Updates

So, I'm finally back from my trip and recovered from jet lag.

Museum tally:
* Britain- Victoria and Albert, Windsor Castle (Although not an art museum, it did have an astonishing collection of art)
* France- Musee d'Orsay (couldn't take photos, but it was /amazing/!), Louvre (many, many pictures there), Versailles (again, not technically an art museum, but quite a collection of paintings)
Total: 3 art museums, 2 others

I haven't had a chance yet to put my travel sketches in my summer sketchbook, let alone scan them, as I've been working on something very special at my internship. I'm interning in the education department at the Udvar-Hazy branch of the National Air and Space Museum, and we've been trying to find ways to make it a little more art, not just science. As a result, I'm creating a coloring book page for our "Become a Pilot Day" event on the 19th. It's a copy of a mural in the museum, "Celebrating 100 Years of Powered Flight" by Dr. Robert McCall. It's very exciting, but it's keeping me very, very busy. I can't post the image or my coloring sheet, but I can link to the artist's site: http://www.mccallstudios.com His paintings, especially his futuristic landscapes and cityscapes, are absolutely stunning.

Berlin and travel to Paris

We ended up not going to any museums in Berlin yesterday. Instead, we took a double-decker bus around the city and I snapped many photos of architecture. I'll probably need to get a new memory card soon for my camera, too. We then took a sleeper train to Paris: Worst. Train. Ever. The compartment was barely wide enough to stand sideways next to the beds, which were triple-story bunks. @_@ But I survived, and I'm in Paris, and have glimpsed the Eiffel Tower for the first time. :) We also had a busker on an accordion or something on the subway; that was very cool.

I think the current plan is something like: wander around tonight, see Versailles tomorrow, possibly cycle along the Seine and visit the Louvre or Musée d'Orsay on Sunday, and whichever museum we didn't see the other day. And, naturally, there's lots of other stuff planned, but those are the most relevant to this blog.

I probably won't post too often here; this keyboard arrangement is driving me crazy. But I have my sketchbook, some pencils, a Cotman travel kit, and Paris to run around in. :D

One short actual post

There are apparently a /lot/ of mustard fields in Mecklenberg-Vorpommern (sp). I don't know if any of you have ever seen one, but they are amazing things. We drove from Hamburg to Rostock, and from there to Rerik, on the Baltic coast, in search of family roots, and saw tons of them! Great swaths of vivid yellow stretching to the horizon over rolling hills. (And I do mean /vivid/. I took pictures on cloudy days and it's only slightly less saturated than lemon-yellow-ish.) Often, the fields would be near groupings of trees or unused fields, spacing them with green. They also tended to have designs running through them where farm equipment drove through them.

There is actually a point here: often, pysanky artists would employ intricate paths to trap evil and keep it away from the person the egg was gifted to (I'll find that source soon; Mom's comp doesn't have my bookmarks, alas). SO, my thought is to use the path idea to create a more abstract (possibly non-objective?) design. The color palette would be: mustard yellow, with linear designs in dark green, and a greyish purple (observed in a tilled field).

Not an actual post D:

Just to point out that I am active. I've been taking photographs galore and sketching to keep my muse active, but I can't upload anything until I get home (forgetting cords is not fun). Anyway; updates!

Museum tally:
Victoria and Albert (London): check

While I was at the V&A, I came across something very cool: micromosaics. As the name implies, they're mosaics made with teeny-tiny pieces. They looked almost like the brushstrokes of paintings! I'll do an actual post about them later, with photos and artists, but their intricacy and the persistance required to complete them was astounding. One artist is rumored to have spent ~20 /years/ on /one/ micromosaic! Obviously I hope it won't take me 20 years to complete this project, but I hope I can put as much of myself into my work as those artists did.

Planned museums:
Something in Berlin
Louvre
Musee d'Orsay
Versailles
Tate British or Tate Modern

That's all for now! G'night all!

Trial and Error

I hate my cat sometimes. It took me about an hour trying to hollow out the duck and quail eggs. The duck eggs went fine; the quail not so much. Out of 6 attempts, I got only 2 un-cracked, hollowed eggs. So, naturally, my cat decided to tip the carton off the table to play with. C'est la guerre.

I ordered 4 pre-emptied emu eggs and some shell pieces on eBay last night. I'll probably start working on a design now, and practice on the shell pieces before trying my luck on the actual eggs. Here's hoping Dad has a dremel tool, as I forgot mine back at CNU. I should probably look into getting one of those pen-like attachments, so it's a little less bulky.

I've also been poking around the internet, and finding more books and artists to check out. My current plan of attack artist-wise is to see if there are other pysanky artists out there and what they're up to. Whether it's turning an egg into a Dalek or other contemporary design (which I've seen and loved- just need to find the link again) or using traditional designs on non-traditional eggs (like emu and ostrich eggs- waiting on a response from that artist re. use of images). I'm also going to look through other modern/contemporary artists and see if anything strikes me. A little broad, I know, but at the moment, it's what I've got.

Adventures

Well, since I'll be gone for two weeks, I decided to try starting early. Unfortunately, things never seem to go quite how I plan. I was elated that I actually knew where the Reston Whole Foods was; in the same plaza as our Michaels! I then proceeded to get lost in my own home town trying to find said plaza that I've been to hundreds of times before.

I'd seen online that Whole Foods carried ostrich and emu, and other types of eggs, so I went to price things out. MY. GOODNESS! They wanted $30 plus tax for one ostrich egg! I think I can get two for that price on eBay! At any rate, they did have a good price on large duck eggs (4/$3), and they had a small case of about 12-15 quail eggs for $6. So, I'll blow those out tomorrow and see where I go from there. The quail eggs are naturally spotted with dark brown patches, so, depending on the designs, I might have to cast them instead. We'll see. Maybe I can integrate the splotches in the design. As for the ostrich and emu eggs, I'm watching several on eBay to get a sense of the prices.

[On a totally unrelated note: thank goodness for strawberry season!]