High Contrast Grey.

Took a sick day and spent it at my desk painting.

I think that this is well enough to turn in for painting tomorrow, although I still feel that it is missing the finishing touches. Like perhaps some feathers and a background, but then again, I never know when to stop.

I think it is time to make myself another hot toddy, put on some TOS, and take a nap.

Continuation.

I saw the usage of a thin white line recently and I thought I would give it a try. It seems to have added a much more illustrative look to the piece, so I am not too sure how I like it or not.

A new painting for this weeks painting class. It took me forever to start this one because I kept having ideas but no form come to my mind. Finally I just took one of the photos from my inspiration folder and decided to use that as a figure study which I will then mutate.

My plan is for war paint, piercings, and tattoos to blend the old photo with new details. A bit cliché, but I can see where it will evolve to.

I have come to see that in my painting classes here in France that the French are all about concept, so as I try to experiment with mediums I am running into not having an answer for when they ask why.

Classes have started up again, although I am still not feeling the realization of that fact. For some reason it seems that none of the classes are interesting this semster and I am having the hardest time trying to figure out which classes to take. Like a psych class where the information is interesting as it talks about the linguistics of language, but is in the third year so I lack all kinds of background in different studies that the other students already have.

Dropping names of researchers like rockstars.

On the upside, I think I finally found “my bar” in Rennes. Le Sambre. Wood walls. Red velvet. And old pictures all over the walls. The music doesn’t fit, but not everything is perfect. At least it is more just better rock music than something like top 40.

I think that this is the state I will show this for class.

I used the pattern from the tie I bought in Paris for the background. I am not too sure how I feel about how it turned out since it isn’t weaved but drawn and painted it seems to loose the industrial feel to it.

Also I can’t seem to capture the color of Jessye’s hair at all. I put in some gold streaks  to help show that her hair is red and not brown, but perhaps that will be lost in interpretation.

A painting of Jessye drinking wine from the bottle in our Parisian hotel.

Hopefully I will be finished by this Thursday for class. I am wanting to do something with the background but I am not too sure what. Perhaps some patterning and playing with painting and then wiping to build up layers of detail.

These past few mornings have been gorgeous as I watch the sun rise from my window.

Of course everytime I see the beautiful colors that are made, like the deep red on the horizon that gently transitions into a firey orange and then a fleeting green, that can almost be easily ignored, before reaching the dark blue that is almost black left over from the night, I have to think of the reactions to these colors by the impressionists and how these vibrant colors are only possible because of the pollution in the air.

Although when I bring this up to people, like when sitting in an 8am class, I don’t think they share the same inner turmoil interest. The conflict with how beautiful the colors are but yet knowing that their presence represents something wrong in this world.

Paris on my 24th birthday.

We got a gateaux des rois for my birthday cake and I got to wear the crown. My surprise on the inside of the cake was a little green porcelaine cat with brown spots.

We followed this up with some apple cidre.

Nothing too extravagant, but a lot of fun. I think this is going to be a good age.

Sitting at a café in Montmartre as Jessye finally gets a break and writes a few postcards.

Sacre Coeur peeks up above the buildings in the mirror.

For as French as this café was, for whatever reason, the two times we went there they were playing Mexican music.

The first time we arrived, we stood in the doorway waiting for a table and then the tiled floor opened up and a small elevator with a crate of cola surfaced.

Jessye at our favorite Parisian bar.

Coffee and cognac.

It was great having her come and visit. It was as if we hadn’t missed a beat while I have been in France and things were just as if we had been together this entire time.

In our French bar and café hopping we came up with the pipe dream of taking back the idea of these beautiful French places and opening up an ex-pat French café that also serves alcoholic drinks, like café calva and vin chaud.

I finally finished enough of this painting to be happy enough to show it for my painting final. The professor rubbed his finger over the window to figure out that I cut it out to put the black paper behind, but didn’t really critique it at all. I still did well in the class, but he did comment on how overall I paint in a passé style.

So of course I am back to the questioning of; what is contemporary art? When I look up contemporary art trying to find new examples that could inspire my work I instead find art that is abstracted and not really in a direction that I would see as improving or inspiring my style.

For the music festival, Trans Musicales, here in Rennes the bars as well established their own music festival called Bars En Trans but sadly my knowledge of French bands is lacking and I didn’t know who most of the list was but I did recognize Mister Heavenly.

I had feared that I would miss the show because it started at 19.30 and I had class until 20.00 and of course that means not really getting out of the apartment until 20.30, but as we arrived at 21.00 the door man told us that no, the show starts at 21.00 and we had missed nothing. Which still made no sense because the tickets even said that it started at 19.30, but whatever. Nothing is ever on time in France, except museum tours.

The first band was a group called Monogrenade which I have searched for the music on the internets for and it seems that there is just a lacking of the emotion and beauty of their music when it becomes recorded. Their cellist shreaded her cello with a maniacal grin on her face.

During the break between bands I get a pastis at the bar and share the water carafe with the american girls who also came. It seems that Molly was able to convince some of them with the tempting possiblility that the tourins bassist, Michael Cera, would be there.

