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A Canadian expatriate living and exploring first France now Germany, then BACK to FRANCE (!!!) with her family; former fashion designer, turned unexpected UNLIKELY NOMAD, raising two children, writing, photographing, painting, playing piano (who knew!!) and blogging - and now... full time student at ART SCHOOL!! (I MUST be crazy!!)

Thursday, July 5, 2007

Water color

On Tuesday we traveled north up the west coast through Goteborg and visited a museum with the only surviving Viking ship in Sweden, then continued north along the coast to with the intent of visiting Tanumshade tomorrow, a site with prehistoric rock carvings. In our path along the fjords, islands and seaside lay a village called Skarhaven and it’s resident water color museum. Perfect.

When we were in Barcelona a few months ago my friend Oreneta and I and all of our collective children wandered across an artist supply shop. In it they were selling some very nifty watercolor sets that we were both quite taken with. In a small plastic packet not much larger than a decent billfold could be had a 24 or 48 color palette, a mixing tray and a paint brush. Just enough stuff to produce a bona fide watercolor painting; and something you can pack along in your pocket or purse.

Cool.

I must admit I was quite smitten, and even though I did not purchase anything at the time I did find one in Dijon before we left. When the kids sit down to do a craft I sometimes pull it out in between loads of laundry and trying to figure out what to cook for dinner and do a little doodling. So far I have produced a couple of decent portraits of them at work…seemed the most obvious and now I am thinking of trying to reproduce some of my favorite photos.
As soon as the kids saw the too cool packaging and had a chance to watch what I was doing they too were keen to give it a go, so I purchased Riel a bona fide set of watercolor paints, portable in a handy tin as well, with it’s own paint mixing tray, and brush. He loves it and has already produced some great paintings. He enjoys the variety of color and quickly becomes immersed in his work. Lily has started with watercolor pencils and enjoys painting the pictures she has already colored in with her pencils.

I have for some time, as some of you may know, been harboring a desire to paint and since the idea of painting in oil seems so intimidating this seemed like the most logical way to get my feet wet. The water color museum provided the perfect segue to explore the medium further both for myself and the kids.

The ultra modern museum building and attached award winning restaurant perched on the edge of a bay was encased in glass, with immense windows on every side exposing a series of elevated walkways which served to anchor the museum to surrounding mounds of weather worn rocks. Clinging to the rock some 100 feet away from the museum were several pods studios, for visiting and studying artists.


We had a fabulous lunch and savored the view and then spent some time clambering around the rocks admiring the sea before exploring the museum.


Heaven.


1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I'm so glad you guys are enjoying your trip. Everything sounds wonderful.
BTW - LOVE the pictures!

What we have been up to...