a m e l i a   f a i s   h a r n a s

My rule for sketchbooking while I was in Europe was to always sketch directly in pen. No pencil allowed. This meant that any mistakes would present the challenge of creative correction: how do I save the drawing despite error?

I started this page on the second day in the Prado and finished it during my fourth day in the Louvre. The top right hand drawing went terribly, so to cover up my mangled drawing of a mouth, I resorted to big guns (my black copic calligraphy pen) and added the black background. But then that looked pretty cool, so I went with it, drawing with the idea of black entering into the composition.... and I'm quite pleased with the results!

The Uffizi itself was very noisy. In my sketchbook, I wrote, "Ridiculously loud humming in the Tintoretto Room." It seemed like almost every floorboard had its own squeaking sound, like no two snowflakes are the same. Then add the tour groups to this equation.

However, nowadays, technology enables the more privileged tour groups to listen through headphones while the tour guide (always with the brightly-colored excalibur-wielded umbrella-beacon!) rambles on into a tiny head-mounted microphone. While sketching a lovely Raphael self-portrait, stubbornly standing my ground as close to the painting as the shinguard would allow, a large tour group closed in around me. I heard the tour guide call me, "the lady in front," in a well-EXCUSE-me Miss Piggy tone. I knew at least the front half of the tour group was looking at me drawing and not looking at the painting. No pressure. As always.

From Firenze, I took 3 days of trains up through Italy, up into Switzerland again, over to Lyon, then down and across the southern border of France, finally dipping down into Madrid. There, I met up with a former collaborator/dear friend of mine. I was thrilled to see him again, as he is one of my favorite people in the world--all the more so in Spain, since he spoke Spanish.

Here, I must admit that one of the 50+ museums that I visited was, in fact, not what you would think of as a museum. This place is called Museo del Jamón (Museum of Ham).

We had breakfast here as much as we could since €3.60 got you 1 fresh orange juice that was the best fresh orange juice in the world, 1 cup of coffee and 1 crusty/fluffy roll with a couple slices of cured ham. Perfection.

About two months ago, after negotiating four trains' worth of less than 6-minute connections and 20-minute delays, I navigated my way to the corner apartment of my good friend from middle school who is living in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. This was my first time in the country, and I effortlessly marveled at:

1. the honestly ridiculous number of bicycles, multilayered bike racks, bike lanes, bike storage units, people on bikes, bikes on trains, bikes on bikes (ok, maybe not that far....) etc.,
   
2. the public composting bin as well as the super compact quiet-as-a-vehicle-sized-mouse street sweepers,
3. the chocolate jimmies or "hagelslag," (if there were a food name contest, I'd be at a loss to choose the winner between those two) that a breakfaster sprinkles on buttered toast for breakfast, and the fact that these jimmies are not just brown-colored wax but are made with real chocolate,
4. the surprisingly terrible bread (perhaps the worst bread I have ever eaten... no hard feelings The Netherlands) and
5. just how much I enjoy place names that include 'The,' like The Dalles, OR and especially The Hague, The Netherlands.

Since The Netherlands is a pretty small country in Europe, it seems only appropriate that much of the sketchbooking I did in Holland fits onto one page and specifically the page seen below.

In honor of the late Thomas S. Buechner, I sat in front of Girl with a Pearl Earring for a good hour and sketched my own tiny version. It caused this sensation of being in one of those movies where a person stands still while activity swirls around them in time sped up. In this small room, sitting on a circular sea-foam couch, I watched her watching me watching the steady stream of tourists, and I wondered if perhaps Tom was watching, too, from someplace I am not supposed to comprehend.

On my last morning in Den Haag, I decided that I must absolutely visit the North Sea. It was a nice brisk (and by brisk I mean teeth-chattering cold) walk from the lovely apartment where I was couchsurfing, and I climbed up and walked along a great big dune in the horizontal slanting sunlight of the morning. Later that afternoon, I visited the Panorama Mesdag and, to my delight, discovered that it was based on the very spot where I stood earlier that day. O! Synchronicity!

Last and not least, there was Amsterdam. I was lucky to have found a place to couchsurf (apparently Amsterdam is one of the hardest and most desirable places to couchsurf), that my host was not only a ridiculously good cook (persian comfort food?! yes!!) but also ridiculously awesome and that I was there on a weekend so that the two of us could walk around the city together conquering museum after museum. I finally saw The Night Watch. Enough said.

