2017 Tour de France Stage 21 Watercolor

For an overview of my Tour de France watercolor project, click here.

And then another great Tour de France came to a conclusion as it always does, on the Champs-Elysees in Paris.

2017 Tour de France Stage 19 & 20 Watercolors

For an overview of my Tour de France project, click here.

Stage 20 brought the Tour through the beautiful red-roofed villages of Provence.

One more treat before heading to Paris ... a spectacular individual time trial through Marseille.  The

beautiful view of all was as the riders climbed the hill to the Basilique Notre-Dame de la Garde.

2017 Tour de France Stage 17 & 18 Watercolors

For an overview of my Tour de France watercolor project, click here.

Stage 17 featured the spectacular giants of the Tour -- Col de la Croix de Fer and the Col du Galibier -- as well as a beautiful alpine landscape of mountain rivers, lakes, and treeless slopes.

As if the climbs of Stage 17 were not enough, epic Stage 18 finished atop the Col d'Izoard, sending the riders through the col's desert-like landscapes before reaching the summit.

2017 Tour de France Stage 15 & 16 Watercolors

For an overview of my 2017 Tour de France project, click here.

The tour not only headed into the land of extinct volcanoes on Stage 15, but also through some beautiful French villages (actually, aren't all French villages beautiful?).  I just had to try to capture those narrow streets and fans pushed up against stone houses as the riders careened around sidewalk-less corners.  The interesting thing about this is if you take a look at some villages on Googlemaps Streetviewer, they can be quite plain, albeit lovely.  But when the Tour comes through town the flowers and flags break out, and a whirlwind of color descends on even the sleepiest little community.

The theme of beautiful villages continued into Stage 16 as the Tour made its way into the Rhone valley.  Red roofs and elaborate cathedrals looked down on the peloton today, and Michael Matthews took his second stage win of the tour.

2017 Tour de France Stage 13 & 14 Watercolors

For an overview of my Tour de France watercolor project, click here.

Tour de France 2017 continued its journey through the Pyrenees on July 14, Bastille Day.  Stage 13 concluded with French rider Warren Barguil winning the day, after having just missed victory on a very close Stage 9.

Hilly Stage 14 made its way through the beautiful fields of southwest France, finishing with a sprint won by Michael Matthews -- win #2 for Team Sunweb in two consecutive days.  It turns out that the Stage 13 and 14 winners were not only on the same team, they were roommates!

2017 Tour de France Watercolors (Overview)

Tour de France 2017 was awesome.  It was one of the closest Tours in history, and it was full of the spectacular scenery and compelling stories that make the TdF so special.

And because the Tour de France is so amazing, I once again accompanied my nightly television viewing with a TdF personal art project!

If you ask me why I feel compelled to do a creative project in addition to watching hours of the Tour each night on tv, I don't really have an answer for you.  It certainly makes for some late evenings.  There are times after a long day at work and then watching the Tour that I say to myself, "Oh no, now I have to do my project!"  But I really do say it with a laugh.  Maybe it's because the Tour de France is so overwhelmingly great that I feel I just have to do something to participate in all the excitement.

For the last two years, my project has been keeping a shorthand notebook for each stage, accompanied by small colored pencil or watercolor drawings.  I haven't posted many of those here, but it's on my to do list!  This year, I did a nightly watercolor for each stage.

Don't expect paintings that summarize the stage or depict the big news of the day.  My paintings are simply inspired by scenes that I liked from each day's stage, watching the Tour on the NBC Sports Network.  And remember, these are quick, daily paintings.  There's no time for perfectionism!  But it was fun doing them and that's all that counts.

I've gathered a nice set of painting supplies over the years.  Here's what I used for this project:

• A old set of Winsor & Newton Travel Paints (you can see some mixing I did to try to get those reddish-orange rooftops and green trees and fields!).

• Fluid 100 brand 6 X 8 smooth watercolor paper, in a block.  It's a perfect size for fast painting, and the block set-up keeps the paper nice and flat.  After your painting dries you simply (but carefully) cut it off the block with a dull knife.  Very handy.

• A big set of Derwent watercolor pencils.  I especially like them for drawing trees and adding weathering to buildings.  Applying water with a brush over the these pencil marks creates a beautiful watercolor affect, but with more defined lines. 

• My Pentel 0.7 GraphGear 500 pencil (which I use for pretty much everything), a fine-point Faber-Castell Artist Pen, and a Pentel waterbrush.  I could have used a regular brush, and I often dipped the waterbrush in a cup of water rather than use the reservoir, just like one would with a normal brush.  But I like the idea of the waterbrush.  It gives me the sense of dong a fast on-the-spot painting with very little clean-up.  I really enjoy using it.

So in the next 21 posts, I will put up pictures of my 2017 Tour de France paintings. Enjoy!

2015 Tour de France Notebook Stage 6

For an overview of this project, click here.

