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Tag Archives: Viking River Cruise

Rouen In the Rain

02 Friday Feb 2018

Posted by emilypageart in art, culture, painting, Uncategorized

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Emily Page, Emily Page Art, Emily Page artist, life of an artist, oil on linen, oil painting, painting, rouen, Viking River Cruise

I’m having so much fun, y’all!! As we get closer and closer to opening the tattoo studio, I’ve been getting to make paintings to decorate the lobby. Big paintings. In different styles. Of random stuff. Stuff I don’t normally get to paint. This is soooooooo exciting for an artist.

As I’ve talked about before, I’m a very restless artist. I get bored doing the same style or subject matter for too long. But that’s what gallery owners and critics demand. You have to get known for one thing and just that one thing. And then you can very slowly evolve to get known for one more thing. But you have to do painting after painting in each theme/style. And partly, that’s good, because it means you get really good at that one thing. But, if you’re anything like me, you get bored.

As I’ve also talked about before, I have no more room to store large paintings. So I’ve mostly switched to small canvases. And that can be fun, because painting can go very quickly and you don’t have to wait long for the gratification of a finished painting. But I really like the physicality of working on large canvases. It allows me to get emotion out of myself and onto the canvas, regardless of the subject matter. It just feels good while you’re painting. And when you’re done, you’ve created something substantial. It announces to the world that it needs to exist.

So combining working in a range of styles and subject matter with working on large canvases is making me a very happy camper. I’ve also taken some older paintings that I wasn’t in love with and painted over them, which has the bonus win of freeing up that storage space the old painting was taking up.

So over the next few days, I’m going to post some images of the paintings I’ve been doing. I’ve had a hard time photographing everything because our weather has been so wonky (rainy or too windy or too cloudly or too sunny) and I have to shoot the images outside, but I’ll post them as I’m able. Here’s the first. See below it for an explanation:

Rouen in the Rain

Rouen In the Rain 64″ x 36″ oil on linen

Merchandise and prints here, and here. When I took that Viking River Cruise down the Seine last year, my favorite stop was Rouen. I used some pics I’d taken of one street as inspiration for this painting. Here’s the pic I took, and then a little watercolor I did on the trip of that street.

rouen-14.jpg

Painting - Rouen 2

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Budapest In the Day

15 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by emilypageart in painting, Uncategorized

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Budapest, Budapest castle, Budapest cathedral, city lights, Danube, Emily Page, Emily Page Art, Raleigh artist, river, river at night, St. Matthias Cathedral, Viking River Cruise, watercolor

After doing 2 paintings of Budapest at Night, I thought I’d like to take a stab at painting from some pics of Budapest during the day. On the Buda side is the St. Matthias Cathedral, which has a wonderful courtyard of sorts. This is a painting of the steps leading to that courtyard.

Budapest watercolor 2.jpg

Prints available here.

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Budapest at Night 2.0

14 Saturday Jan 2017

Posted by emilypageart in art, culture, painting, Uncategorized

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Budapest, Budapest at night, Budapest castle, city lights, Danube, Emily Page, Emily Page Art, Raleigh artist, river, river at night, Viking River Cruise, watercolor

Apparently, I wasn’t done with creating watercolor paintings from my trip down the Danube last summer. I just keep going and going! I’m like the Energizer Bunny of Danube paintings. While I liked the first painting I did of Budapest at night, I decided to rework it. Here’s the result.

Budapest watercolor 3.jpg

Prints are available here.

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Regensburg at Night

08 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by emilypageart in art, painting, Uncategorized

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art, artist, cathedral, cityscape, clock tower, Emily Page, Emily Page Art, Germany, Raleigh artist, Regensburg, travel, Viking River Cruise

One more sketch from my favorite stop on my trip down the Danube last summer, Regensburg.

Regensburg watercolor 3.JPG

Prints available here.

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Nuremberg

03 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by emilypageart in painting, Uncategorized

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art, artist, cityscape, Danube, Emily Page, Emily Page Art, european castle, european streets, Germany, Nuremberg, paint, painter, painting, Raleigh artist, street scene, travel, Viking River Cruise

This is another watercolor study from my trip down the Danube last summer. Our first stop was Nuremberg, where we hiked up a steep hill to a castle, and then were able to look out over the city.  What a perfect introduction to Germany!

nuremberg-watercolor-2

Nuremberg Views 6″ x 8″ watercolor and pen on paper

Prints available here.

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Regensburg

01 Sunday Jan 2017

Posted by emilypageart in art, culture, painting, Uncategorized

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art, artist, Danube, Emily Page Art, Europe, european cityscape, Germany, paint, painter, painting, Raleigh artist, Regensburg, street scene, Viking River Cruise, watercolor

Here’s another watercolor study based off of a photo from my trip down the Danube last summer. This one is from Regensburg, Germany – my favorite stop on the trip.