The Louvre: 

My favorite find in the Louvre was the rocketbooster prophet. The monk who painted this piece must have been especially imaginative and especially favored to get away with something so bizarre. After hundreds of rooms of medieval madonnas and saints and crucifixes, this one stuck out like a sore thumb...

Sketchbook excerpt No. 1:

After standing in a snaking, ribboned-off line for a good half hour in spitting drizzle, complete with accidental jabs from umbrella points at eye level and a smattering of languages, I found myself inside the Musée d'Orsay once again. Almost immediately, I noticed some things that haven't changed since my last visit three years prior: they still seem to be renovating the same sections of the building (at snail's pace!) & they allow way too many people/school groups in the museum at the same time. This meant that I had to attempt sketching at high over-my-shoulder pressure; I also encountered this at the other blockbuster museums like the Louvre, Uffizi and Prado, but these are hardships a sketcher must bear. Instead, I found that achieving intense, trance-like focus on sketching helps block out any awareness of the proximity of onlookers.

At d'Orsay, I discovered that I kept gravitating towards Pierre Bonnard, an early 20th century painter, probably because of the loud colors, patterns and design (my current affinity for fluorescent orange may have some sway). I also greatly enjoyed comparing the variety of stylized portraits between familiar artists like Gauguin, Manet and Gérôme and new-to-me artists like Jacques Émile Blanche, Louis Anquetin and Émile Levy.

But, what was most striking to me was how much I fell in love with Denys Puech's "Aurore," (below), which was stationed in the grand ballroom, an impressive blow-out of gilded decorative molding and lit-up crystal garlands just dripping in sparklepower. 

This canopy and cape of hair was so expertly carved by a son-of-a-farmer, that I stood for as long as I could, marveling at this marble, until a group of highschoolers started sneakershuffling in...

After a solid 4.5+ hours, one full page in the sketchbook and a furtive snack featuring Babybel & Duplo under a set of stairs, I bade adieu, merci et à la prochaine to one of my favorite museums in Paris.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art - Dresden's Neue Galerie - Dresden's Alte Meister - Dresden's Porcelain Collection - Dresden's Orangerie - Museum Für Moderne Kunst - Wilhelmshöhe Alte Meister in Kassel - Kassel's Neue Galerie - Centre Pompidou - Musée D'Orsay - Louvre (4 times/approx. 20 hours total) - Gustave Moreau's House - Delacroix Museum - Sainte Chapelle - Conciergerie - Rodin Museum - Musée Guimet - Quai Branly - Arts et Métiers - Het Valkhof - Den Haag's Foto Museum - Mauritshuis - Panorama Mesdag - Rijksmuseum - Van Gogh Museum - Speelklok Museum - Aboriginal Art Museum - Foam Photography Museum - Van Loon House - Amsterdam Historical Museum - Alte Nationalgalerie in Berlin - Gemaldegalerie - Hamburger Bahnhof - Berlin Photography Museum - The Leopold - Mumok - Kunst Halle in Vienna - The Belvedere - Secession - Kunsthistorisches Museum - Musée de L'Art Brut - The Uffizi - Museo Opera Duomo - Palazzo Vecchio - Prato Cathedral - Palazzo Pitti - Bayonne Cathedral - ARCO Madrid - Prado (2 times) - Reina Sofia - Museo del Jamon - Sagrada Familia Guadi Museum.

New York City, Dresden, Kassel, Paris, Nijmegen, Utrecht, The Hague, Amsterdam, Berlin, Vienna, Lausanne, Florence, Prato, Bayonne, Madrid & Barcelona.

I know that not all of them are regulation museums, but those old cathedrals are works of art; the Museum of Ham (a restaurant chain with cheap and good breakfast in Madrid) is a bit of a stretch, but it still counts. Also, I would prefer to count the larger museums (like the Louvre & Prado) multiple times, but decided against it. 

Sketchbook excerpts to follow...

O! My old website was just that: OLD. So, I decided to try something new (using Weebly). I'm still working out the kinks (and, apparently, unlearning the German keyboard layout as I type this, which is taking much too much effort), so please be patient. 

Furthermore, I fully intend on dusting off my old title, "Art Factory," this spring, so you (and I) get to look forward to that.

In the meantime, I think this would be an excellent place for me to share some of my observations from my Epic European Excursion! my L'Université des Musées! my Bildungsreise! I know all of you are on the edges of your seats...