Sketches from France

Out of curiosity, how many of you have watched Les Misérables? Man, the film version last year was awesome, but don’t expect explosions or car chases like you might see in a Michael Bay movie. Some of my friends complained that Les Miz was too “singy”. But I said: “Duuuude, it’s a musical. Whaddya expect?”

Anyway, I asked because I was lucky enough to visit the very place Les Miz was filmed. That’s right – France! Studying European art in my first semester in NTU certainly proved useful there.

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Here’s a small sketch I did of the Eiffel Tower. It’s slightly out of proportion and a bit shorter than its actual size. Seeing the real thing was truly amazing.

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Here’s another one of the Eiffel Tower. I drew it from a distance and wanted to play around with “gestural lines” – something I learnt in NTU. Gesture drawing means that when you sketch, you do not completely mimic the actual artefact, but instead try to quickly capture its essence with quick, energetic strokes.

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Here’s a sketch of Notre Dame de Paris. If you caught Les Miz, you would have seen this in the backdrop of some scenes.

A little background info: Notre Dame was constructed during the Gothic Era (unrelated to Gothic Fashion, which is a completely different thing!). It was completed around the 12th to 13th Century, if I recall correctly.

One of the key characteristics of Gothic church architecture is the flying buttress – you can see these arched exterior supports all around the building.

And finally, here’s a real picture I took of the cathedral during my trip. Beautiful, isn’t it?

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