Tor Eiffel encore!

Bonjour! I am in Paris for a month, taking a drawing course at the Studio Escalier in Montmartre. I'd like to write about it properly after its three weeks' duration is over and when I have a better overview - but so far, I am loving it. I am staying in a studio flat Airbnb in Montmartre just down the road, which is completely lovely - but boy is it loud. I'm getting used to that now, and feel I'll be able to sleep through anything after this. Tonight will be the biggest test as the revelry will be up to 11 for the France/Portugal match - fingers crossed for France but either way there'll be drunken shouting and I expect the whole of Paris to be engrossed in their gueules de bois tomorrow. Les pauvres!

Anyway, class runs from 1pm till 7pm each day, and in the mornings I've been wandering round remembering old stomping grounds, and doing some building-drawing again. Paris feels remarkably unchanged in the seven years since I've been here - judging by my yardsticks of favourites cafés and art shops at any rate. A fine way to judge! Yesterday I had lunch at Le Reflet, which had the exact same menu of five different types of croques, as far as I could recall them. I also popped into the Pantheon Cinema to see La Tortue Rouge - it being entirely without dialogue, I was able to watch it in "French"!

I thought I would post my building drawings here and hopefully will see progress over the four weeks! At the moment I don't feel I've got my eye in; they feel pretty jumbled. But it's a lovely way to spend time... I think I wrote about this before, but the power of drawings as aides-mémoires is really something. I can still look at the drawings I did seven years ago here, and mostly remember the kind of day it was, my mood, and what we'd been up to. I think photos can do that a bit, but they are different in that they create their own moods and memories... 

Anyway, drawing ahoy!

I went to rue Rollin, where we lived for about seven months. Our flat was number seven, up on the right a bit from here. 

I realised I'd never tried drawing Shakespeare & Co! This is pretty unfinished as I got hungry for dinner... but I'd like to have another go. Earlier in the afternoon I visited the art shop I'd liked, Dubois in the 5th, hoping to find the sketchbook I'd bought there before. And voila! They had them, in all kinds of lovely colours... I bought two but I'm going back for more. They just feel so pleasingly French.