The Fise: International Festival of Extreme Sports

Montpellier is the host every year to Fise--the Festival international des sports extrêmes--or the International Festival of Extreme Sports. It is pretty interesting. Elena and I first noticed that stages were being constructed on the banks of the River Lez. Over the next couple of weeks, they turned into a full blown extreme sports festival.

At the north end, waterboarders give demos over the dam. Then there is bicycling, skateboarding, rollerblading, and probably other forms of youth extreme sports. The banks of the river are sloped up and the spectators sit all along the banks oooh-ing and aaahhh-ing. There are competitions and some spectacular crashes. There are booths of vendors and pretty spokesmodels handing out free KitKats. The weather cooperated wonderfully. A bit hot for me, but heat+youth=eye candy. The crowds are so thick, you can barely move. They set up an extra footbridge, but it takes forever to get on, traverse, and leave the bridge. At least they have ample bathroom space--about 10 porta-potties.

I sketched this watercolor yesterday (just before heading over to the Shakespeare Pub) and just painted it in today. It's a part of a bike track that the non-acrophobic kids can ride around on.

Two More Pictures: Saint Anne's Church & Book-in-Bar

I offer up two more watercolors.

First is a statue at Saint Anne church. The church is in an area too crowded to actually see the whole church from a distance. So I had to pick a part to draw. I chose this angel on a platform being held up on the shoulders of a guy sort of wedged in there. It was fun to draw him because his position was hard to capture. He looked better in monochrome than after I applied the color, though. While I was capturing the scene, several tourists came, saw, clicked, left, and finally scratched Saint Anne from their list of places to visit. Meanwhile, I sat there trying to figure out how to draw the little guy holding up the angel. Thankfully I knew how to do it because my figure drawing instructor is Seattle, Tamara Codor, showed us how to draw extremely foreshortened body parts. I'm really happy I took a bunch of her classes because without them, there is no way I could have ever had the confidence to try to capture statues of people.



The second scene is a well in the basement of Book-in-Bar which has been converted into a display case for books on sale. Elena and I arrived early for their language exchange event because we were downtown anyway and didn't want to go back home. So Elena read a little while I sketched the well. The buildings in this district are all really old, so they all have features that were created at a time when our needs were different. It is interesting to see how the modern businesses that occupy these old buildings adapt these features.



I did the sketches yesterday. Today I filled in the paint and then I went to the Shakespeare Pub to pencil in the lines over a 3 euro John Bull Classic.

Poseidon in My Studio

This is my watercolor stuff. This is all I use (oops--forgot the kneadable eraser, though):



That's the next one I'm working on. A fountain of Poseidon. Here is a picture Elena took a while ago when she was planning to use it as a starting point if she would organize OVS jogging activities. It's quite a unique fountain.



It started out looking like this in the 6H pencil:



Then I colored it in. It isn't easy to capture the scene. It is very wet and there are many many jets of water dancing on and off and high and low. I did the bronze with a first coat of dark green followed by a second coat of brown. Poseidon was a bit dark, so I had to resort to my fountain pen to ink in the details in black ink.

Here is the final product:



So I have done 5 watercolors now. It's time to take a break and try to learn some more French. Tomorrow is another day. Elena will go for a bike ride and I will find something else to draw

The Babote Tower en Aquarelle

The Babote is one of the two remaining towers from the original wall of the wall around medieval Montpellier. It is also the subject of my fourth watercolor. It's a national holiday in France, so there is no public transportation, most of the stores are closed, and even half the cafes are closed. But I found some tables across from the Babote at a place called Les Negociants Cafe and got a 1,40 euro coffee. Then I set about capturing the Babote Tower.

This is my original sketch with a 6H pencil and darkened at home with an H pencil. I do my sketches in the field with the 6H so I can sketch roughly and not have to many stray marks all over.



Here it is all filled in with color.



It is still a bit wet in this shot. I went in later and darkened some of the lines so as to get the color and the detail which existed in the pencil version.



It took close to an hour to capture the Babote. Then probably another hour to get the color in. Certainly more effort than the digital picture which took all of three seconds to photograph. But I enjoyed doing it. It's my fourth watercolor.

For reference, here is the Babote on digital camera. The angle is a bit different because I wasn't sitting at the outside table of Les Negociants when I snapped this.

Another Picture and One In Progress

I left today to get a harder pencil for sketching lightly in my watercolor book. Then I went to find something to draw and meet Elena later.

I decided to draw her:


Here she is--a slightly different view though because I took this picture a few days ago. The watercolor is from the park bench. I was listening to the CD of l'Alchimiste while doing this.


Then I checked my watch. Already 5 minutes late to meet Elena! Yikes! So I found her at our meeting place by the Polygone and she was late too. Whew! We went to the Voltaire Maison Por Tous (like a community center) to see about registering for a month of Francais pour l'Etranger. Then we headed to our favorite coffee place--Book-in-Bar. We had coffees while I sketched in a corner of the place that was interesting:


I'll add color later.

Digital Camera vs Watercolor

Since I don't have a digital camera, I decided to try my hand at watercolor. I spent about a half hour this morning on my first watercolor. It is is a little 5"x3" notebook for watercolors.

I call my first one "View From My Window".





Hopefully, I'll improve. But you gotta start somewhere. The notebook has space for 30 little watercolors like that. Once it's done it will be neat little momento of my voyage.

Edit: I found these blog posts by a guy named Ethan who does this sort of thing too (except he does it well).
http://ethandraws.blogspot.com/2008/01/bad-beginnings.html
http://ethandraws.blogspot.com/2007/05/my-watercolor-travel-kit.html