I painted in the Tuileries in the afternoon. I've been thinking a lot about park spaces since we in Memphis are currently fighting our own city government to protect my beloved Overton Park. It's both good and bittersweet to see how fierce the French are about protecting their public spaces.

After painting I went back to the Musee d'Orsay for the evening hours. I was blown away by the five versions of Rouen cathedral in a row. Monet rented a shop window and painted I don't know how many versions at all times and weathers. I had just seen two in the Boston museum and loved them.

I had a Monet evening, also doing a sketch of his large, spectacular painting of turkeys. Something about the light and color and scale always makes me think of Sargent's Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose, which is amusing with the different subject matter. It's one of my favorite Monets, and I decided I was due to spend a little time looking at it closely, which for me usually equates to sketching it.

I had hoped to see the full moon rise over the Louvre afterwards, but there was a solid low bank of clouds, and the evening was fine, so I ended up just walking beautifully home through the warm streets. It was a delightful day

I am finding myself fascinated by the trees this trip. No one who follows my art will be surprised about that. There aren't that many trees in Paris, comparatively, but there are some lovely ones. I was on my way to paint St. Chapelle this morning but got lured off my path by this view instead. And then I treated myself to an afternoon at the Musee d'Orsay instead of doing more finished watercolors. I'll put those sketches up in another post.

It was sunny today! I could not have been more delighted. I spent almost the whole day in Luxembourg Gardens making the most of it. I did three finished watercolors there (this blog post) plus three journal sketches that I'll post later.

One watercolor was of a spectacular tree that I have unaccountably walked past without pasting proper attention in years past. I enjoyed spending time with it today. And also with a kind gentleman who saw me painting it and also does watercolors. I told him about Urban Sketchers and also spread the gospel of my water brush, which is such a quick and easy sketching tool to have. He shared his strawberries with me, and I enjoyed a little friendly conversation since I'm traveling solo.

I had a gorgeous walk home in the sunshine. It's funny how ridiculously happy I feel just for being able to paint all day. I've been looking forward to this so much. I hope the weather holds for a bit.

I've been continuing to work on my creation triptych lately. It's taking me a lot more than six days for sure. I've got the sky piece done (that's first proof above, but it's quite close -- I just took more yellow out of the moon).

I've been printing a lot of blue skies lately.

Below is the final of the animal panel and a later draft of Adam and Eve for the third panel. I'm still edging blue back out of the figures. You never want to cut too much at once, since you can't put it back, and I'm hoping I didn't get too extreme last night. I printed blue today and will do the top layer to find out once that dries. This is definitely the slowest one, because the blue is the middle layer instead of the top one. With the other two panels, the only other layer is a light yellow/brown, so it's less of a crisis what happens in the figures with that. The blue is the top pattern layer. With Adam and Eve, the blue can bleed into the figures, so I'm having to really proof it, check it, carve some more, proof it again. Hopefully this last round will work, because I'm hanging the show at the seminary next week, and this is my centerpiece. I'll also hang the watercolor sketches of creation (five total, the number of Wednesday chapels back in September, not the days of creation...) that inspired this print series. It will be fun to have them shown together.

I'm not posting as much as I like to right now. Between the printmaking and some deadlines and seminary work and switching to a new (to me) computer which wasn't talking to the scanner well, I haven't been either sketching or scanning in what I do nearly as much as I like to. An ongoing crisis in my park, where so much of my painting happens, has also taken a ton of time lately. It's lovely to be able to schedule my own time instead of punch a clock. When something that important surfaces, I can take a lot of time to help. But it's all piled up to make me feel pretty frantic lately and to have less art creation time than I like.

I'm strongly looking forward to a return to Paris in a couple of weeks. It will be marvelous to have three weeks solo just to walk, paint (hopefully the weather will cooperate and I can bring home enough work for a show this fall), and look at art. I do love getting away. I always work intensively when I travel, but it's the best part of the work. The book keeping, matting, schlepping work around, and anything else is eliminated, and I just get to paint. So lovely.

It was the Cabin Fever dance weekend in Maryville, TN, this past weekend, and I drove east early to visit one of my favorite towns. It had been a crazy enough week that I had been having dinner in my car between meetings, so the evening I arrived I went to my favorite tapas place for a lovely salad, a couple of small pork rolls, and a flan. I had thought I was too tired to sketch, but the flan was so pretty I couldn't resist.

I enjoyed walking around town and hitting the book stores and my favorite brocante, the Downtown Market. It's an indoor flea/antique market with several lovely clothing vendors. I found two cashmere sweaters, real silk pajama pants, and  red velvet coat that makes me feel like a movie star. I also sketched my favorite trees there while I was wandering around.

For purely self indulgent reasons, I'm going to include this photo from the weekend, taken by Lanny Huddleston. This is my favorite way to find joy when I'm not making art, and Charlie Zisette, with his marvelous dips, made me feel just lovely this weekend. Sometimes it's good for me to move away from the micro movements of carving prints and move my whole body instead. This is the very best way I know how to do that.