A few favourites from Provence and a new YouTube video

I’ve slowly been scanning sketches from my recent teaching trip in Provence and I’ll be posting more of them soon. Here are a few from my favourite spots.

ST PAUL DE MAUSOLE: I visited St. Paul de Mausole for the first time in 2018, when I was teaching my very first workshop with French Escapade. I remember how moving it was to enter the room where Van Gogh spent a year of confinement, look out at the garden from his bedroom window, see the olive trees that he painted, and be surrounded by the landscapes that inspired “Starry Night“, “The Irises“, “Olive Trees in a Mountainous Landscape” and many other paintings.

On this visit, we all did a series of small sketches that represented the place for us. I sketched the lavender fields and the monastery building where the hospital was located, a few of the Romanesque arches in the cloister, some iris leaves (even though they had finished blooming) and a few coquelicots in the garden. It was a very hot day when we visited, and there wasn’t much shade, but everyone sketched something interesting that morning, despite the heat. To note: the gardens — both outside and in the cloister — are much less well tended than they were six years ago. I’m not sure why that is. A lack of staff due to the pandemic, perhaps?

FONTAINE DE VAUCLUSE: On my day off between two teaching weeks, I had a bit of time to sketch on my own. I sat on a bench near the river and sketched the bridge, the waterwheel and the narrow village buildings. At one point, when I looked up from my sketchbook, there were two fisherman in hip waders standing on the landing near the Sorgue river. I was hoping to capture both of them but by the time I started to draw the first one, they were gone. Sketching in that spot by the river is always a pleasure. There’s a bench in the shade and a fountain so I can fill my painting cup. The temperature in the village is always cooler than the surrounding towns because of that cold spring water, and the river is an unearthly green due to the clear spring water and the bright water parsnip that grows in it. If you want to see how I painted this scene, have a look at my YouTube channel. I just posted a video of it there.