Tuesday, August 6, 2013

Away and Now Back with Some Stories of Arts and France

I have been neglecting this blog but, of course, not on purpose. It's a good thing I'm not a writer who has to meet several deadlines. I would be in so much trouble.
We went to South of France not too long ago. We rented an apartment in Nice for our base and exploring the surrounding areas. Nice is a beautiful city and it's one of those things where pictures won't be able to translate certain feelings you can get from a place. The ocean has that gorgeous azure color like a gemstone, which you can see from your google search, but it's way way way better when you experience it with your own eyes. I felt like I was fitter there because we had a chance to walk everywhere, which I loved. I could walk to a boulangerie to get some croissants, pain au chocolat, bagette or some treats, because it was right at the corner of our apartment. How cool was that?
Public transportation was great. We could take buses easily or trams. The rate was flat (1.5 euro) no matter how far the distance was, for example going to Monaco, which was around 50 mins by bus would be the same rate as going to Vieille Ville Nice. The city has many features that I love - many public parks, a lot of Museums, cute buildings, open market, beautiful beach, mountain view, mild temperature.
Other towns/ villages near Nice are also nice. We only managed to see some of them - Cannes, Vence, Saint Paul de Vence, and Monaco. The farthest place we went was St. Tropez by boat.
Leaving Nice was absolutely difficult, but we shall return :)
We took tons of photos from our cell phones, my camera, and DH's camera, so below are only few of them. I may share some on my next posts.

We took printmaking class when we returned home. It was a fun class. I've never tried printmaking before, so this class was pretty much an introduction to familiarize us with different techniques in printmaking. We learned about Monotype, Drypoint, Etching, Woodcut/Linocut, and Xerox transfer. We learned so much from the class and our printmaking teacher was really generous sharing her knowledge and time in the class.

I've been busy painting, drawing, participating in some shows. I will share some pics of the progress next time.







                             





Some pics from our printmaking class


DH made those prints on the right. Those patterns look like they should be on Japanese paper :)