Regensburg watercolor 2.jpg

Prints available here.

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Gottweig Abbey

30 Friday Dec 2016

Posted by emilypageart in art, painting, Uncategorized

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abbey, art, artist, Austria, castle, Danube, Emily Page, Emily Page Art, Europe, Gottweig Abbey, Krems, Raleigh artist, Viking River Cruise

As I mentioned yesterday, I pulled out the watercolors and sketched out a few new paintings based on photos from my trip down the Danube last summer. This is from Gottweig Abbey in Krems, Austria:

Krems, Austria - Gottweig Abbey watercolor.jpg

Gottweig Abbey 8″ x 6″ watercolor and pen on paper

Prints available here.

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Budapest at Night

29 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by emilypageart in art, culture, painting, Uncategorized

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Budapest, Budapest at night, Budapest castle, city lights, Danube, Emily Page, Emily Page Art, Raleigh artist, river, river at night, Viking River Cruise, watercolor

Over the holidays, my mom and I were chatting about our trip last summer down the Danube, and we couldn’t remember the name of one of the towns we’d visited. When I got home, I looked it up, and realized that there were several photos I’d taken with the intent of turning them into paintings. So, instead of doing more important work today, I sat down and broke out the watercolors to play a little more. I’ll post the sketches over the next couple of days.

At night, Budapest lights up the city and it’s gorgeous. Gor-geous. It was our last night of the trip, and we road up and down the Danube on the riverboat, taking picture after picture and wishing we didn’t have to go home the next day.

Budapest - night watercolor.jpg

Budapest 6″ x 8″ watercolor on paper

Prints available here.

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Painting My Way Along the Danube

11 Thursday Aug 2016

Posted by emilypageart in art, culture, gratitude, painting, Uncategorized

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art, artist, attila, attila the hun, attila the hun's wife, Austria, Budapest, Emily Page, Emily Page Art, Europe, gudrun, Hungary, Krems, Nuremberg, paint, painting, Passau, Raleigh artist, Regensburg, St. Matthias Cathedral, St. Peter's Cathedral, Tulln, Vienna, Viking River Cruise, watercolor

As mentioned in my last few posts, I just got back from a river cruise down the Danube with my mom. One of the ways that I processed what I’d seen in each city was to spend the afternoon on the boat painting. I snapped a ton of photos on my iPad on the morning tour, then worked from those pics to do some quick watercolor sketches. I did one from each port, and I suspect that I’ll end up creating some more within the coming weeks if other work doesn’t take over (always a big “if”). In order to not have to check paints in my luggage that could get lost or have paint tubes burst and ruin all my clothes, I opted for a watercolor palette. I have very little experience with watercolor, since it doesn’t have the “gush” factor that I so love about oil and acrylic, but I thought it’d be easy to transport and wouldn’t take up much space, and it’d be easy to take the sketches back with me since the paint would be dry immediately. I also figured it be fun to experiment with something new. So each day, I set about to try to do a different style for each port. I really only ended up doing 2 styles. I found myself having a hard time not tightening up, and staying loose and expressive. I think that’s because I’ve been so focused on the realist paintings lately. I kept trying to let go, but didn’t have much luck. This may have also been partly to do with the fact that I was working on 6″ x 8″ paper – it made me feel constrained.

sketching on the boat

Regardless, here is what I came up with along the way:

First stop was Nuremberg. A really great entry port to our adventure. Quaint, colorful, friendly. As we first entered the city, this was our view:

Nuremberg watercolor

Our second day, we hit Regensburg. It was definitely my favorite place on the trip. It was absolutely charming; unpretentious despite having some spectacular old buildings. I loved the narrow, twisty streets. In addition to the regular tour, we opted to add on a tour focusing on the Jewish history from the medieval to the present – some of it horrific, some, at least in part, hopeful. I created this painting of the door into St. Peter’s Cathedral:

Regensburg watercolor

I also wanted to post this photo that I took that is probably my favorite of the trip. I love all the square spaces in it – the two colors on the wall, the vent, the corridor on the right, the grate on the ground and the smaller squares within that grate, and each individual stone and the larger square that encompasses them. Visually, there’s something really interesting about that. But more importantly, the gold stones are “stumbling blocks.” Each one bears the name of a Jewish person who had lived or worked in the building where the blocks were located who was sent to a concentration camp during WWII, and they’re scattered around the city:

