and was still able to follow the film because the crowd in Rennes didn’t know all the things to yell, like they do in Seattle.

Initial pencil sketch. To make the angles less harsh for the perspective I nailed a string to my wall and have been using that as a crude straightedge. It seems to be working alright so far, except that everytime I need to put something else into perspective I need to renail the picture to the wall.