Category: Sketchbook
Errands and Aïkido
First, shopping for a soccer ball, cheese, and a scanner. All in the same store. Then on to check out the nearby aïkido class.
Dianne
Monica
Meet Les Briconautes
To set up a painting area for me, we first ventured forth into the store of do-it-yourself.
Roman Baths, Gisacum
Notre Dame d’Evreux, with Robot
Yes, that is indeed a robot beside Nôtre Dame d’Evreux and the old Gallo-Roman wall: it’s one of several imaginatively created from found and recycled materials and installed in the park. Juxtaposition of the old and the new is pretty typical of life here, but it doesn’t usually include robots.
Christy
Garden/rue Victor Hugo
From the street one doesn’t suspect the presence of this sunny retreat behind the house.
Welcome to Normandy
The right side of this sketchbook spread is on the next post.
Hello again, beautiful France
Bon Voyage
At last I have a scanner and am beginning to scan sketchbook pages to post. Here is the first, from the day of departure. (Click once, then again to see it larger.)
August Morning
A poem by Albert Garcia in celebration of the poignant, brief-and-boundless late summer.
It’s ripe, the melon
by our sink. Yellow,
bee-bitten, soft, it perfumes
the house too sweetly.
At five I wake, the air
mournful in its quiet.
My wife’s eyes swim calmly
under their lids, her mouth and jaw
relaxed, different.
What is happening in the silence
of this house? Curtains
hang heavily from their rods.
Ficus leaves tremble
at my footsteps. Yet
the colors outside are perfect–
orange geranium, blue lobelia.
I wander from room to room
like a man in a museum:
wife, children, books, flowers,
melon. Such still air. Soon
the mid-morning breeze will float in
like tepid water, then hot.
How do I start this day,
I who am unsure
of how my life has happened
or how to proceed
amid this warm and steady sweetness?
—Albert Garcia
Francine