Thursday, June 13, 2013

Rodin, Rain, and Medals of Honor

 Today I biked after school through the rain to the Rodin museum. I have never been there but it was a must see for Ericka. It was rainy all day so we knew that today was definitely a museum day. (You couldn't take pictures in there.) Here we are right in front of the gates of hell.
So out came my sketch pad. I only had 45 minutes to do this bad boy and it was HARD. Not only was I using a different sized charcoal, but the shadowing was difficult. Rodin doesn't ever finish his arts, so that also made it hard. But this one is called "The Kiss."
 Aaron really liked this one, which is literally just 3 of the same exact statue but turned slightly more than the last. A big no no according to him of classic art.
 It was rainy in the gardens which is too bad because supposedly the gardens are huge here. But the flowers were all in bloom.
 We made sure to get a good look at the thinker. If it wasn't raining, I would've drawn him. Dommage. I don't understand why I can't just have a nice 2 months in Paris. Is that too much to ask?

 We then split up, Aaron going to the house, Ericka checking out the impressionist art at the Orsay, and since the line was so long, I went alone to the Medal of Honor museum across the street. It was free which was nice, and they have audio tours for free which I was not aware of until too late. But they did have a crazy massive amount of medals and jewelry from different countries. Here's Thailand with an elephant. It made me think of Pook!
 And here was one from the Kingdom of Hawaii, before America took over.
 And some old medals from America as well. They were amazingly well preserved and you were able to pull each drawer out to see them all.
 Belgium. Made me think of my family back there.
 Many of the French medals were from Napoleon's time. Since I finished the museum early, I started reading his wiki page. I wondered "just how short was this guy?" (5'7")
 Since our feet were already drenched and we were already on that side of the city, we walked to Les Invalides. I guess I didn't spend much if any time here last time.
 It was a hospital for the veterans but also a place to be buried. Napoleon's tomb is the main draw here though.
 We saw a lot of armor, and the one that was most disturbing was designed for a 6 year old boy. Unless he's playing dress up, no boy should've had to wear this.
 The church was beautiful. The dome was very deep and I love how pastel the blue is, especially since it's not very well lit in there.
 Napoleon had a Napoleon complex in death. His coffin is inside 5 other coffins. It's already a very stumpy 6th coffin, so I can only imagine how short he was.
It was massive!

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