She was correct and the girls started doing the different chicken dances from Arrested Development as they talked about how to ask him about the Arrested Development film.

Perhaps this is just a rash generalization of me now only going to three concerts in Rennes, but the locals don’t seem to like to dance at concerts. The head nod, a slight sway, yes, but no really letting loose and just dancing. Which it seems that my dancing in the front of this not packed at all venue garnered the attention of the lead singer/guitarist, Nicholas Thorburn who also plays for the Islands and the Unicorns (about how this band is quite litterally an indie kid’s wet dream), and at first he came off stage to sensually dance with me as he played his guitar.

A bit homoerotic and confusing.

Then I was invited up onto the small stage to dance. Michael Cera told me to say the phrase that he had been given to say, and already said quite a few times, to the crowd since the band didn’t speak French, ‘I like the Breton beer’ (which after the show we found out he thought ment, ‘I like the British butter’).

Then while dancing on stage a fuse seemed to have blown and the lights and electric instruments stopped playing and Mister Thorburn started to strip and give me a little dance until he was down to his mustard yellow skivvies. Then the lights came back on and he hid behind the drum set playing a maraca. As Michael Cera came over to me to dance with me in the spot that had been left open. Then the song finished, I got off stage and got a high five from one of the other Americans.

Then later the keyboardist, Honus Honus who is also the lead singer for Man Man, started singing a song off stage and came up to me and put his arm around to dance a little bit before he rammed into the crowd. I wasn’t sure if it would be kosher to do a cancan dance like I used to do back in high school at the punk shows with my friends.

The show then ended and everyone seemed to disperse. I went up to Honus Honus to say thanks for the show and bring up that Molly and I had seen him a few months back when he came through with Man Man.

The girls then went over and talked to Michael Cera, who’s response was, ‘why are you all American’ although in defense, one of the girls was British. Awkward conversation insued, as want to be with someone who seems to be constaly typecast as someone awkward, and it all ended with him showing off that his red cap is actually a ski mask and me taking a photo of all of them.

All in all, it was definitely an experience worth 5 euros.

After a day wandering the Parisien streets we decided to finish our brief Paris trip with a stop off at the Arc de Triomphe.

It dwarfs with its size.

After taking some cliché tourist photos (those things that everyone takes, but no one really looks at) we took the tunnel under the street to climb up in the in the middle and see it first hand. Capitalism had another plan since it seemed that it would cost 6 euros each just to wander around the base. Fulya decided that we should just enter through the exit. As we left we noticed that some officers had stationed themselves at the top of the stairway, but as we went up it just became apparent that paying would be ridiculous. The shape of the Arc created a wind tunnel of cold night air, so we stayed mostly in the other tunnel of the arc that was shielded from the wind.

A girl in a hooded jacket sitting off to the side makes momentary eye contact but then looks down at a journal or sketchbook. I assume she is making observations of the diverse crowd of people at the Arc.

After leaving we take the metro again. In a confusion of which stop to take I get out too soon and jump back in just as the doors close. I make it in but in the instant that I make it though and the doors close it they close on my camera bag trapping it in the door. The strap snaps as if it required no force at all. We pull and try to twist it through the opening in the door but it is tightly shut. Finally the door releases slightly and I pull the bag through. The front cover of my sketch book has been dented, folded. But thankfully nothing is wrong with my camera.

I sew the strap back together on the foggy car ride back to Rennes. We awkwardly sleep sitting up in the backseat for most of the ride back. Our driver is a balding Algerian dental assitant who wear metal rimmed glasses. I fear we frustrated him as we both slept in the back, where he was actually wanting to have more conversation.

La boheme plays over his stereo system. I can’t seem to escape this song, but I also can’t seem to track it down in French and not English to download.

Our next day in Paris we took a stroll without destination through Montmartre. Of course stopping by the square filled with artists to look at their work. Since the cliché for paintings here is that of street scenes of French architecture I was entralled to see new techniques and ideas. Perhaps it isn’t really the avant-garde of modern art, but it pleased me a lot to look at. There was one of the artists who used a piece of bamboo cut into a point as a quill pen that he would dip into a small jar of ink. This was then followed by watercolor that turned the picture into a beautiful colored painting. Simple, but the detail was amazing with the erratic line quality.

The simple watercolor paintings that I have been coming across in France have led to quite a lot of inspiration for me, but I just hope that I will be able to use this inspiration improve my own watercolors. Perhaps when I no longer have to worry about my paintings for painting class.

We met an Egyptian who told us that even though he was born in Egypt, his soul is French. His paintings looked a bit like color field theory, but not in the way that student’s work looks. There were layers built up and then the paint was paired with gold leaf. It changed color with every angle.

They talked about art. His inspiration. His subject matter abstracted. They talked about the problems of the world and how it seems that the major powers are all about to shift.

Parisien breakfast.

Whoever told the French that slicing a baguette in half and pairing it with a very light spread of butter and jam constitiues a breakfast should have been given a medal. At least three of those large desktop medals in boxes that I keep coming across at the antique markets.