And that is that. Six weeks, four countries, and a camera so full it clinks when I shake it.
I am at the gate at Charles de Gaulle with a bottle of cold water and my sketch pad wedged under one arm, watching them load the plane that starts the long unravel home… Paris to Istanbul this afternoon, Istanbul to Bangkok overnight, Bangkok to Brisbane after that. Thursday morning, if the sums hold, I will be standing in my own studio wondering if any of it happened.
The evidence says it did. A sketch pad full of gesture studies. A phone full of water, bridges, markets, walls and one delegation of Parisian rats. New nibs and brushes from a shop that served Cezanne. And a head full of everything I now have to sit down and turn into ink. That is the real work, and it starts Monday.
Thank you for walking Europe with me. Next post from Queensland.
Monday’s list said one word: Sennelier. The paint shop on the quay that has been serving artists since 1887. On the way there the Left Bank gave me green glass bubbles, a wall of steel cyclists, and an entire film crew in the Palais-Royal.
Last full day in Paris, so I got up before Paris did. Notre-Dame at six in the morning, an empty square, and the discovery that I was not actually first. The locals were already doing their rounds.
Monday’s list said Butte aux Cailles, so naturally I went Sunday. A stencilled rat guarding a doorway, and Aydar’s flowering women watching the street from two walls of the thirteenth. All of it in black and white, which is to say, my language.
