Au Revoir Aude

The trip to Arizona in February, mentioned in my last post, triggered a major life change... and we have exchanged the warm ochres and terracottas of southern France for the cool greens, dark stone and peaty earth tones of the Pennines in northwest England where I grew up. So this post is a farewell to my Aude sketching days. I'll be documenting this next phase of my artistic life with a new sketchblog in the next few weeks.

Le voyage en Arizona en février, evoqué dans mon dernier post, a provoqué un grand changement dans ma vie. En effet, nous avons échangé les couleurs chaudes, les ocres et terres cuites du sud de la France pour les verts frais et les tons sombres de pierre et de terre tourbeuse des landes des Pennines au nord-ouest de l'Angleterre où j'ai grandi. Alors dans ce poste je dis "au revoir" à mes carnets de l'Aude. Je vais documenter cette prochaine phase de ma vie artistique avec un nouveau sketchblog dans les prochaines semaines. 

The riverside houses in Quillan have been a favourite sketching subject over the past three years. On this day in February it was grey and rainy but the colour of the roof tiles always warms things up.

Les maisons riveraines à Quillan ont été un sujet de croquis préféré au cours des trois dernières années. En ce jour de février, il était gris et pluvieux, mais la couleur des tuiles réchauffe toujours la vue.

On my return from Arizona, I had a hankering for the red rocks of Sedona so I made another trip to Peyrolles on a bright day in early March.

A mon retour de l'Arizona, les roches rouges de Sedona me manquaient alors je suis retournée aux terres rouges de Peyrolles un jour ensoleillé au début de mars.

In late March, as the days were starting to lengthen, I did two evening sketches of the Aude riverside in Limoux while my daughter was having her piano lesson.

Fin mars, quand les jours commençaient à rallonger, j'ai fait deux croquis sur les berges de l'Aude à Limoux alors que ma fille avait son cours de piano.

And this was my last sketch of the Aude Valley, at least for now. Au revoir Aude!
Et voilà mon dernier croquis de la vallée de l'Aude, au moins pour l'instant. Au revoir à l'Aude !

Colours of January

Next month I travel to Sedona in Arizona with its impressive red-rock landscape, very similar to the area near the village of Peyrolles where I live in the Haute Vallée de l’Aude. On a clear sunny afternoon a couple of weeks ago, I went up to there to do some sketching in preparation for my upcoming trip, when I hope to do a travel sketchbook.

This week by contrast, the rain has resulted in much more muted colours. The abandoned Chateau de Cazemajou, which sits on the hill overlooking Couiza, has been tempting me to sketch it for years. Last Wednesday it was raining but I had an hour to spare so I found a place to park the car, in the tiny container park next to the railway track, from where the view of the chateau was crisscrossed by telegraph wires and power lines.  

Oliver's Ait

Although I started urban sketching regularly only two years ago, I have occasionally dabbled in plein-air painting and drawing over the years. On one such occasion, a blustery April afternoon in 1993, I spent a chilly half-hour on a bench by the Thames at Chiswick doing a quick rendition of the small island known as Oliver's Ait at low tide, before rain stopped play and I repaired to my friend's house nearby for a reviving cuppa.     

Oliver's Ait at Low Tide, 30x23cm, acrylic on paper

At the time I thought it was rubbish but one day decided to put it in a frame I had lying about and it looked altogether better. Now it hangs in my hall in France and every time I see it I think maybe I should experiment with working loose like this again. It has an energy and freshness that can be so easily lost when I get bogged down in detailed line work.  

Friday Evenings

This year my daughter has weekly piano lessons with a teacher in Limoux, a town I've never sketched before. Limoux is famous for two things: the champagne-like tipple Blanquette de Limoux and its carnival, reputed to be the longest in Europe, that runs every weekend from January to Mardi Gras. It also has some pretty nice buildings, an arcaded central square and an attractive river front along the Aude.

