Watercolor

This week I worked with watercolors. I found it the most challenging medium so far. It is very unforgiving. I tend to get a little precious and too realistic which doesn't work well unless you are quite experienced. I therefore developed a faster and looser method involving usually wetting the paper first and drawing faces directly with the brush. I limited my palette. It was quick and fun. I usually painted at least ten in two hours, although I didn't save them all. Here are samples from each day:

You can view the whole series here.

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We went to Paris at the end of last week to stay with Quinn while Emily and Jos had a night away at a nearby spa. It was their last opportunity before the baby arrives. We helped a bit with preparations. While we were there, we all took a stroll to Parc de la Villette which I have written about before. It is not far from Emily's house and it is a great place to give Quinn an opportunity to practice on his new "early rider" bike (what a great invention!) In a section of this huge urban park, one I had never noticed before, there are many huge mirrors installed among the trees. We were there right at dusk and had a lot of fun playing hide and seek behind trees and reflections of trees. It was quite enchanting.

Back at home one evening we had thick fog which made the world outside our windows even more magical than usual. The village lights come on just before sunset and they reflected off the stone and softened the atmosphere, making golden accents amidst the purple haze.

Each night on these winter evenings, Rick builds a cozy fire in our wood stove. It warms the entire third floor apartment. We settle down for a quiet evening at home.