Sunday, January 28, 2007

Paris Sketchbook part 2

One hot weekend last August we took a day trip to Chantilly, outside Paris. The chateau itself is remarkable but it was too hot that day to sit outside & draw it. We sought solace from the sun in the shaded gardens & after eating ice-cream with real chantilly cream found these petit maison normande.


Gare de Lyon. The last place I saw in Paris before I boarded the TGV train to the South.


Musée du Panthéon Bouddique displays the Asian Arts collection that established Musée Guimet around the corner. Hidden at the rear of this little known museum is a wonderful Japanese garden.


More quick sketches of people in the streets & on the Metro. These were each drawn in probably 10 seconds or less.


Sculptures de Rodin et d' Henry Moore à l'exterieur du musée de l'Orangerie.


People I sketched while travelling to & from work on the Paris Metro.




A skinny French house!



Out of Picture publisher Paquet put on a party for the Blue Sky boys at a club on the Left Bank. This is the band that played. I seem to remember they were quite good but it was very late & a copious amount of punch had been consumed.





Opera Garniér




Metro Champs Elysées Clemenceau sortie sur le Rond Point des Champs Elysées, en face L'Hotel Dassault.




The Louvre is so vast & intimidating I avoided it for the whole summer. Before I left Paris I spent a couple weekends visiting & decided to concentrate on just ONE section. I chose the new department devoted to the tribal art of Africa, Asia & Oceania.







BHV is a big department store on the Rue de Rivoli, across the road from the Hotel de Ville.






This is the Brasserie de L'Est, opposite Gare de L'Est. The station has trains coming in from the East of France & Germany so this restaurant is popular with arriving Germans. Sauerkraut & huge plates piled high with sausages & meat are the house specialty.

61 comments:

Boris Hiestand said...

ahh- I'm hungry already! great sketch

max said...

I was waiting for one of these. It's fantastic. Great details and feel.
How ironic to move to Paris and eat sausages though.

MikeS said...

Confident lines and a great details in this sketch. Looking forward to seeing the rest of your Paris sketches.

A bientot.

limbolo said...

Love the sausage...But I don't see the sauerkraut.

Anonymous said...

I know this place, it's exactly like that (:

Paul Mckeown said...

Holy shit

amazing mate!

Jason Kotey said...

Good stuff MJ. You have an amazing eye for detail! Look forward to more stuff.

merf said...

i like the window lettering

Uli Meyer said...

I'll be there as soon as I can!
Guten appetit.

Matt Jones said...

Boris-this is just the apéritif
Max- I never touch French sausage, I had the steak!
Smook-more coming up!
Limbolo-big steaming dish of sauerkraut on the far right of the pic.
Cali-bon restau non? Bon marché aussi.
Paul- merci
JK-more coming right NOW!
Dad-I'll send you the real thing' I have the restaurant card.
Uli- u mean the German Brasserie or Nice?

Unknown said...

Hi Matt , annoyingly great sketches as usual !!!
Thanks for the support words on my blog about HNA!. I´d love to go to Nice but is it a traditional animated production? or CGI?.Looks great!!.Would be a blast for me to go back to traditional.Yesterday I went to do some life drawing!! , It has ben ages since last time I did life drawing in London! I really missed it. I´m planning to go once a week to this nice place I found next to the studio and get back in touch with my drawing and de-intoxicate from computers a bit!!.

check out my latests posts!

Cheers!!

Eric Dyck said...

amazing as always...you have an wonderfully natural sense of perspective.

Jason Kotey said...

Nice character studies MJ. Like the new "Ville" piece too. Keep knocking them out!

Richard Mitchelson said...

The Building is very nice indeed. Good one frenchie... :)

Jeroen said...

Your tiny sketches of humans are always my favourites. So simple in style, but so full of life.

Kristian said...

beautiful water colour touches on the statues above. the interior of the brassierie is marvellous. you get a real sense of the atmosphere. grand work matt

Jotodo said...

Wonderful posts! I always wanted to go to the Louvre just a little far from me. Really like these tribal pics. Liking the sketches very much.

Jason Kotey said...

Love the latest two posts MJ. You'reon fire, man!!!

alberto mielgo said...

grandisimo Matt.
I just show the Louvre from outside and I had too much.
It's great to read how your days go.

pbcbstudios said...

great sketeches

Richard Mitchelson said...

The line work on the newest piece (statue of oceanic style god) is realy great, it looks like it is going to be my favourite from this group.

God i hate being overly nice to you, you get too much praise these days ;)




knob (sending this back over to your blog after the comment you left earlier. lol)

max said...

This new sketches that you added are awesome.
The African stuff is really powerful. I like the lines that you put down, I feel that with the range of marks that you used you managed to communicate the intention behind the art you observed.
The entrance of the Metro is both clean and wonderfully atmospheric, you really feel the Autumn coming there.

Jason Kotey said...

Metro Champs Elysées: Nice work, man. You really feel the last days of summer....

Re; African Art... Great stuff. Nicely observed. Respectfully done, sir.

Richard Mitchelson said...

I must agree with Jason, this does have that late summer feel, i can just imagine the tour de france whizzing past. Bravo.

Unknown said...

Champs Elysees clemenceau was my tube stop when I was working in Paris, I miss that, and all the beautiful Guimard tube entrances...
BHV is great too, I was leaving just around the corner...aaaaah Paris, merci monsieur Jones for those beautiful sketches.

