Provence en Plein Air - Part II

Cafe au Lait a Les Deux Garcons

Pepper & Plums

 Here are two more watercolor sketches from my Provence trip.  The Café Les Deux Garcons is in Aix-en-Provence - had to go there for its long interesting history of hosting many famous artists and others. I spent a pleasant hour there watching people and enjoying the atmosphere.

The Pepper & Plums is a sketch from my purchases at Le Marché De Cassis - one of the most beautiful open air markets imaginable. These luscious fruits were consumed shortly after the paint dried.

Both of these watercolors are in my new exhibit at The Left Bank Café, opening on Sunday, May 5th (4 to 5 PM) in Saranac Lake. On the left bank of the Saranac River. It will be a lovely party, especially if my young French-accordian player friend can come!

A Lovely Mix

A lovely mix this week of birding, paddling, work, and art-making in the Adirondacks. In spite of the apparent health of the Star Flowers and Canada Mayflowers, it has been very dry (until this weekend). While paddling down the Saranac River with Myra and Tony, we frequently ran aground on the sand bars - usually not even a glimpse of them, especially this early in the season. The water level was at least a foot lower than normal. Lots of birds and other wildlife out there though - A Hooded Merganser mother with 10 scuttling little ones, a Wilson's Snipe at a nest site, several warbler species, a muskrat, huge Snapping Turtle, among others. Wonderful!

In addition to all this outdoor fun, I continued my daily art practice with my fabric embellishment experiments. This piece with the moth was made by printing a digitally-altered moth photo onto an Extravorganza printing sheet, then sewing it onto an altered fern image on rayon, along with other stitches and fabric scraps. The letters were stamped onto twill tape to spell the moth's scientific name - Grammia virgo. 

I learned how to make a fabric window in this little bird piece - the sheer embroidered fabric was sewn into a 4-piece square and faced with turquoise cotton. Inside the window is a bird and piece of a scientific article on a background made with a CitriSolv-altered page from a National Geographic magazine. (Really fun and interesting to make!)



 
The waterlily was my "printing on fabric" lesson. I used some stamps I made awhile ago (to print waterlilies in my bathroom) on batik-printed cotton. I like the way it looks but I really prefer the collage pieces. In any case, I plan to make some kind of wall quilt once my experiments are finished. (Well, they'll probably never really be finished... So much to learn.)