Drawings from Paris

Today was a good day--more productive.  I did a little bit of tidying up, finished a spread for my picture book, got all my Paris photos uploaded to Facebook, and did a couple other "to-do"s.

Went to women's Bible study tonight.  It was good!  Despite having been sick over the weekend and being stressed out from some spiritual warfare going on, Anja was nice enough to make smoothies for us.  We were five total: Anja, Rebecca, Ivanna, another girl named Lexi who was at church on Sunday, and me.  Rather than studying a Bible passage we mostly had prayer time.  I also did a worship song on Janos's guitar, which was cool.

Also tried out a recipe I made up: basil-pistachio bread.  I don't know much about baking with yeast so I found a baking-soda bread recipe and used it as a base.  The basil and pistachio gave it a nice flavor, but basically it was just flour, baking soda, water, and a tiny bit of olive oil, so the bread ended up resembling a giant piece of sailor's hardtack biscuit with basil and pistachios mixed in.  It tasted all right while it was still warm, but is extremely hard to eat when it's cooled.  Kind of like eating a white rock, and the baking soda made it a little bitter.  I think I'll need to try again . . . probably should use the yeast next time.

Anyway, I did so much drawing in Paris that I figured I should share some of my sketches with you.  The awesome thing about a sketchbook is even when you go places where photo-taking is not allowed (like Sacré-Coeur), they won't ever stop you from drawing, so you can still capture the essences of the place you are visiting.  Perks of being an artist!

I thought I adjusted the brightness level on these, but on the blog the colors are awful . . . sorry about that!  Hope you can see them well enough.

Arc de Triomphe

Notre Dame

Kids at Jardin du Luxembourg

Senate building, Jardin du Luxembourg

JAZZ!

Pont Marie 

This was the one that took me forever to finish because the guy from Senegal was hitting on me . . .

Romance in Paris: In the café-restaurant, in the park, on the quay,
on the street, on the metro . . . even on the moped

Notre Dame interior

Characters from The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Characters from Les Misérables 

Characters from The Count of Monte Cristo