Sunday was a glorious day here. Between the weather and just having too much fun with my sketchbook, I've only done a handful of finished watercolors this trip. I decided to do one of the Louvre to start the morning off, before the plaza got too crazy.

In other news, I discovered that a bakery halfway along my walk downtown (an hour or a little more, depending on where I'm heading) had the brilliant idea of joining pain au chocolat with an almond croissant, so now I don't have to choose. I ate that with a little tea as I sat on the edge of a fountain and considered my composition options.

Then I walked across the Seine to the Luxembourg gardens. I had really enjoyed painting some of the statues here last year, and I decided to revisit some of them with my sketchbook in a different style.

It was packed on a Sunday afternoon, and once again I enjoyed seeing everyone out, gathered together, and enjoying life.

I did an overview of the scene just for fun.

I finished by painting Sainte Genevieve, the patron of Paris. There's a lovely set of statues of strong women in history, most of them from the first millennia AD. I may need to go sketch more of them.

But the sun was out, I was tired, and so I decided to be utterly Parisian and just soak it up through my shoulders (and three layers) a bit before walking home. I had a beautiful time just sitting there and letting myself be happy.

I walked some different places yesterday. Truthfully I was looking for the bakery where I found fig bread last time I was here, but I seem to have misplotted it on my map. I'll have to do a little more research.

But I saw some new sights, including the funky sculpture above and the equally funky bad relief of a naked woman on the side of an apartment building below.

I really liked the architecture of the building, and the sun came out after I'd done the black and white, so I decided to stay and do a quick second one in color.

Then, of course, it started pouring, and the day became less productive. I took shelter in the Galleries Lafayette department store and sketched from their cafe window out into the grey city. Got the Eiffel Tower a little wonky, though.

The weather was better walking home, so I stopped and sketched a fountain at the end of a cul de sac that I always admire. It feels like a welcoming place tucked away out of traffic.

I ended with a quick sketch of evening clouds from the window. It was a good day in spite of squalls, and I enjoyed seeing some new spots.

The day was glorious, so I decided to keep going to one of my very favorite spots in Paris, the Rodin Museum. I'm saving the museum itself for a rainy day visit, but I decided, in a fit of optimism, to buy an annual pass for the gardens. Oddly they don't have one for the museum itself. I hope to be back to house sit more, and if not, it was a very modest amount (15 euros) to support a museum I love.

On the way, though, I stopped and painted on one of the bridges over the Seine.

While doing that second sketch, I met a lovely woman who was sharing my bench. She lives just by the museum and talked about how magnificent it is to wake up to the dome of Les Invalides. We chatted a good while. She was patient with my French and enjoyed looking at my sketches.

I loved meeting someone who wanted to talk for a bit and make me feel welcome. It's still hard here to just chat with people. In fact, she asked if I had had trouble making friends, and I had to say yes, very much so. I've been lucky to make a couple, neither one of them French. So it was nice to have a chance to practice my conversational skills, and I greatly enjoyed talking to her. Talking to people around me is one reason I enjoy traveling solo. I get to hear more about everyday life in the places I go.

I did a few more sketches in the garden and walked home happily, calling it a day. The loveliness of my day was capped off when my favorite bakery was still open on a Sunday evening, and I could get my favorite chocolate and pear fondant. A perfect ending.

I spent one afternoon painting down by Notre Dame. It had been my favorite subject last year, but I hadn't painted it this year at all. I wanted to see how it would look with my thicker, more layered approach to watercolors that really took hold during my England trip earlier this summer.

I wasn't able to paint much in the mornings that last week. Mornings seemed to be socked in, but the sun would break through (still with rainy periods) in the afternoon. So I'd linger with my tea, book, and banjo in the mornings and paint in the afternoons.

The second watercolor is the bridge from Ile St. Louis (just behind Notre Dame) looking back to the Right Bank.

It was latish, and I was going to head home after two, but I walked past Notre Dame again and couldn't resist the blue skies. Nice to be able to linger and paint at will. That's the fun of traveling by myself. (There are other lovely compensations for having company.)

I moved back more to watercolor the last few days. It was raining off and on Friday, but I manages to find a couple of protected enough places to paint. One was the Carnavalet museum garden, where I could be under a covered walkway with a great view of the mix of formal boxwood with kitchen garden plants --- tomatoes, beans, and cabbages. Utterly charming.

I also went back to paint the fountain at the Place des Voges after doing a couple of marker sketches there earlier. It was drizzling slightly, but the thick tree arbors there gave me plenty of protection for painting.

I included a halfway done picture of this one. It shows what has been so hard for me about watercolor. For years in pastels and even in oils, I could do the entire background in the dark colors and then just pull the white of the fountain on top.

With watercolor, I have to be very conscious right from the beginning about where the water is and leave it completely clean as I'm working. It takes a lot of concentration, and there's no real recovery from a mistake. But I'm having fun with the watercolors, and their compactness is just marvelous for traveling, so it's been worth learning the mental shift.

On Saturday I had the marvelous treat of hanging out with Rene Miller and Stephen Harrison as they played music all afternoon. They set up just beside a Left Bank cafe, and I scored the table right next to Stephen and his bass. So I had the comfort of a chair and table to work at while I listened to the guys play their excellent music. A perfect afternoon. I did one longish watercolors and a couple of quick sketches of the guys playing.