When in Paris, you can't help but be inspired by the arts. The museums -- which honestly I haven't even started to hit yet -- are amazing. The streets around Montmartre are full of artists doing portraiture and selling works of varying styles. And in the parks and street-side cafes you occasionally see people sketching.
The city has a long tradition of being a world center for the arts. I'm currently reading The Greater Journey - Americans in Paris by David McCullough, which tells the stories of American expats -- many of them artists -- coming to Paris from the 1830s onward. I've enjoyed reading it and learning how our experience and reactions to life in Paris are very similar to those of Americans coming over almost 200 years ago. Much of the book is focused on artists such as Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Samuel Morse (yes, of the telegraph), and others who came to Paris to learn in the French art schools and from the paintings of old masters that hung in the Louvre and elsewhere.
Despite coming from a family of artists (my grandmother, four aunts on both sides of the family, and now two cousins all were/are artists by profession), I've always been more of a dreamer than a doer. While I could easily drop $100 in an art shop, prior to coming to Paris I'd spent a grand total of maybe 10 hours in 25 years doing anything artistic (with the exception of photography, which I've continued to do on a regular basis).
But if I was ever to do anything more, how could I pass up the opportunity to start working on some drawing or painting while in Paris. So, I took advantage of the classes offered by WICE and signed up for a three session drawing course.
The course was taught by Jan Olsson, an American expat who has lived in Paris since 1990. We had six students of varying abilities and under Jan's guidance we all improved a lot and got comfortable sharing our work with others. It was really an enjoyable course and I look forward to taking some of the next sessions throughout the year. I also look forward to continuing to practice, learn, improve my drawings, and take on new and more challenging subjects.
Here are a few that I've done recently.
The city has a long tradition of being a world center for the arts. I'm currently reading The Greater Journey - Americans in Paris by David McCullough, which tells the stories of American expats -- many of them artists -- coming to Paris from the 1830s onward. I've enjoyed reading it and learning how our experience and reactions to life in Paris are very similar to those of Americans coming over almost 200 years ago. Much of the book is focused on artists such as Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, James McNeill Whistler, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Samuel Morse (yes, of the telegraph), and others who came to Paris to learn in the French art schools and from the paintings of old masters that hung in the Louvre and elsewhere.
Despite coming from a family of artists (my grandmother, four aunts on both sides of the family, and now two cousins all were/are artists by profession), I've always been more of a dreamer than a doer. While I could easily drop $100 in an art shop, prior to coming to Paris I'd spent a grand total of maybe 10 hours in 25 years doing anything artistic (with the exception of photography, which I've continued to do on a regular basis).
But if I was ever to do anything more, how could I pass up the opportunity to start working on some drawing or painting while in Paris. So, I took advantage of the classes offered by WICE and signed up for a three session drawing course.
The course was taught by Jan Olsson, an American expat who has lived in Paris since 1990. We had six students of varying abilities and under Jan's guidance we all improved a lot and got comfortable sharing our work with others. It was really an enjoyable course and I look forward to taking some of the next sessions throughout the year. I also look forward to continuing to practice, learn, improve my drawings, and take on new and more challenging subjects.
Here are a few that I've done recently.
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