Opening 'Guide France' - Part 2: Musee Picasso

It was an interesting experience drawing Picasso's paintings, there infront of the great man himself (or so it seemed) and amidst a large ever moving crowd.

I sat on benches in the middle of the rooms or stood when there were none. People came up to look at my drawings, sometimes sitting next to me to sneak peaks at my progress. On top of this I had decided my brush texta-style pens would be the quickest and easiest (and I didn't want a confrontation over using watercolours in the gallery). The brush pens make that texta squeak as you draw, and I was drawing fast so the squeaking was prominent.

In order to survive all these external influences and distractions I had to focus on getting the simple 'facts' of the painting down.

I found I hadn't brought my black brush pen and had to use my .8 and scribble to quickly fill the large black areas. I also didn't have all of the colours I needed.

The only thing I had left was to relax into it, free up, scribble and scrawl as best I could. I remembered - almost seemingly on a cellular level - the old lessons I had 'learned' from Picasso from books back home, the lessons on being free and getting it down regardless. I felt the spirit of Picasso there approved in a humorous way, of my scratching out images in texta right there amidst everything. I think he would have liked it, after all he used anything and everything in creating his art, nothing was 'sacred', not until it was done that is.