I went up to San Francisco for the weekend, to see a traveling exhibit at the de Young museum called "The Birth of Impressionism: Masterpieces from the Musee D'Orsay." Ironically, I walked by most of the actual impressionist pieces with only a slight pause in step. Aside from wanting a maple frosted donut with bacon on it that I had seen in AAA magazine (mission: accomplished), I went pretty much for the sole purpose of seeing this painting by William Bouguereau:
La Naissance de Venus (Birth of Venus), 1879, by William-Adolphe Bouguereau
As I had suspected, it was completely stunning in person. Definitely my favorite that I've seen of his so far. There was another giant painting by him which was also incredible. The sad thing is that they didn't allow sketching, as they had so many people waiting to get in that they didn't want you to dawdle. For the same reason I wasn't really able to get my nose up against the paintings as much as I would've liked to, to really take it all in, as there were constantly new herds of people coming in. I waited about 2 hours to see the exhibit, so I only had about a half hour looking at paintings before I had to drive back home. But it was worth it anyway! Besides my main attraction, there were a few fantastic paintings that I didn't expect to see.
My friend and I took some Polaroids while we were up there and I had fun drawing on a couple of them.
I really need to be careful about what sunglasses I wear, as I tend to bear a rather startling resemblance to a young Roy Orbison. I've made peace with this fact, but sadly, this rules out pretty much every retro-cool type of sunglasses available right now. When I was little, my dad used to sing his song to me: "...anything you want, you got it. Anything you need, you got it!" Apparently that is true, unless what I want is to not look like Roy Orbison.
