In Lyon, our home base was the Royal Hotel. The artist, Jean-Christophe Defline and his wife Valerie were stationed there too. Yun and Valerie toured the city. The husbands created lots of drawings over the week and galavanted with some slightly undersirable artist types. Defline and I have a posse who endlessly consume every culinary extravagance the city has to offer, washed down with a bottomless river of the best french wines. I’m Mr. salad and Perrier. Somehow they weren’t embarrassed by my presence. Maybe it was my red beret and fake glue-on Monet beard. Let me fill you in on one of my drawing tricks on the road. I sketch the hotel I’m staying at, or the view out the window, or a building on the block. This way I can draw a little bit at a time over the course of a few days without having to wander far. The mornings are perfect because no one is around except my wife filming me for 2 minutes. In the end, I have a great drawing that I was able to put quite a few hours of work into.
