Usk Sketchmas Day 18 - Dog or Cat & Museum Trip

 The Sketchmas prompt yesterday was a "dog or cat." I don't have any pets and didn't really want to disturb a friend to go over and do a pet portrait. So I went to Petco and stood by their window to the grooming station. The dog I picked stood pretty still, but the groomer kept moving around and blocking my view. Also, I couldn't see the dog's paws because there were boxes blocking my view. I did the sketch on site but added the color at home.

On Saturday one of my art groups, Wet Paints, had a bus trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It was a free trip for members...only guests had to pay. How could I pass that up? The museum had several great exhibits so I wasn't planning to spend the day sketching like I usually do. Along with two friend from the group I went to view the Manet/Degas Exhibition which was really good and extensive. Manet & Degas were friends and often painted in the same areas and used the same models. The curator of the exhibit showed a painting of each of theirs and the info by the paintings discussed how the two paintings were related. I learned a lot about both of them.

The second exhibit was titled "Vertigo of Color: Matisse, Derain, and the Origins of Fauvism." The two artists redefined color as they painted with colors that they sensed rather than the natural hues of what they were seeing. It was a color explosion.

The final exhibit we saw was "Women Dressing Women" which explored many of the women fashion designers from The Met's permanent collection from the turn of the century to the present day. My favorites were some of the older fashions.

The Met's Christmas tree with the beautiful angels merited a stop too.

But I did have about 30 minutes to do a sketch before we were due back on the bus. My friend Liz was sketching in front of me.

Tiny Dancer

On Wednesday night the Patchogue Sketch Club had a Zoom sketch meeting. We started with everyone sharing some of the work they have been doing recently. Our theme for the night was statues. At first I was going to do a sketch of Venus de Milo but then I saw images of the Tiny Dancer by Degas and inspiration struck. I've sketched the statue before...quickly at the Muse d' Orsay, but I worked in a bit more detail this time from a photo image.

Paris Art

Although I wasn't in Paris for too many days I had some museums that I wanted to visit. I set aside  a day to visit museums stopping at the Musee d'Orsay first. I love the Degas statue of the little dancer and sketched that in pencil.

My favorite area was the Impressionists. It was still early and I was able to capture one lone visitor with some of the artwork.

The clock on the interior of the d'Orsay is one of my favorite parts of the structure of the museum. They renovated it since I was there and the clock isn't quite as prominent in the cafe.

There was a wonderful special exhibit of the work of Berthe Morisot. She is a founding figure of the Impressionist group and was considered to be one of the most technically daring artist in the movement. Probably due to the fact that she was a woman her work was shown much less frequently than than her fellow artists of the time and she was not nearly as famous as the others. Much of the work on display was figures in landscapes or settings and was beautiful. 

Next I headed to the Orangerie which displays Monet's waterlilies as he wanted them shown...in the round. It is a very moving experience to see them. I can't figure out how to show a video so I can't show them to you. 

I made a visit to the Sennelier store...I just had to and bought a few pens and some paper.

On my way to the Orangerie I passed the Louve. I sketched it but didn't go in.  I used one one of the new pens I bought at the Sennelier store.