Regensburg - Stumbling Blocks

After Regensburg, we moved on to Passau. Again, quite pretty with lots of color, but fairly touristy feeling. Still, we had a good time, and poked our head into a cafe for a latte. In the cafe, there was a little courtyard behind it where we sat and sipped…until a rat wandered out from under the little platform our table and chairs were on. Then we quickly finished and took off, lol:

Passau watercolor

After 3 days of slow travel through the loch system and through very straight water and flat land, we finally hit the Wachau Valley. I swear the heavens opened and the angels started singing. Seriously, I didn’t realize how much I was missing mountains until we hit Austria. My mom was in the shower and I started yelling at her, “Mom, there’s a curve in the river, come see it!” The series of curves eventually took us to Krems, where we visited Gottweig Abbey, which I did not actually paint. But when our bus pulled back up to the boat, we discovered we were actually in Tulln at that point. In Tulln, there’s an extraordinary group of sculptures by Russian sculptor Mihail Nogin of Attila the Hun meeting his new bride, Gudrun (the statues are said to be placed at the site where they met). As I was starting to become known aboard the boat as “the artist,” one of the other passengers teased, “Quick, paint it!” Which I took as a challenge. I ran out of time that day to actually paint it, but I did not knock out a quick sketch of Gudrun:

Tulln sculpture of Gudrun sketch

Next, we hit my least favorite city on our tour: Vienna. I found it overwhelming, like a giant, but older and more ornate, version of New York City. I’m not a big city girl. I feel claustrophobic with all those buildings pressing in on me. There’s no room to breathe and you’re constantly bumping into people, and the buildings, in their splendor, felt gaudy to me. You’re wealthy and important. We get it. I prefer the extravagance of nature in the spring. What I did enjoy though, was watching the 10 -15 fiaker (the carriage rides) barkers caring for the horses between rides while trying to entice people to go for a tour of the city. I took about eleventy-twelve million photos, so expect to see more paintings like this one in the future:

Carriage horses watercolor step 3

Last stop on our adventure was Budapest, my second favorite city on our tour. It was a lovely blend of Regensburg and Passau, but with a splash of Vienna tossed in for good measure. The Pest side is closer in similarity to Vienna, but with an abundance of gardens and greenery so that you don’t feel so penned in. The Buda side rises up on the other side of the Danube and has more the old world charm of the German towns we visited. For the sketch for this stop, I focused on the interior of the St. Matthias Cathedral. Not as bright and resplendent as some of the other cathedrals we visited (like Passau’s, which was INSANE), but lovely nonetheless:

Budapest watercolor

Anyway, that’s my trip from the painter’s viewpoint. A couple more observations in another post or two, then I promise I’ll shut up about my fabulous and glamorous vacation (wink). But one last thing. Remember how I said I made friends with a bunch of the boat’s staff? One waiter, Aleksandar (from Romania), was so excited by watching me paint that he decided to try a little drawing himself. We traded. I gave him the Gudrun drawing, and he gave me this, in exchange:

Aleksandar's drawing

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Viking River Cruises

10 Wednesday Aug 2016

Posted by emilypageart in culture, gratitude, humor, kindness, Uncategorized

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Tags

boat tour, foreign languages, get to know your crew, hassle free travel, how to see Europe, travel, Viking River Cruise, walking tour

So, remember how I told you that I was going on a Viking River Cruise with my mom and that I’d probably be the youngest person on the boat? I wasn’t far off. There were a couple teenagers there with their grandparents, and one couple who looked to be in their late 20’s/early 30’s, but other than that, I was just about the only person under the age of 55 on board. I was also the only artist – at least who was actively creating art on the ship. This made me somewhat a celebrity. So did the fact that I made friends with a bunch of the crew. By the third morning, I was notorious…apparently.

On the second night, I had had a bourbon cocktail, plus a couple glasses of wine, plus a shot of schnapps, at which point I had the crew teaching me how to curse in Filipino (the crew consisted largely of people from the Philippines, Romania, Bulgaria, and Croatia). Meanwhile, I taught them useful American phrases like, “mad props,” “slacking off,” and “busting your balls.” When I went up for breakfast the next morning, I was greeted with shouts of my name and cheers, and the crew that hadn’t already met me was lining up to do so. This reinforced my belief that all good things come from alcohol.

All good things also come from learning your crews’ names and how to say “thank you” in their native tongue. On the second to last day, I called one of the servers by his name to ask him something, and later, he came up to me and said, “You knew my name, and I wasn’t even wearing my name tag. Thank you.” This made me really happy and really sad. Of course I wanted to learn their names. They were waiting on us hand and foot like we were royalty or the pope or something (that is, if the pope regularly drank too much). So I was pleased that I had managed to do so since I’m notoriously bad with names in general (just ask my customers), but I was also bummed out that it’s a rare enough thing that he was shocked that I had done it.