Here is my Stage 6 notebook entry:

Shorthand translation:

Great beauty, triumph, and heartache in this stage.  Beauty in the amazing Normandy scenery.  Triumph in Daniel Tekleheimanot being the first African rider to earn the Polka-Dot Jersey.  And heartache in Tony Martin crashing in the last few kilometers of the stage.  Mom and I are hoping he recovers tonight and is back in yellow tomorrow.  Quite a stage.

2015 Tour de France Notebook Stage 5

For an overview of this project, click here.

Here is my Stage 5 notebook entry:

Shorthand translation:

Rooting for Cavendish to win the sprint, but a thrilling finish all the same with a well-earned victory by Greipel.  Rain through much of this stage, and wind -- which caused a large break in the peloton once again.  But for me I will remember most the beautiful wide open spaces of the countryside, the World War I memorials, and (as pictured above) the beautifully well-organized teams at the front of the peloton, keeping their GC contenders safe throughout the stage.

2015 Tour de France Notebook -- Stage 4

For an overview of this project, click here.

Here is my Stage 4 notebook entry:

Shorthand translation:

Pave or cobblestones -- whatever you want to call them, they defined this stage.  All the favorites did well -- especially Nibali & Froome, who not only stayed in the front when the peloton split, but drove the race through some of the most difficult pave sections.  But then the real shining star at the end was Tony Martin, who after switching a bike with a teammate within the last 10K, then pulled ahead of the pack to win the stage.  Amazing!  After three stages of disappointment, it was wonderful to finally see him take yellow.

2015 Tour de France Notebook -- Stage 3

For summary of this project, click here.

Here is my Stage 3 notebook entry:

Shorthand translation:

The stage began seemingly so peaceful in Antwerp.  But the anticipation of the last climb -- the Mur de Huy -- kept everyone nervous.  It reached a breaking point around 53K from the end with a terrible crash.  So many riders went down, including Fabian Cancellara in yellow.  The officials stopped the race -- amazing and unprecedented -- which was the right call.  But I loved seeing Cancellara still making it to the end with his teammates patting him on the back,

2015 Tour de France Notebook -- Stage 1

For an overview of this project, click here.

Here is my Stage 1 notebook entry:

Shorthand translation:

An exciting and amazing stage -- all under yellow umbrellas in the 100-degree weather.  The eventual winner, Rohan Dennis of the BMC team, chose to start early and set a world record time that no one could beat.  Some highlights: seeing the Dutch rider Tom Dumoulin race amid the roar of the crowd in Utrecht, cheering on Fabian Cancellara (didn't quite make it into 1st, but nice to see him back in action), and seeing the amazing architecture of this very modern city with beautiful bridges and old buildings mixed in with the new. 

2015 Tour de France Shorthand Notebook -- Overview

I love Tour de France projects.  In 2010 and 2011 I painted nightly watercolors after watching each stage on TV (which you can see in the menus at right).  For the next three years, simply watching the tour was a project in itself, with my busy summertime work schedules!

But in the summer of 2015, I decided to do something new.  I combined my love of writing shorthand with sketching to create this:

What you're looking at is a 6'" x 8" spiral bound drawing notebook, which happens to be the same size as a standard Gregg Shorthand steno pad.  I stuck some yellow card paper over the cover and then added a Tour de France postcard my mother found on eBay.  I cut the paper to shape with a t-square ruler and an X-Acto knife and then attached it and the postcard to the notebook using Scotch double-sided tape.

After watching each stage in television, I opened up a fresh page of the notebook and got to work.  Here's one of the pages, so that you can see what I did each night:

Every evening I settled into a fairly regular process...

First, I wrote the stage number and geographical information at the top of the page with a felt-tipped pen.  Then I decided where I would place my sketch ... sometimes at the top, sometimes at the bottom, and other times in a corner.  After I finished the sketch using colored pencils and the felt-tipped pen, I then wrote the stage results using a ball-point Parker Jotter.  Next, I made evenly-spaced lines on the rest of the page using a mechanical pencil and a t-square ruler.  Last but not least, I wrote a summary in shorthand using the Jotter.  I didn't plan much; I basically just wrote whatever came to mind.

What is Gregg Shorthand?  Here in the U.S., it was the most widely used written system to record the spoken word from the early 1900's until shorthand began to sink into obsolescence in the 1980's.  My grandmother learned Gregg in High School and used it throughout her life.  From the first time I saw my grandmother write it, I thought shorthand was beautiful, fascinating, mysterious, and fun.  So in 2002 I decided to learn it.  By 2004 I had taught myself the basics from a used 1960's textbook (the Diamond Jubilee version of Gregg, for those of you in-the-know).  I'm not an experienced enough shorthand writer to do dictation yet, but I can keep personal notes fairly well.

In the next 21 posts, I'll share each page of my 2015 Tour de France Notebook and translate the shorthand for you.  I think the sketches tend to get a little better with each stage.  When you're doing a sketch and writing an entry each night one can't be too self-critical.  That was actually all part of the fun.  I loved spending time with this little notebook each evening of the 2015 Tour.

Enjoy!