Sunday at the Louvre

I was itching to use our new Amis du Louvre pass, so I told M we were going on an outing to the museum. "We need sketch pads and pencils, and markers or crayons if you'd like", I told her. "Just pencils and paper", she said as she eagerly packed her girl bag. I had to make the trip sound appealing because she is only six, and her older brother was spending the day at the park riding rides and shooting guns for a birthday party.

The plan worked out better than I thought. After we spent a fair amount of time sketching (or whatever it is we were doing) in two rooms, she wanted to press on. "Okay, maybe one more room", I said. "No," she insisted she wanted to stay for an hour or more longer. So we sat way back on a comfy couch and with our heads leaning back, we drew different details of the ceiling that interested us. She gave her various drawings names like Flrinea, Tatou, Tom and Fleur. Up to this point, we focused on sculpture. I thought it might be fun to sketch part of a painting, so we whizzed past the Winged Victory and the crowd at the Mona Lisa and settled on a room of Italian 17th century painters. M picked out parts of a painting that she liked and drew them. She totally got into it, and having M with me made me brave enough to sketch in public.