Sneak Peek

The 52- Week Illustration Challenge continues to inspire.  This is a quick sketch done on a torn out magazine page (the only paper I could find at the time the idea struck) . . . the theme - Paris. 

For me, reading the word Paris automatically brings three things to mind - the Eiffel Tower, City of Love, and the Impressionists. (well, art in general, really.)

However, I've never been there, don't speak french at all, and the only contact I've ever had with a French person is working with a pair of back-packers from France for a short time before they flitted on their merry way.

Hoping to avoid the typical Eiffel Tower pictures, I cast around for something else.
The first idea was macabre and frankly ridiculous . . . 

It was based on the stereotypically unusual fine dining choices of the french. (Privately I've always wondered if really frogs aren't consumed by and large in France at all, except by the tourists!!)

A friend and very talented photographer must have guessed at my mental dilemma after seeing this dismal thought embodied in a pencil sketch, and quickly email a link of some of her gorgeous photos from a trip she'd made a few years ago. 

One of the major centres for art, culture, love, passion and history in the world deserves to be better represented, I have to agree. 

So, when Wednesday rolls around and the time to post for theme Paris arrives, I will be posting romance, and there will be a typical Eiffel Tower in there somewhere. 

It feels like a bit of a cop out.
But then again . . .