Do you want to be too gorgeous for words in Paris? Or trop belle as they say?
Then get out your whites. It doesn't have to be white head-to-toe. Just a touch of white will do very nicely.
White shirt tails hanging out is IN.
Do you have a white doudou? Bon! You're in.
When you see blanche dans la rue, not just in the windows/vitrine, you know you better do something and do it fast.
J'adore Galerie Lafayette's posters, but I haven't a clue what this one signifies. *Note the white shorts though.
More white shorts embroidered in this case.
Is this Frenchie going a little de trop with the whites..?
A white velo in Galeries Lafayette Home.
An Older French Girl in white on a velo = perfection 
White chocolate Tour Eiffel? Bien sur
Stacks of white paper Louis Vuitton trunks.
A favorite silhouette in Galeries Lafayette Home.
Stacks of perfect white cups at Le Bon Marche.
I met up with journalist/blogger Amy of God, I love Paris and neither one of us was wearing a stitch of blanc, but it was non-stop giggles at an experimental dejeuner at LASSERRE (shhh) all the same. Not wearing white doesn't have to be a complete disastre. Amy writes about Paris sweets too so you'll want to stop by. Here's a semi-white dessert I gobbled up first day back in Paris. Don't ask me what this was or what was inside. A touch of framboise?I haven't a clue except to tell you it was very miam-miam
BONJOUR PARIS WHITES!
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Tricks of the Watercolor Trade
In the window of the pigment store where I worked part-time there were banks of colored pigments.I've been wanting to record them. Then come home, match the colors with paint.
Match the pigments on my palette, which is an old enamel kitchen tray found on Ebay.
Match the colors swatches on a test sheet of paper. The next step is to make a painting...
My watercolor teacher, David Dewey used to say, the painting is 1st of all set up on your palette.
Get your colors down there.
I used to take a ton of pictures of his palette mixings.
Then put it down on the paper.
I'd love to select a few of these bottles and make a painting from just those colors - what's known as doing a "limited palette" painting.
Another Dewey trick was to use your dirty water to put the washes down on the paper. It's easier to see where the water is on the white paper if there are bits of pigment in the wash. For most watercolor painters painting with clean water is like religion!A watercolor paintbox I'd love to own. A client of Wendy Brandes designed this using a poison ring bezel!Claus Oldenburg of the Spoonbridge and Cherry sculpture, said
he does most of his idea sketching at the dinner table.
Wouldn't this paintbox ring be a tremendous help?
Tuesday, February 06, 2007
Paris Valentines Reds
Yellow Bird Admires A Chocolate, watercolor, 9" x 11 1/2"
February is the "RED" month, the month of Valentines Day - to keep us distracted from the cold wintry gloom?
Paris reds always strike me as strong and forceful - there are plenty of true reds where ever you look.
Paris isn't afraid of red!
This strawberry tarte aux fraises is loaded with true Paris reds.
Plus just a touch of pale green to give it that zing!
Comptoir de la Famille, is a wonderful chain of old fashioned styled kitchen and home shops. You can always find plenty of reds to cheer you up here. Their logo is true red!
Why don't you put something RED on today?
Et merci Marie-Noelle for all la vie en rouge!
Monday, September 18, 2006
Les Bonbons
Someone commented on the pigment store post saying, "You must feel like a kid in a candy store". You know what they say about people who work in the candy store or bakery...after a while they can't look at the candy much less eat it. Color is a different story, and I'm often surprised and inspired by the color combinations people pull off the shelves and put together...
With all my running around to fancy, deluxe chocolate shops last May in Paris, M. said I MUST not miss a charming confiserie up the street on #6, rue Brea, 75006. Les Bonbons is only slightly larger than my closet...
Small as Les Bonbons is, it's famous for it's vast selection of bonbons à l'Anciennes (old fashioned candies) from all regions of France. Plus they have confitures (preserves), miels (honey), pain d'epice (ginger cake) and gateaux (cakes) and chocolat (chocolate) of course. Most pf their products are fabrication artisanale, i.e.made in small factories with less than 50 workers.
Les Bonbons' shelves are lined with too numerous to count apothecary jars. Note the ROSE labels everywhere*
I loved the look of these toothpaste-like tubes filled with crème de marron, a traditional recipe of chestnuts, vanilla, sugar and water from the Ardèche, but I didn't buy any...
This shop is like a musée de confisierie (candy museum) for all the variety offered. I've seen these yellow tins at Dean & Deluca. Sometimes the outer packaging seems like it might be more interesting than the candy inside...decisions, decisions.
I did finally choose these innocent looking foil-wrapped sardines. They're in fact filled with rich, dark chocolate ganache and just one sardine goes a long way on the satisfaction scale.Now here's the mystery in most Paris chocolate shops - giant tins of many varieties of thé (tea). The French take it for granted that thé et chocolat are a natural pair as an afternoon snack? More to come on this.
Monday, August 28, 2006
Carnets de Couleur
I have a bag full of color test swatches and I can't throw them out. The 1st watercolor lessons you learn, is test out your colors on a bit of paper before putting brush to expen$ive watercolor paper.
I get attached to test color scraps.
Sometimes they're better than the finished 'work of art'. After David Dewey's watercolor class I'd go round picking up test scraps off the floor. The colors are lush, splashed on freely. Some of my own color test scraps are far superior to anything else IMO. 