Anyway, none of what I wrote is the point I had intended to make with this post. I’m rambling. Blame it on the jet lag. What I really wanted to do was give a general overview of what a Viking River Cruise is like for anyone interested. First, I’ll say that it is about as pressure-free a way of visiting a new foreign city as possible. Everything is taken care of for you. They arrange for flights and transportation to and from the ship. Food is all covered and wine is free with meals. You can also buy other drinks. The food is good, but carb-heavy, and there weren’t a lot of vegetarian protein options – especially at lunch. It was pretty red-meat-and-pork-centric. But the breads were delicious (I won’t even tell you how much weight I gained because of the breads and pastries). The staff is unbelievably, almost awkwardly solicitous and won’t let you do anything for yourself. They also have excellent senses of humor. The rooms are immaculately cleaned daily, including turn-down service. Internet access and television are spotty, but present sometimes. There are optional excursions you can take in addition to the free guided morning tours. There’s on board evening entertainment. Pretty much anything you could wish for, they’ve got covered.

Generally, you wake up relatively early either to discover you’re cruising along the river and are almost at the next port, or that you arrived and docked during the night. After breakfast in either the downstairs dining room or the upstairs deck, you grab your gear and load onto a bus to be driven to the city center (if it’s not close enough just to walk to). There, you’re broken up into smaller groups and met by guides, and you all wear your voxes (quiet voice box). This is the most humiliating thing you’ll do on the trip. The guide speaks into a microphone that transmits what he or she is saying over a radio frequency that your vox picks up and relays into your ear piece. Super convenient because they don’t have to shout to be heard, and you can wander a little farther off to snap photos while they talk without missing anything. But, damn, those things look awful. You might as well attach neon signs to our heads that say “aging tourist.” Shudder. They’re also pretty uncomfortable. But still, super convenient. The guide does a walking tour of some part of the city. Depending on the day, you may or may not go into any buildings, and the tour can last anywhere from 45 minutes to almost 2 hours. Then they let you loose to hide the vox in your purse and wander on your own. Mom and I made a habit of seeking out a good cafe in each town to sit and watch the world go by. It has ruined me for Starbucks. I never knew a latte could be so good. We also did a little extra exploring, checking out local shops and galleries. More on that in another post.

Cafe in Budapest

Budapest (Buda side, near St. Matthias Cathedral)

After you’ve had some time to explore, you’ll meet back up with your guide and head back to the ship for some lunch. Each afternoon (and some mornings), there are optional excursions to check out other areas, go to a concert, visit a museum. While a lot of them looked interesting, I have to say, I’m not sure the additional cost was necessarily worth it, and I was always pretty damn tired and in sensory overload by the time I got back for lunch. A nap in the afternoon was welcome. And I found that I really loved sitting on the deck and drawing/painting what I’d seen in the morning or the day before. It helped me process everything I had seen and heard and helped me decompress. There’s only so much of the whole being-herded-from-one-place-to-another-in-a-large-group thing that I can handle. I found that I liked my travelling companions on the boat more if I hadn’t been around them 24/7, dodging traffic together, getting in each other’s way as we tried to take pictures, waiting for everyone to show up so we could move on. It made making small talk at dinner easier, too. If you didn’t go on any of the extra excursions, you were free to spend the afternoon how you wished: napping, playing cards, listening to the on board piano player and sipping cocktails, headed back out to the city to explore some more on your own. Or if you wanted to do something special, concierge would help you get tickets or appointments to whatever it was in town that you were hoping to do.

When everyone was back on board by a set time, the boat generally launched again and began making its way down the river to the next port. Meanwhile, there was a presentation each evening about something we’d be seeing or doing the next day and an overview of what the schedule would be. Then off to dinner in either of the two dining spots again. There’s no assigned seating, so there’s always that awkward moment if you’re not with a large group where you’ve got to figure out who you’re going to sit with each night, but it gets you chatting with people you might not have otherwise interacted with.  After dinner, they have music or games in the lounge area, or you can sit outside and watch the world go by as you float along. Then back to your room to find turn down service has come and left your itinerary for the next day.

My overall view was that it was a fantastic trip, and a really great way to quickly and safely and hasslelessly (it’s a word now, get over it) see a city and get a general overview of it’s history and people. But what I’d like to do is now go back and book a hotel or a condo and stay for a week or three in the cities I really enjoyed to get to know them better. There was so much more to see, but not enough time to see it when you’ve got strict time frames aboard a boat.

More on the specifics and observations of my person adventure in another post. Auf wiedersehen, peeps. Time to slack off.

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Emily Page

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