Initial layers of acrylic.

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 coming out of something abstract and reaching for the earth, but the only area of the earth that can be made out is Europe. This place is going to be hard to leave. It will be nice to return to family and friends and have some kind of notion of being able to prepare for a future and know that I won't have to leave everything behind by a certain date.
Both of our two hands each ended with the futures seeming somewhat dark. Perhaps it was just the theme for the night.

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Windy Coffee. [part 1]

Fulya was looking at my sketchbook the other day and remarked that she liked the random sketch that I had made of some girl that I saw walking along with a little plastic cup of coffee during the wind storm a few weeks past. As I still have some small pieces of very good watercolor paper [that I had sized to be used for some small frames I had collected but did not have anything to put in them yet], I thought that perhaps I could transfer a little sketch to a little piece of paper to play with techniques. Namely the layering of water colors. Something that I know I have been working on a lot, but practice makes perfect. I also wanted to see how using my new mechanical pencil filled with blue graphite would work in hiding my lines as I initially worked. I forgot to take a picture of the transition between not having the girl inked at all to inking her and starting the background. I was having a hell of a time trying to figure out a setting in which to put her. At first I was th

French underworld tattoos at the turn of the century. The man sports a tattooed mustache intended to foil the prohibition of facial hair in the Foreign Legion. The World of Tattoo by Maarten Hesselt van Dinter. I can only dream of being anywhere near that combination of badass and crazy. Though at that point the Foreign Legion was probably still the best place for criminals to get their record cleaned so perhaps he is as well quite legitimately scary upon all of that. I find myself flipping back to this page time and time again to romanticize the French underground from around 1900. Give him an accordion, a beret, and some braces. Prostitutes who could easily kill you if you ever come up short and tattoo the names of their ‘actual’ lovers between their breasts, close to their heart. Tattoo ‘Je mother fucking t’aime’ in a tattoo cursive along my collar bones.

The adventure continues.

So, I haven't written much lately.. but from the doldrums of the end of semester I then entered a time period of a flânerie across France. A last hurrah. Jessye came to visit again and the tiny room was packed up all into a few suitcases, the largest being named Bertha, and Rennes was left behind, although not before having a picnic in Thabor for the last Saturday market... We got the essentials. Madeleines (where as I reached the front of the line the vendor greeted me with a question of, '6 madelines?') with a few more of that vendor's delicious delights, like those bite size rolls with jams and caramel and chocolate.. Then of course the impossible cow cheese that acted like goat cheese and was rolled in Provencal herbs. And of course a baguette from the amazing bakery covered in tiles. A trip to Thabor with Jessye was never complete without a stop at the aviary. And some people watching. A mohawked punk rocker walks a little girl hand in hand through the park.

High Contrast Grey.

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