Tuesday, March 19, 2019

why i love paris (11)



One Saturday in January, I took up an invitation from my friend Anne, a fellow urban sketcher, to meet inside Eglise Saint-Etienne du Mont to draw. I had never been inside this church just beside the Pantheon, and I almost certainly had not heard of it. But after stepping inside, what a beauty to behold!




I joined Anne in the back row facing the central balcony and got to sketching the view in front of me. The initial goal was to let loose a bit by doing without my usual measuring points on the paper and feeling out the proportions more instinctively. Which I accomplished. After that, the penchant for detail caught up with me. As the sketch was taking shape, I took more interest in it -- so much that I came back the following day to the same spot to fill out the double page of my sketchbook with the rich, lovely matter that laid before my eyes.

It turned out to my first sketch ever in a church, and I am glad it happened in Paris.