The main photos featured in this design are Moulin de la Galette which is located at 83 Rue Lepic, 75018 and Mona Lisa which is located at the Louvre Museum in Paris, France: 99 rue de Rivoli, 75001
You’re going to need some tea to read this one! Over 2500 words 😀
As mentioned in the last post, I knew this design was going to be a hard one. I was working with a windmill, Mona Lisa, and my abstract drawing. A lot of a ingredients in the design recipe. Maybe too many? I probably worked on this one twice as long as Sleeping Faun and that one was tough as well. I don’t know if I’m happy with this one. It’s not my favorite out of the four I made so far for this album. I had a strange thought while making my album playlist. I wanted to combine the windmills to this design to add more dimension and fix the width challenge I imposed on myself at the start of this design journey. I don’t think it was a mistake to add the windmills but it’s already difficult working with more than one object. I would love to say I’m a master blender when it comes to these designs. I would totally love to say that but I’m not and this one makes me a bit sad. I’ve been working on this design for over a week and half those days I’ve been feeling intense pain and it’s not self inflicted. I was feeling random sharp pains all over my body and generally it doesn’t bother me but I hate feeling like this all day unless it’s by choice. The irony… lol!
Before I digress too much… I don’t hate this design. In fact, the more I stare at it, the more I start to like it. It’s growing on me. Not every design is a grand slam like Pierre but for this album I want them all to be that way and that’s upsetting me. I know I have way too high expectations. I’m not that good of an artist to aim for perfection every single time. Though, I must admit that it’s nice to aim high. I really want to push myself with every design for this album. I hope you can see that in this design. However… my outlook on art, especially my own “art” is very different from how other people see it. I put a lot of time in all my art and videos. I love the process and it’s so easy to get lost in the blends but I don’t think it’s easy to make these designs especially when I go off the rails and blend too much. Sometimes I reach that fine line between hitting that beautiful sweet spot and creating a pure distorted disaster. Just a mess… I kind of feel like Mona is on that line. I think maybe 85 percent of anyone starting at this will see a pure distorted disaster.
Let’s talk about the story behind these pics! Go back on the positive! My initial plan was to start early around 9am but I had to take a detour and get my third and last CoVid test before heading back to the States. I had to get a test done one day before heading back and I wanted to get the results before I started my day. Just incase something crazy happened on December 8th and my birthday. I know I wasn’t sick but I’ve heard all types of stories about Covid! December 10th was perhaps my least favorite yet funniest day from my travels in Paris. I had an interesting encounter with the breakfast staff at the hotel. I think it was all just a misunderstanding but sometimes I think about what happened and perhaps it wasn’t and they were just laughing at me. It’s all good. It’s not the first and definitely not the last time someone will laugh at me in negative way. While heading back out again, the manager saw me and wanted to talk about what happened and everything was “resolved”. I put that in quotes because sometimes I wonder… The reason why I mentioned this was because it really rattled me at the start of the day. I was very upset while walking to get the test done. It was raining as well and I was just miserable and hated feeling like this in Paris of all places. Definitely not a good way to start the day. Well… it was no surprise I tested negative for Covid again. Now I can try to get back on track in having my last full day in Paris be just as beautiful as my birthday. My birthday wasn’t perfect but I didn’t start that day in tears, lol.
Back to my plan… This is all going to end positive! I swear!!! I had an enlightening talk with the uber driver heading to Sacré CÅ“ur. Maybe it was meant to be… He was just so kind and we were talking about living in the moment and enjoying life because you never know what’s going to happen. He also told me some cool facts about locations he was driving by while heading to Sacré CÅ“ur. It was just a pleasant conversation and the energy throughout the drive was just amazing and positive. All the positives encounters I did have were amazing. I think overall there were more positives than negatives which is great considering I’m not fluent in French. If I was… then this trip would have been 100 percent different, perhaps perfect.
I saw the windmill that you see to your left, which is featured in the design, while walking to Moulin Rouge. My walk started at Sacré CÅ“ur in the 18th arrondissement and I was going to end my walk at Musée d’Orsay. I calculated the distance and it was close to 2 miles. Not too bad… On the way, I wanted to stop by Moulin Rouge and Palais Garnier to take photos for the album. Moulin Rouge is in my top five for my design playlist. It’s iconic and I know it will be amazing to work with a windmill for a design. I had no idea while walking towards Moulin Rouge that I would see another windmill on the way. It completely took me by surprise and it was simply beautiful! It was raining a bit at the time but the whole scene was just perfection. I can’t say enough that Paris is such a beautiful city. I simply fell in love with the architecture. I could take walks like this every day in Paris and be so happy and content with life. The windmill is called Moulin de la Galette. There is a very interesting story behind the history of the windmill. Some of it is disturbing but I do recommend reading more about it here. Currently there’s a restaurant below the windmill that I wish I knew about beforehand. I just checked out the reviews and some food pics and I would love to stop by if I ever make it back to Paris.
I continued my walk to Moulin Rouge from this point. I’m going to stop the story here and save it for Moulin Rouge because the walk there was amazing to say the least. A few designs have stories that tie together and I’m going to try my best to connect them properly. December 10th was my busiest day and most designs are from that day of the trip.
I’m going to skip backwards in the story to my birthday! I wanted to talk about the Windmill first because I wanted to feature that picture somewhere in my design playlist. I just had no idea at the time until I was back in Philly. I visited the Louvre shortly after my once in a lifetime experience at the Eiffel Tower. I took a small rest and jumped in an Uber and headed to the Pantheon. I talked very briefly to the Uber driver in french and I’m very proud of myself that I wasn’t too nervous to talk! I did have an interesting conversation with him. He seemed surprised that I was visiting Paris alone on my birthday. I don’t have many friends and honestly I don’t think the trip would have been the same with a friend or two. Then again… maybe it could have been better. Who knows… I didn’t feel lonely at all. My itinerary was so full, I didn’t have time to think about being lonely, if that makes sense. I was just so busy trying to go everywhere and soak up as much of Paris as possible! I mean… I only had two full days to explore Paris and just like the driver said, that’s just not enough time. You need at least a week!