So every Friday evening, after dropping Delphine off, I have just 40 minutes to find a suitable subject, do the sketch and get back to the piano teacher's house for the pick-up. Not long but it's good discipline.

Week 1: Found a parking space near the indoor market and, not wanting to be too ambitious given the limited time, decided to focus on a detail of the entrance to the market hall in ink, no watercolour.

Week 2: Delphine's piano teacher and his wife are also good friends and for the second week's sketch, I stayed on their terrace to draw some weathered terracotta pots sitting on a pair of rickety wooden chairs. No time to paint it on site but I took a photo and added watercolour at home.

Week 3: Had a bit of shopping to do and only had time for a quick pencil sketch of the old bridge (inexplicably called the Pont Neuf) in fading light.

Week 4: Mid-October, chilly and damp and I wasn't really in the mood for drawing. After wandering around the rive droite area, I ventured onto the Pont Neuf (see above) and saw that there was quite an interesting view of the Eglise Saint Jacques, now the Piano Museum. Stood on the bridge and did a quick ink sketch of said building.

Week 5: The last lesson before the half-term holidays. A cool evening, light fading so I headed for a cafe in the main square and sketched the view through the windows, while sipping a kir royale - a glass of blanquette with a dash of blackcurrant liqueur. Pas mal.

Putting it in perspective

Two years ago almost to the day I did my first proper 'urban sketch' - of an old butcher's shop on a street corner in Quillan.

Though a bit wooden, it was at least a start. Yesterday, quite by chance, I found myself in the same spot and thought to myself: "Wow, wouldn't it be interesting to sketch the same scene and compare the results...?". So that's what I did.

This time I decided to include more in the sketch, a) because I had more time to spend and b) because experience has taught me not to feel daunted by complicated views. But, as I started to draw, all the problems I came up against last time came flooding back. The perspective is really tricky in this one. Feeling bold, I had opted to go straight to ink... bad decision. With hindsight, I realise I should have at least sketched in the perspective lines in pencil to give me the basic structure. Anyway, I got down the basic drawing on site, took a photo for reference and left to pick up my daughter from dance class.

Back in the studio, I compared my sketch with the photo and immediately saw how bad the perspective was. It's odd because I usually have quite a good eye for perspective and have never felt the need to use a frame or other device. Not wanting to give up on this sketch, I decided to use it as an exercise. So I printed out the photo and drew in the perspective lines, establishing that there was indeed a single vanishing point.

Then I used a ruler to check the lines on my drawing... Multiple vanishing points. Oh dear. Was it salvageable?

With the help of a tube of white gouache, I was able to improve the perspective, though the final drawing still has multiple vanishing points. Oh well, you can't win 'em all. Enough fiddling, on with the fun part, putting in the colour.

Despite the dodgy perspective, the finished sketch, while by no means one of my best, does perhaps have more atmosphere than the 2011 version. Probably because there is more in the picture and the colours are more resolved. What do you think?

  

Three views of the Faby valley

Scenes from domestic life

In the winter we often spend our evenings sitting in front of the wood-burning stove, which happens to be in the hallway. The kitchen is open-plan and this is what I see from my fireside chair when I turn to the right. The corner of the kitchen is under the stairs. The basket I use for the market hangs from a nail banged into the underside of the stairs. There is also a sprig of dried sage tied with a red ribbon.

This sketch is intended as a slice of life rather than a still life, so nothing is arranged. The worktop is a post-cooking jumble of pan lids, steaming pot, etc. The fridge magnet is an Aboriginal art style dolphin I've had for years.


Like most cats, Bella has various favourite sleeping places. Last week her preference was for the sofa, before that it was Simon's piano carrying bag and now it's a cushion on a dining chair.    

         

Rainy Saturday

On this rainy Saturday afternoon, the garage door of the house opposite makes nice reflections in the wet road and puddles in the square in front of our house.

Un jour de pluie : le portail de la maison d'en face fait de jolis reflets dans la chaussée mouillée et les flaques d'eau sur la place devant chez nous.

