Friday

On Friday morning, we went to the weekly outdoor market in the town of Thouars, which had lovely vistas of vegetables and fruit, also clothes, books, shoes, cheeses, and other miscellaneous stuff. Bixxy and I wandered around photographing it all, and then went into a couple of shops for some French souvenirs for me, while Jane, Cristina and Giovanna got a coffee and then roamed the town on a separate trajectory.

I got Bix to ask the attractive young man (why didn't I take a photo?!) behind this pasta counter whether he had hand-lettered these signs, but he said that his partner, who was absent for a few moments, had done so. Bix then proceeded to tell him that I was a famous movie title designer from Los Angeles who wanted to know what font it was, so then he wanted a photo with me.

There was just something so beautiful about the presentation of the produce at this open-air market...maybe it was just the novelty of the handwritten signs in French...

I loved these islands of flowers put up to direct traffic around the circles and corners:

We all met up at Le Café des Arts for lunch out, and sketched on the placemats while we waited for our salads.

I tried my hand at this portrait of Bixxy, who was looking down doing her own sketch of the salt cellar. The salt cellar possibly looked more like itself...

And of course there was a cat...

This was my last full day (it all went so fast!), so after our outing it was back to the studio to pursue various projects. We worked over the top of underwashes we had done the day before, and also experimented with three-part washes to mimic the lake horizon in an abstract bleed of sky, water, and trees along the bank between. Here is one of those that I did:

And here is the lovely picture of a dovecote (from our trip to Bressuire) that Jane painted over the top of a wash she had done the night before, photographed here in process and then later when complete, with some of her other work:

More later...