Matthew Cruickshank said...

We have people here at work whose ASSES are so vast and intimidating we don't go near them for whole seasons too.

You have some beautiful reference here for the monstre sequel---in Africa. Love the delicacy of your little nib monsieur pimpernickle.

Madame X.

Matt Jones said...

Jeez, don't talk about Stef's 'derriere' here- he visits this blog. . .

Jason Kotey said...

Travail très bon, MJ. Désirent ardemment de viva la Français, monsieur! Bonsoire!

MikeS said...

Monsiuer....do you ever do underdrawings on these sketches and tighten them later or do you just go at it right away in ink?

Either way, I think they're terrific and very well done, full of appeal and great observation. MORE! MORE!

Matt Jones said...

Rarely do underdrawing. I find if I try to pencil something first the drawing has no vibrancy or spontaneity, too considered. I try to just go for it. I look long & hard, weigh up where to put everything on the page then DO it!

Christophe"ZEBE" Lourdelet said...

Heyyyyyyy!
Hello mister Matt.
It's always a great pleasure to look at your Blog.
but i had to congratulate you for the job you do on "Monster in Paris".
(It's a shame that i had to creat my own BLOG on BLOGGER to be able to salute you.)
Tell us when you'll be back in Paris.
We miss you.
la bise à toute l'équipe!

ZB-)

Jason Kotey said...

Bonjour monsieur Cojones...I mean Jones. I like the skinny french house. Very dramatic, son. Very dramatic.

Anonymous said...

wow great illustations

Uli Meyer said...

These are all fabulous but the skinny French house is my favorite. I want to live there!

limbolo said...

Respect...

Richard Mitchelson said...

Very nice stuff, hope you got the 'mammoth' e-mail, my system is playing up...

Jason Kotey said...

Paris Metro studies- Tres Bien. The top left 3 are my favourites. also the women 2nd in from the right. Nice studies, MJ 2000.

Brian Sibley said...

Lovely, lovely sketches - my favourite: the skinny French house... Oh, my god - all those stairs, but then that view (hopefully) from The Top!!

Here's a lovely French Restaurant you should try: Brian Sibley's Window Gazing.

chenguin said...
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Matthew Cruickshank said...

Look at those tube sketches! And I thought the English were ugly!

Unknown said...

WOW!! Beautiful sketches, especially love the museum drawings!

chenguin said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
max said...

Your quick sketches of people on the street are great.
You're the fastest pencil in the West.

Richard Mitchelson said...

The new sketches are wonderful, they have a realy energy to the line... Must come from taking only ten seconds to do each one. Will have to give it a go. All good with you?

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Matt Jones said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Christophe"ZEBE" Lourdelet said...

salut monsieur Matt!
je te fais juste un petit coucou en passant.
(j'ai bien dit coucou, pas cocu...)
j'espere que tout va bien à Nice.
passe le bonjour à toute l'équipe.

i hop weel sea u sound...;)

my English is better everyday, isn't it?
and you know what?....
an incredible thing...
I drink tea every day at five.
...sometime i put milk in my tea.
isn't it amazing!!!
But, don't worry, It's just because i spend the week with my mother in lord.She loves british things.
It's not bad...but I prefer beer than tea.
so...
see you soon!

ZB-)

chenguin said...

i also prefer beer than tea. buts i prefer vodka to beer. i enjoy nice glass of vodka every evening, and thens another ones before i brush teeth at night. vodka is cheaps in kiev.

Jason Kotey said...

Happy St David's day, MJ. They are celebrating it big time here in London!! Craaki Daah, moi Laad!

MikeS said...

I wrote this glowing praise of your 10 second peoples in under 10 seconds.

max said...

Wow, the clock of the Gare de Lyon is ridiculously good.
Amazing collection of sketches.

Jez Hall said...

Great stuff Matt. What're you doing in Paris?

Uli Meyer said...

nice! When are you back?

Matt Jones said...

Hey Jez, I was in Paris last summer working on a couple of TV projects. I've been in Nice since October storyboarding on a feature film.

Uli, not sure when I'm back. It's so nice here I hope to stay a while.

Boris Hiestand said...

that doesn't mean you shouldn't visit man, it's been too long!
I want you here so we can tell each other we're assholes again.

Unknown said...

J'adore ce croquis de la gare de Lyon! I always find it a challenge to sketch the guts of a train station, so complicated and beautiful.

Matt Jones said...

Merci Stef, the intricate 'anatomy' of the Gare de Lyon is a joy to draw. I wanted to make the drawing larger to incorporate the contrast between the architecture & the palm trees that they have in their. Malheuresment mon train a Nice depart trop bientot!

Andreas said...

Came across your blog though your comment on Uncle Eddie's post on John Currin. I like your sketches. Just curious, what did you use for your gray tones?

Matt Jones said...

Hey Andreas, the grey tones are either just regular grey brush pens, or simply adding water to the black line which was drawn with water soluble ink, or added later in Pshop. Or diluted Indian Ink. Thanks for stopping by.

Anonymous said...

Beautiful ink drawings! I like how your work has so much personality --whether it be a house or a person.

Andrew Glazebrook said...

All the pictures in this Paris section are great !! Skinny houses rule ! :)