Plein air sketching in January?

January has ended with two unseasonably warm days. Yesterday I sat by the river in Quillan and did a quick watercolour sketch of the Pont Vieux. After the heavy rainfall of the past few days, the river was rushing noisily past. 

Janvier se termine sous le soleil. Hier à Quillan il a fait 18° C ! Le beau temps m’a fait sortir de ma voiture pour croquer le Pont Vieux, vu d’un banc au bord de l’Aude, grossi par les fortes pluies des derniers jours.   

Today was even hotter so I ventured out again, this time to sketch the strange sight of a huge cable drum teetering on the edge of a very large hole in the road, just along from my house. The electricity company is in the process of laying bigger cables to bring more power to homes in the upper part of the village. With the yellow drum and the red-and-white safety barriers, it made quite a colourful scene.

Aujourd'hui il a fait encore plus chaud. A Fa, EDF est en train de poser des câbles plus gros pour amener une puissance supérieure aux foyers de la partie haute du village. Cela nécessite des travaux importants. Au croisement ils ont creusé une grosse tranchée et laissé un énorme touret au bord du précipice ! Un tableau haut en couleurs pour ce dernier jour de janvier bien ensoleillé.

A prolific weekend

Think I broke my own record this weekend, with a grand total of four pictures completed and posted on my Flickr and Facebook pages. Of course the quantity is irrelevant... what's important is the fact that I'm motivated at last. 

On Saturday afternoon I took myself off to the local spa town of Alet-les-Bains which, in addition to its healing waters, is home to a ruined Benedictine abbey dating back to the ninth century. It being winter, I was able to park my car right outside the abbey's ticket office, from where I had a perfect view of the ruins, offering a glimpse of the cathedral's unusual hexagram-shaped stained glass windows.

         
At home that evening, Simon was sitting opposite me, engrossed in a game of Beach Buggy Blitz on his Nexus 7. A perfect opportunity to get in some badly needed life drawing practice...

Later, much later, I couldn't sleep and, instead of lying awake overthinking my life, I opened my sketchbook again and added watercolour to a pen sketch I had done on a recent visit to Villerouge-Termenès. It's really a study of a small section of the chateau entrance gate because, as often happens, I started too big and there wasn't room to fit in the scene I had originally been attracted by. The colours turned out well though. I'm really loving the pinks and violets at the moment, perhaps because they are a good antidote to winter.

On Sunday night, I decided to attempt a studio drawing of the street I had wanted to capture in my sketch, using a photograph as source. What drew me to this scene was the bluish quality to the light in the alley through the gate and the way it contrasted with the warm ochres and pinks in the archway's stonework. The biggest challenge proved to be the values, since the whole street apart from the very top of the houses on the right was in shadow. The result to my eye is rather flat as there are no stark contrasts to give depth.

         
This painting also, to my mind, lacks the looseness and spontaneity of my sketches. A good exercise though... and a satisfactory conclusion to an art-filled weekend.

La Mouline

Our friend Irving pitched up in the Haute Vallée nearly forty years ago in a gypsy caravan, bought the crumbling ruin that was La Mouline and gradually turned it into the delightful and still decidedly rustic dwelling it is today, with lots of quirky features like windows made from old car windscreens.
Now it's home to Irving, his wife Juliane, who came from Berlin as a Couchsurfer and never left, their little boy, and a menagerie of domestic animals including Jasper the dog, a donkey who sleeps in his own personal stable on the ground floor, chickens and a herd of goats allowed to wander freely over the surrounding hills.

Notre ami Irving a atterri dans la Haute Vallée dans une roulotte il y a presque quarante ans, a acheté le hameau de la Mouline, en ruines, et peu à peu l'a transformé en cette demeure charmante et toujours résolument rustique, des pare-brise récupérés faisant office de fenêtres.
Maintenant, il la partage avec sa femme Juliane femme, venue de Berlin en tant que Couchsurfer et n'a jamais quitté, leur fils, et une ménagerie d'animaux domestiques : le chien Jasper, un âne qui dort dans son propre écurie au rez de chaussée, quelques poules et un troupeau de chèvres qui se promènent librement sur ​​les collines environnantes.

