Pigment Stores in Florence...

Late last night I got a comment from michael.

He said...What a wonderful pleasure to stumble upon your blog while researching for pigment stores in Florence...(know any?). Your blog is beautiful!Naturally, being of an impulsive nature, I had to find the name of that pigment store in Florence tout a suite.
ZECCHI!

I started pawing through my fat file on Italy - mostly Tuscany. Such yummy Tuscan earth colors. I could do a post on that I thought!

Camille Corot went to Italy to paint for 3 years in 1825, and everyone followed. I got to Italy for wine adventures, shoe design and a 3 week artist residency in Poppi. Ideally, I would really like a Fullbright Scholarship researching Gelato. So far I've heard niente/nuttin'.

Painting while on the train is a fun thing to do in Italy.
There are tons of trains and the landscape is perfect for sketchbook recording. And sometimes the trains go very slowly.

You can't think about Tuscan colors without thinking of painter, Piero Della Francesca. His deep reds, ochres, siennas are the archetypal Tuscan colors that always come to mind.

You better come prepared with Tuscan earth colors in your paintbox or just stay home! True, you can always pick them up in ZECCHI's in Florence.

Well, I hope I answered your question Michael 

And Grazie tanto for giving me an idea for today's Paris Breakfasts post!

Les Blancs de Paris...

Playing with warm (Burnt Sienna) + cool (Fr Blue, Cerulean, Cobalt) colors. The value study every student grapples with in art school. It never hurts to go back to basics.

A wacky window decoration - a wedding cake of crockery to hang jewelry off of?

I'm a sucker for Parisien doggies. This doggie purse, pencil case and notebook was in the stationary shop around the corner on rue Saint-Andre-Des-Arts - why didn't I get one of them?

Not exactly a true WHITE, but think of all the fun provided by these now faded winebottle corks...

In a wine shop window on the Ile Saint-Louis...

I bought my first pair of Ballerina shoes in Paris in a shop that no longer exists in the 6th. Paris and ballerinas are synonomous for me and they say Audrey Hepburn too...
Look, these shoes in Vivaldi's window in the Marais are like real point shoes!
No art shop worth it's salt is without plaster casts, usually of Beethoven and Mozart.
Again the chance to do those value studies in warm and cool colors or just shades of grey. I refused to do caste drawing while at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. I still rue the day I didn't learn how to figure out the values of a picture from the getgo. I've had to make up for it many times over. I cannot do a watercolor successfully without first doing a little pencil sketch of the grey values. It's like going into the deep end without your waterwings. Well, finally some yummy WHITES...

I'm not a big fan of whip cream but these were too lush to pass up at Gerard Mulot's. I will take the carmelized bits though :) Click on this to get the full effect.