These boots are made for walking

in the streets of Paris in Winter.

This has been my best buy ever! After 4 days of aching soles and close to chillbained toes, what had become a dread each morning to pull my thin wooden soled Wittner boots, has become something to look forward to as i steps into these French babies. i LOVE these boots so much!

Yesterday, after doing the daytime river cruise and going up a tower at Montparnesse, both of which involved standing shivering in the cold for an hour, feet in continual pain from the cold geound, i made it a mission to purchase a pair of Parisien heavy duty fashion boots. we ventured to the huge "Galerie Lafayette", which is like David Jones, only 10 x larger, and not unlike those super shopping galleries in KL, only more fancier. The whole bottom floor is devoted to more than 25 different boutique shoe sections.

Since it is the last month of Winter there are "soldes" or sales everywhere of boots. i got these perfect half leather, furry, ankle boots with tyre-like treaded soles and cushioned insoles, by French fashion shoe brand "Jovak" down 50%.

More on what we've seen and done in Paris later as i figure out how to get photos from my camera onto this ipad.

Bonjour!

I am in France! It is 7am and it's still dark - I can see the moon still resting above the chimney's of the buildings opposite our 'Hostellerie'. But the smell of fresh bread and pastry woke me up. Yep, Paris are the things you hear people say, and then it's something else altogether. Everything is utterly charming. Every street is lined with old, three story buildings of white and many with little, ornate, iron balconies. Even when we went through what seemed to be a ghetto area on our way from the airport on the train. There were apartment blocks that looked centuries old with quaint window boxes, shackled rooftops, curly balconies and white painted bricks.

But It is the thick of Winter here and the air is so cold in a matter of seconds the wind stings any part of any bare skin that is not covered. It is fresh and I like it! But my face got so red and numb i couldn't tell if my nose was dripping or not, and after 10 minutes I couldn't pronounce 'w' or 'r' so I couldn't speak properly in English, let alone the sparse French I learnt. If my already mittened hands weren't in the pockets of my overcoat, they started to get icy and disappeared from feeling. And my toes, omigosh I am so afraid of getting some mild form of frostbite on my feet because they get cold numb and sore so quickly! After an hour of walking around I was sure I had done my feet some frozen damage (but they are in fact miraculously fine). I'll just have to buy some new boots with shearling on the inside.

I have found I can get away with wearing opaque stockings and a dress in this -15'c. Which is a relief since i couldn't bring myself to pack any jeans or pants as I was determined to pack light. As long as I have two tops and two jackets on, and a good pair of boots, stocking or tights are fine in the snow!

And yes, the people in general are unanimously gorgeous here. What's with that?

Maybe it's because I look out with a sketching eye, and people in particular who dress with more individual style like particular hats, and scarves, and shoes (which is everyone here!) stand out as a beautiful character to draw in my sketch book. Everyone dresses with panache, but so simply and understated. Everything about their attire from shoes to hair looks impeccably maintained, yet casually put together or left naturally.

Or maybe it's because from the airport to now we've already seen at least five times complete strangers striking up jovial conversations with each other.

An old lady began chatting to a man and his toddler sitting two tables away in a small patisserie and they carried on happily til one of them went on their way. An old man leaning on his walking stick exchanged chatter with a 20-something girl knitting on the train, and they laughed and said this and that. An old man even turned around and started laughing and talking to Tim as they both went through a row of some strange looking doors that we were not sure was the exit or not at a metro stop. He spoke rapidly in French, laughing and Tim just nodded and smiled.

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....

My thought process for painting portraits

This second Christmas portrait was an experience. I've never wanted to take on a commission of a real person. Mostly because I know to do realism well, it requires longer time. I'm afraid my enthusiasm is a rather flakey friend and might not last more than 3 sittings on the same painting.

The scarier thing was, the commission was of a friend, Pierce, who happened to be like part mentor, part cool-comraderie-crude-comic-relief during my stop-motion filming stint. I was nervous to trust my own skills to be able to pull off an accurate portrait of him.

My first thoughts when I get requests are often
"Why do people think I can do this?!"
"Why do people put wads of money in my hand and trust that I will deliver?"
"I don't even trust myself."