      

Villerouge-Termenès

Rather than occupying an elevated position like most of the Cathar castles, Villerouge-Termenès is smack bang in the middle of the village, amidst the undulating countryside of the Corbières, with its abundance of evergreen shrubs, red earth and limestone outcroppings. 

From my vantage point on a mound near the church, I had a perfect vertical view, from the café terrace in the shadows below me, over the rooftops to the crenelated towers of the chateau and the hills beyond. 

A la différence de la plupart des autres châteaux cathares, celui de Villerouge-Termenès n’occupe pas une position élevée, se trouvant en plein centre du village, au milieu des terres rouges et des affleurements calcaires des Corbières. 

Pour faire mon croquis, j’ai trouvé un monticule rocheux près de l'église, offrant une parfaite vue verticale de la terrasse du café en bas, passant par-dessus les toits jusqu’aux tours crénelées du château et les collines derrière. 

Cathar Castles

This part of southern France, the eastern foothills of the Pyrenees, is known as Cathar Country, dotted with ruined chateaux where the Cathars, branded as heretics by the Roman Catholics, took refuge during the crusade which ultimately destroyed them.

On the day of the Winter Solstice this year, we went to one of the most spectacular of these Cathar strongholds - Quéribus, down towards the Mediterranean, on the edge of the Corbières.

It was cloudy and threatening rain when we arrived but just as we reached the top of the steep path, the sun made a brief appearance and I sat down to sketch the steps leading up to the arched entrance.

At one point the light started to fail though it was only midday; I turned around and saw, hovering over the valley below, the strangest and blackest cloud I've ever seen. We hot-footed it back down to the car park where I did a second sketch from the warmth and protection of the car.






Boxing Day was sunny and warmish so I took advantage and drove over the hill to sketch another Cathar castle - Puivert. I particularly like the view of the back of the chateau as you come down the hill into Puivert village. It was a clear blue day and the light was exquisite.

Yesterday also dawned sunny and mild so we jumped in the car again and drove over to the Ariège. Between Lavelanet and Foix is another, rather spectacular chateau that we had often passed but never visited: Roquefixade. This time we made the detour - and didn't regret it. We parked in the delightful village square and made our way up the steep path to the ruined chateau, perched on top of a limestone outcrop. It was a perfect day to come up here, to enjoy astonishing views of the snow-capped Pyrenees and the neighbouring chateau of Montségur on its pog further along the valley.

Hunting Shooting Fishing

For my first post on the Urban Sketchers France blog since being invited as a correspondent, I drew one of Quillan's traditional shops on the Place de la République. 

Yesterday afternoon, with my daughter at her usual two-hour dance class in Quillan, I found a much coveted parking space with a good view of the quirky aqua green shop front of the hunting, shooting and fishing supplier's. This side of the square was in shadow and the buildings opposite were mirrored clearly in the shop's windows. With its murals of leaping salmon and unsuspecting ducks flying over a pond thick with bulrushes, this place is a blast from the past.

Mon premier poste en tant que correspondant du blog Urban Sketchers France…
Hier après-midi, quand je me suis garée devant le magasin « Aux Loisirs de la Haute Vallée » pour dessiner, ce côté-là de la place était à l’ombre et les bâtiments d’en face se reflétaient dans la vitrine comme dans un miroir. Avec ses peintures murales de poissons et de canards survolant une mare avec des joncs, c’est une vraie relique du passé.