Anyway… I’m skipping ahead to being inside the Louvre. I will touch on the walk to the Louvre when making designs for Pantheon and Notre Dame. The Louvre is just humongous! I’m making a design for the Louvre so I’ll try to be brief here. I remember someone saying that it would take weeks to see each piece inside the Louvre. And in saying that… I was completely lost while being inside the museum. I have a horrible sense of direction. I am very ashamed to admit that fact but it’s true. I get lost with GPS directions. It took me over an hour to find Mona Lisa. I had a 5pm appointment to get a tattoo and I told myself that I had to leave by 4pm to get to the tattoo place in time. I arrived at the Louvre around 1:30 which gave me only 2 and half hours. I thought I want to see some sculptures but since I knew I wouldn’t be able to see everything, reaching Mona Lisa was the primary goal. By 3pm, I still haven’t found her. It felt like I was on a wild goose chase inside of a breathtakingly beautiful museum surrounded by amazing pieces of art. I thought if I didn’t find her by 3:30, I was going to cut my losses. I needed a rest. My feet were in excruciating pain. I walked at least 10 miles by this point in the day. I checked my Fitbit when I was back at the hotel and it said I walked 12.6 miles. That’s almost a half marathon! I never walked so much in one day. So cool that I almost walked a half marathon on my birthday, lol! I asked for directions and the gentleman told me I was close and after 15 minutes I saw him again and realized I was walking in circles, lol. There were signs as well and I checked the time and it was close to 3:30pm when I happen to stumble upon Mona Lisa. It was strange because it felt like I was already there or at least around that section. I still don’t know what happened or how I was that lost circling around the area where she was located. This was the first time I actually saw a huge crowd in the Louvre or anywhere in Paris. I will always say that I went to Paris at the right time. There were large lines of people trying to take a picture close to the rather small painting. I was actually surprised how small it was and no one could come remotely close to the painting which is totally understandable. I didn’t want to wait in the line to get a good photo so I tried my best to get something without someone being in the shot. Camera zoom was my best friend here! After taking my pictures, I somewhat collapsed as soon as I saw a bench I could sit on. I was so relieved to find Mona Lisa but I didn’t think I had it in me to walk another 30 to 45 minutes to the tattoo parlor. But… I did manage it after taking a 15 minute break.
I really shouldn’t have to mention anything about this painting. It’s probably one of the most famous paintings throughout history. One thing I will mention is if you haven’t seen the movie Ever After, it features Leonardo DaVinci as a somewhat major character. There’s a funny part where when one of his paintings (The Mona Lisa) was stolen and the Prince set out to get it back from the gypsies. Ever After is based on Cinderella and Leonardo’s character is like the fairy godmother in the movie. Well… I guess I should say fairy godfather! I haven’t watched it in years but it’s an awesome movie! I highly recommend watching it! I’m thinking about renting it to watch tonight for dinner. I remember recording it on tape (VHS) many years ago when I was teenager. I’m not ancient but it’s been a while since I was a teenager. 😀
I wanted this design to feature Mona Lisa in the center of the piece and have the windmills on the opposite ends. The cool thing about rotating mirror in Paintshop was that it created a nice background when I connected two copies of the windmill. I love the pattern it made of the yellow lines in the street. You can see it at the very beginning of the music video. When I added my abstract drawing in the mix it did complicate things but I was intrigued on where the design was headed. Towards the end of making this design, I thought to stop because I knew I was starting to lose the windmills and Mona in the blends. So I stopped recording but the following day, I started tinkering around a bit more with rotating mirror and found more versions of this design that I liked. Overall, I made nine different versions of this design. The youtube thumbnail might be my favorite. The thumbnail for this blog post is the original. It’s the first design I saved before going back to tinker with the design. I wanted to feature both because I was truly torn on which one to feature online. I feature both in the music video.
Making these music videos are adding years to my life! It’s so hard to render these videos. Sony Vegas keeps crashing on me. The video is only 3 minutes long and took at least 6 hours to render a lower quality version of the video. While writing this post, I tried rendering the higher quality version and was surprisingly successful on my first try. It did take over an hour to render. The main problem is that every video has a loss in quality because I have to crop about 10 percent of the video while editing. I know I’ve mentioned in the past, probably not recently, but I remove the software interface from the live recording. I have to enlarge the video so it can have a suitable size to publish online. Without enlarging the video, you will see black lines around the video and it probably won’t be in HD. However, it does have a blurred/pixelated effect. You can see it in full size. It’s not that bad but the only fix to that is buying a bigger monitor so when I crop the video it will still be in 2k or at least 1080p. Unfortunately, I’m working with a small laptop. Whenever I am able to upgrade my equipment, you will definitely see a difference. I am thinking about testing something out for my next design. I hope it works. Wow… if you read to the end of this post, you are amazing! Thanks!
Credits
Programs used: Sony Vegas 19, Paintshop Pro 21, & Bandicam
Design Base: Photos taken of Moulin de la Galette (Windmill) and Mona Lisa (created by Leonardo DaVinci), plus a digital abstract drawing I created.
Music Video and Art Design created by me (Katherine Barnett|BeatnikBlends)
Motion loop in video: Motuit by SGS (MotionLoops)
Song used: Ana by Herr Doktor
Click here to view Mona in my shop.Â