Crazy right? But I honestly think that before I start a portrait.

Then I start it. And push myself. I do many, many drafts. I finally settle on one.

Inking is tedious but the least stressful.

I begin to paint and freak out multiple times, laying down the permanent washes.

A few days later I think I've wrecked it.

Near the end I truly feel I've ruined the portrait. I'll wail to Tim how stupid my painting is and how I want to give back the money the person has paid me. Tim sighs and says to me how I'm like this for every painting and it always turns out fine. And I say "No, but this time it's true!".

And then I peel myself off the floor and force myself to work on, adding the final touches...and finally I reach a point where I stand back and look at it and I genuinely feel "It's alright! PHEW!!!" and breath a sigh of relief.

I either have to start charging more and get an agent so that I can distance myself from the personal nature of each request, or I stop doing this as my work and get some other day job.

So how do I feel about this personal person portrait of Pierce and his cat Neville?

It helped that Liz, his partner who commissioned the portrait, was a gorgeous easy going client and had a good idea of what she wanted, and that it was a comical idea too.

I'm happiest with how the red curtains worked out. It was a lot harder to paint than it looks! Decievingly simple looking, but I didn't count the so many shades of red I had to replicate in order to make it look like real curtains and not just an abstract mass of flesh from hell (that was the point I was wailing to Tim, 'I've wrecked it!". The cat Neville was a breeze. He's got such a funny face don't you think?! And of Pierce, well I guess I'm my hardest critic as I'm still not sure I did him justice. I  know Liz loved how it turned out, so that's great.

This halfway copy on white actually looks pretty good! It was hard to paint around wisps of hair when I added the solid red curtains in, here it definately looks more natural. 

 

And this is what Pierce really looks like, and their cat Neville:

        

 I hope you're happy with the portrait Pierce, and know that I tried my bestest. x.

Christmas Portraits

Here's two more paintings that I couldn't show until post Christmas, as they were commissioned as surprise Christmas gifts.

The Schnauzer is the 'cousin' of little Jemima that I did for a lovely couple a few months ago. They came back to get one done for the parents in law's grey peppered version of the Schnauzer, Max. He was more older and stately than Jemima, so we came up with a similar on the couch, but reading a book, setting.

I didn't get to meet Max, but I got to see Jemima again when the dad came to pick up the photo, and then My Max met Jemima and peed all around the place in my workroom!!! The most embaressing thing was that at first I thought it was Jemima, as I assumed that a dog in a new place was reason for it to mark some territory. Little did I know that our good mannered Max, who never barks or pees in the house, especially never in his own home, was the one doing the peeing! As we found out when we turned around after cleaning up the first lot, to catch Max in the process of peeing by the side of my waste paper basket!!

A Wedding Oscar portrait

We went to a good friends' wedding a few weeks ago on Perth's river's edge at Heathcote Reserve. Although they're home is in Melbourne at the moment, they're from Perth and being a small animation/film world we happened to work and live in the same places from the freezing land of Tasmania at the Blue Rocket studio, to the stressful, crazy times at Melbourne's Ettamogah studio.

The day was gorgeous, which was perfect for one of the most giving, deserving (and cool) couples we know. It wasn't a large wedding, and records played on an old record player, while everyone helped themselves to glass bottles of drinks with stripey paper straws, and croquet and throw rings were set up on the grass for some mellow fun 'til the sun went down and dinner was served.

The bombaneries were the best I've seen, classic Penguin books! and they doubled as nameplates. The title that caught my eye at first instant, turned out to be mine. And so onto the subject of talking animals, whilst in Melbourne Tim and I remembered fondly meeting the bride and groom's cat "Oscar", who appeared to be a friendly and sweet layabout, but we were told he only acted that way when guests came over. More humourously was how at one point we all looked over to see Oscar lying on his back, limbs spreadeagled out like a starfish. His owners were slightly abashed and told him to mind his manners "Oscar!!! Do you mind?!". No he didn't mind at all, and he's quite a large layabout cat now. Since he couldn't come over to Perth to share with the bride and groom's marriage, this portrait helped to include him.