A secret assignment Monday week...

This time next week I will be away from here, somewhere over the sea, doing a couple of unofficial artistic 'assignments'.

Here is a bit of a doodle of what I might be doing:

For those who aren't familiar with sempe and fafi, they are only two of the most loved French cartoonist and graffitti artist respectively. And my most favourite artist heroes! I only did those pics quickly, and one shouldn't take my crude scribblings for an accurate reflection of their work. Google image search both, you won't be disappointed. And if you like it, books can be bought of their collected works. I have five and they are some of my most treasured art books. 

Tim and I had been hearing about friends and family, going to Paris, some of them twice. We thought it was high time we put it on our priority country to visit, especially since it's the place of the revered Annecy (the biggest and most prestigious of all animation film festivals). Plus all AMAZING cartoons hail from France - everytime we see some animation that has that amazing level of charm, colour and craftmanship, we know there's only one explaination for it that goes beyond talent, the artist must be French. For a good example watch work from the school of "Gobelins" in France, google it for some indie animation candy.

And then it just so happened that Tim stumbled upon info that there is an exhibition "Sempe: a Bit of Paris and Beyond" at the Paris City Hall of more than 300 of Jean-Jacques Sempe's original cartoons on at the moment!!! Ending February the 11th actually. So we did some hasty booking last week, and next Monday we will be in Paris! After a great and lingering 9 days there visiting the Moulin Rouge, Versaille and what not, we'll go to Notting Hill, London for a few days to meet up with some good old friends and I hope to see a musical at some theatre in the famed West End.

As for the secret assignment, officially I'm going to do a couple of Francais pet portraits....unofficially Alice and Olive might or might not come along with me and might or might not end up on a wall next to a fafinette.   Check back here in 10 days time to see what pics I post....