Arièges

I was lucky to have been invited to the Arièges region by a very good friend. When I accepted the invite a few months ago, I had no idea how much I would need this short break! What happened is that we got no Spring in Ireland this year (4 nice days at Easter doesn't count), and so far, Summer has been elusive - 15 degrees and heavy grey skies is not Summer! And I was delighted when the forecast showed 34-36 degrees in the Mirepoix region for the few days of my stay. Thankfully, I avoided the 44+ degrees that hit areas not that far away. So, I had a wonderful stay, mornings spent discovering the area, afternoons by the pool, evenings with a glass of rosé. I did fit in quite a bit of sketching, mostly by the pool and in the gardenss, as it was too hot to do much - just perfect!

You can't have a holiday without airport sketches - though I'm very bad at drawing planes!!

And passenger sketches. Next time, I must draw some context around the head!

The house we were staying in had a shared pool (we only encountered other guests on one of the days) and the wall behind the pool was this amazing crumbling structure, an old castle with no roof, just stone walls and empty windowframes. I became quite obsessed with it!

This view was a struggle - the paint was drying so fast that my washes were dry on the page as soon as I applied them. 

Morning and lunch in Mirepoix. A beautiful little town.

As you can see, I'm still in directwatercolor mode!

When I saw that there was a Lac de Montbel nearby, we had to go there! My favourite raincoat is a Montbell (OK, there is an extra L)

We spent a lovely morning there, sitting by the shore, under the shade of the trees. It was warm and quiet. I bet it's a lot busier now, with the holidays in full swing in Europe.

Just a little closeup to show your the pigment granulation

Rather than just the wall, I decided to do the full view. The sun umbrellas worked out nicely. Sunlounger not so much.

Too hot to do much else, so we went back to the Lac de Montbel. It was a lot busier, including a slide pedalo (a pedalo, with a slide on top - the 4 young Germans disappeared on the horizon and we never saw them again -ah well!), school trips, families, music. It was fun to watch and comment on it all! This time, I sketched it with a foreground.

Just a little detail

By the last day, I had finally figured out how to get juicy washes that wouldn't dry too quickly - well, lots of water, that's it really. Typical! This is my favourite sketch of the holiday, I think.

One last sketch for the road. I didn't sketch at the airport - if you ever go to Carcassonne airport, you'll understand why!