Passion Fruit

Well, it's been ten months since I posted anything on this blog. In that time, I have been getting involved with the art community on Flickr and created a fan page for my art on Facebook. And I did wonder what the point of a blog was, especially as I don't always have the time, the inclination or indeed the skill to write an interesting commentary. But now, having just become a correspondent on the Urban Sketchers France blog - an exciting new stage of my artistic journey - I think it's time to revive my own blog.

And what better day to start than a crisp, sunny Sunday in the Haute Vallée... the light was exquisite. It was cold but so beautifully sunny that I just had to get out and sketch. In Espéraza, on the road that runs alongside the railway, I found a house, clearly a holiday home, its green shutters closed for the winter, the stubby plane trees opposite casting huge shadows onto the facade. My eye was drawn by a few golden passion fruits dangling from a vine that crept along the railings in front of the house.

Quoiqu’un peu froid, il faisait tellement beau aujourd’hui que je rongeais mon frein pour dessiner dehors. A Espéraza, sur la rue qui longe le chemin de fer, les platanes dénudés jettent leurs ombres gigantesques sur les façades des maisons d’en face. Passant devant une résidence secondaire, ses volets verts fermés pour l’hiver, j’ai été attirée par les fruits de la passion dorés qui pendaient toujours à sa liane sur la grille devant la maison. 

Snow in Serres

With my daughter at music class, I had an hour and a half to devote to sketching. My idea today had been to sketch a rural snow scene but I couldn't find anywhere to park off the road, all the tracks and lay-bys still being too snowy. So I ended up in the square in Serres, a picturesque little village in the shadow of Pech Cardou.

Ma fille en classe de musique, j'avais une heure et demie à consacrer au dessin. Aujourd'hui, mon idée avait été d'esquisser une scène de neige en milieu rural, mais impossible de se garer hors de la route, toutes les pistes et aires de stationnement étant encore enneigés. Je me suis trouvée alors sur la place de Serres, un petit village à l'ombre du Pech Cardou.

Rusting Industry

Entrance to an industrial unit in the old hat factory of Montazels. I was drawn by the contrast between the electric blue paintwork and the rusting iron window frames.
Pilot drawing pen and Derwent watercolour pencils

Entrée d'atelier dans l'ancienne fabrique de chapeaux de Montazels. J'ai été attirée par les contrastes entre le bleu de la peinture et les cadres de fenêtre rouillés.

Efisol factory

The Efisol polyurethane foam factory, the only industrial facility in this small town, was closed down by the health inspectors a few years ago. Its rusting pipes and tanks are quite an eyesore though it does have its attractions for an urban sketcher.

La seule installation industrielle de cette petite ville de la Haute Vallée de l'Aude, cette ancienne usine qui fabriquait des blocs de mousse en polyuréthane a été fermée par les inspecteurs de la DRIRE il y a quelques années. Bien que ses conduites et silos rouillés soient plutôt laids, c'est vrai qu'ils ont ses attraits pour un croqueur urbain.

Nocturnal Shadows

The forecourt of this town house in Quillan has a slatted wooden framework over it and the stark white light from the street lamp casts dramatic shadows onto the walls and pillars.
Ink drawing on site, watercolour added at home.

L'avant-cour de cette maison de ville à Quillan est couvert d'une structure à lattes de bois et la lumière blanche du réverbère jette des ombres dramatiques sur les murs et les poteaux.
Dessin au feutre fin sur place, aquarellé à la maison.

Graveyard Cypresses

Quillan in the foothills of the Pyrenees is backed by a high ridge which is often swathed in a soft milky haze when the sun goes down behind it. The town's cemetery by the river Aude has many old cypress trees and I like the way their majestic forms are silhouetted against the mountain.
Derwent watercolour pencils on location.

Derrière la ville de Quillan s'élèvent les premiers contreforts des Pyrénées, souvent voilés d'une brume laiteuse au coucher du soleil. Le cimetière sur les bords de l'Aude a beaucoup de vieux cyprès et j'aime la façon dont leurs formes majestueuses se détachent sur la montagne.
Crayon d'aquarelle sur place.