People tear their hair out daily trying to get their walls to look like some swatch of paper with a divine color on it. They fall in love with that color and will settle for nothing else = madness.
In many PB posts I'll mix up and match paint colors to whatever I'm going on about, whether it be macarons, chocolate, swimming pools, cherries, toy birds, ice cream, orange, red, black, pink etc.
I once took a color mixing class at Parsons. We could only use 3 primaries, RED, YELLOW, BLUE. We mixed away till we were blue in the face for 6 weeks.
That's the thing about color. It's so easy to fall in love with. I thought I was mad for RED. All those ridiculous personality tests where they ask you your favorite color, I always put RED. But now I realize it's BLUE I can't get away from or stop using blue all over the place.
I took Dr. Lusher's color test for this post. You get to choose
A watercolor book I had, Spanish I think, had an exercise for making over 100 colors with just 3. Ilove color mixing and matching. It's a nice meditative exercises.
People tear their hair out daily trying to get their walls to look like some swatch of paper with a divine color on it. They fall in love with that color and will settle for nothing else = madness.
In many PB posts I'll mix up and match paint colors to whatever I'm going on about, whether it be macarons, chocolate, swimming pools, cherries, toy birds, ice cream, orange, red, black, pink etc.
I once took a color mixing class at Parsons. We could only use 3 primaries, RED, YELLOW, BLUE. We mixed away till we were blue in the face for 6 weeks.
That's the thing about color. It's so easy to fall in love with. I thought I was mad for RED. All those ridiculous personality tests where they ask you your favorite color, I always put RED. But now I realize it's BLUE I can't get away from or stop using blue all over the place.
Your most favorite/least favorite color etc. The results are not far off:
Hungers for intensity in life and welcomes opportunity to take on challenges and makes a focused effort to solve them. Wants to concentrate energy on achieving goals. Not to be sidetracked by outside influences. Aims to achieve impressive success by expending great effort and single-minded perseverance.
WOW! I'm loving this.
Hungers for intensity in life and welcomes opportunity to take on challenges and makes a focused effort to solve them. Wants to concentrate energy on achieving goals. Not to be sidetracked by outside influences. Aims to achieve impressive success by expending great effort and single-minded perseverance.
WOW! I'm loving this.
I took Dr. Lusher's color test for this post. You get to choose
Tachisme, a French abstract art movement during the 40s and 50s, was a reaction to cubism and the equivalent to American abstract expressionism. Some of Les tashistes were Sam Francis, Hans Hartung, Georges Mathieu, Henri Michaux, Pierre Soulages. Being hooked on blobs, it's a natural that I'd love Sam Francis' paintings. You usually see him surrounded by sheets of paper on the floor -> giant color tests. And he looks incredibly happy. mindless activities you can do endlessly, yet at the same time quite challenging. It's not as easy to match a color as you'd imagine.
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Piu Piu - Pylônes - Piaf
The little guy sitting on the dollhouse sewing machine is called Piu Piu. He comes from Pylônes in Paris. Piu Piu is the nickname for little bird in France and Brazil and similar to our Tweedi Bird character.If you're crazy, nuts for goofy chatchkes go to Pylônes.
There are 5 Pylônes shops in Paris, 6 in Japan and 2 in NYC.
I spotted Piu Piu in the window of the Marais' Pylônes on 13 rue St Croix de la Bretonnerie and it was instant love. I fell for the one on the upper left because of his complementary coloring and he was damn cute. A cook book author, was wearing this baublely illustrated necklace at a James Beard House event 10 years ago - I was a house photographer there for 7+ years. Each epoxy resin globe has silly illustrations inside: numbers, dog muzzles, faces, star fish, monkey twins etc. Next trip over I went to their tiny closet-size shop in Galerie Vivienne and got the necklace, earings, bracelet. I passed on the ring.
I've always had a thing for sparrows. They flit about when I walk to the pool at 7am and yack outside my window even earlier. So Piu Piu was an easy addition to my collection of what-nots.
When you bring home a new pet you should know something about him...I didn't know this little guy was a working bird.
I didn't know he was a magnet for paperclips and straight pins until I wrote this post. I didn't know he would chirp non-stop once out of his box. See the white paper tab sticking out of the bird's bottom in the 2nd picture?
Pull the white tab -> the chirping begins.
I didn't know he was created by artist, Ionel Panaït a Romanian designer living in France.
Piu Piu is a chirping color wheel for me.He's made up of 2 sets of complimentary colors.
RED + GREEN or/ RED + TURQUOISE a similar combo
YELLOW + PURPLE
The 3rd set BLUE + ORANGE is missing on this little guy but I can live with that. Here's a watercolor tip for those inclined - When you mix 2 complimentary colors together you'll get some very handsome GREYS..much better than using Paynes grey or Davy's grey straight out of the tube.
Piu Piu, watercolor, 12 x 10"Painting Piu Piu is an ongoing project for me. Here he is next to my La Vaissellerie tea pot. French customs stopped me leaving Charles de Gaulle airport for New York. I thought it was Piu Piu, chirping away in my purse like mad, but I'd forgotten to get rid of an AirFrance fork I'd snagged on the trip over. They didn't make much of a fuss and just giggled about Piu Piu. He can be useful at customs too. A working bird.
The "Little Sparrow" or Petit Moineau has a new movie about her, LA VIE EN ROSE which means the sweet life). It's named after one of Piaf's most loved songs. The words in French are ( here. And in English as sung by Louis Armstrong are here.
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