Would you feel insecure and self-conscious if you sat down in a crowded public place and started to sketch? Most adults would feel that way. It would take a really good instructor to get them so excited about drawing that their inhibitions disappeared and they could lose themselves in a few blissful moments of creation—probably like a child feels when creating art. Romain, my instructor for two sketching tours in Paris, was that kind of instructor.
Romain Olivier Thieulot is an energetic and engaging 29 year old artist in Paris. He teaches art at the University of Paris and has his own art studio. As with most artists, though, money is tight, so he conducts sketching tours as a kind of “side hustle” to earn some additional money. Although he is quite young, he is devoted to a traditional style of art rather than digital art. That, he believes, is one of the reasons why he was chosen to teach at the University of Paris. He did not go into a lot of details about the curriculum at the university, but he described the style that is taught there as “academic,” and it sound like it is a regimented system with very specific rules.
Fortunately, that is not the approach that he used with us. He coached and encouraged us as we moved from place to place with our sketchbooks and collapsible stool, all the while providing us with instructions on the major principles of drawing like composition, perspective, and showing emphasis through detail and value (degree of lightness and darkness). Importantly, I think, he left a lot of room for individual expression. Before we started to draw our first building, I remember, he told us that we could choose to draw it any way that we wanted, sketching, for example, the entire building or only a part of it. What was important, he said was to have a clear idea of what we saw as the major area of interest, because the first lines we put on the paper would dictate important considerations like scale and composition.
Romain had carefully chosen the locations and routes of these tours, one in Montmartre and one in the Left Bank area beginning at Notre Dame, in order to provide us with fascinating bits of information along the way on the history of the city of Paris and in particular on its rich artistic and architectural history. (Architecture is one of Romain’s areas of expertise and he was able to explain many aspects of the architecture that makes Paris so distinctive.)
One of the places that Romain highlighted was Le Consulat, a historic coffee house that was frequented by many of the artists, writers and painters that flocked to the Montmartre area in the 19th century, including Picasso, Sisley, Van Gogh, Toulouse-Lautrec, and Monet. In the second photo below, Romain was showing us a postcard-sized copy of a drawing that he had done of the café. If you click on the photo you can get a real appreciation of the amount of detail in his drawing. I don’t recall long he spent on that particular drawing, but I remember him showing us similar ones on which he had spent forty or fifty hours of work.
One of the fun little bonuses of Romain’s sketching tours was the quick sketch he would do of the individuals in our little group as we were at work. The third photo shows the three members of our group in Montmartre—I think it is pretty obvious which one is me.
During one conversation that I had with Romain, he shared some insights into the world of a professional artist in Paris. As we we passing a series of galleries in the Left Bank area, he noted how difficult it was to get your work into a gallery. Even if you were fortunate enough to get your worked displayed, there were so many fees involved that the artist was often left with very little money when a piece of art was actually sold.
Romain seemed to be much more content to display his work at his own studio/workshop, Atelier Thieulot in the 15th arrondissement in Paris. You can check out his studio on his website and get a better idea of his workplace and of his work. The website is in French, but even if you can’t read the details, you can’t help but be impressed by the number of exhibitions in which he has participated and the awards he has received. If you click on the tab, “Mes Créations,” you can look at his work divided into categories such as architecture, oil painting, drawing, and design. One of my favorite ways to view his work, though, is to click on the “E-boutique” tab and if you do, you too will look with amazement at his detailed drawings.
I saw some wonderful art and architecture in Paris, but some of my favorite moments in the city were spent in creating my own art during the sketching tours with Romain as our guide, coach, and instructor. I was intrigued that the tour is titled “Être artiste à Montmartre,” which means “To be an artist in Montmartre.” We were not pretending to be artists as we toiled over our sketchbooks—Romain made us feel like we really were artists.
We have become friends on Facebook, have exchanged texts since concluding the course, and he is also now following this blog. Paris is wonderful, of course, but it really is the people you meet that make a trip memorable. Thanks, Romain.
© Michael Q. Powell. All rights reserved.
Mike Powell 
Thanks for this impressive “portrayal” of your engagement with this remarkable young artist. Paris has such an identifiable characteristic, brought out so well in your words and images. M:-)
My wife and I have gone to some of the most beautiful places in the United States and Europe, but in the end we agree it’s really the people that make the trip. This is a prime example of why.
Wow! What an amazing experience you had! Thank you for sharing the artist and his art with us!! 🎨👍
I have always been in awe of artists (like you) and am excited to try to create some myself. Like a lot of adults, I kind of shut down any artistic pursuits at a young age and it is cool to try now to recapture the kind of excitement that children feel in creating art with their own hands. I think it helps to have folks who provide encouragement and examples, which is why I love following your posts so much.
Thank you, Mike! You are so kind. 😊 I do believe we are ALL artists… I look forward to seeing more of your artwork. 🎨👍
Sounds like a great experience. An inspiring and considerate teacher makes such a difference to our enthusiasm and engagement. I have never tried urban sketching but I would give it a go some time if I had some guidance such as you describe. I do, however, draw whenever I am in museums and art galleries. Only once has it made me self-conscious to have people watching me and that was in the Mutter Museum in Philadelphia.
I loved your recent posting showing you and the boys sketching in a museum. What a great way to enjoy art. Recently I did that in the National Art Gallery in Washington DC. It was cool to be sitting on a comfortable bench as people passed by me, trying my best to capture my sense of Monet’s Woman With a Parasol. I am still trying to overcome many decades of belief that creating art was only for a select few with God-given talent. It’s fun at this stage of life to finally get to the point where I see that the very act of making art counts a lot and that the results are often of secondary importance. Little by little I see some improvements and even when I don’t, I sometimes feel like the little kid who comes home from school with his newest art creation that needs to be displayed immediately on the wall or the refrigerator door.
I love your attitude to your art. I allowed my inner critic to become far too loud and domineering precisely because I was too outcome focused rather than just enjoying the process for its own sake. It is only in recent years that my focus has become journey rather than destination.
That second drawing is pretty amazing. It’s wonderful that you were able to study with him. One of the benefits of our modern technology is that you can keep in touch. A lasting impression from your vacation.
I can’t even imagine getting to that level of artistic skill–I have always been in awe of people with creative abilities. As several other readers have noted, relationships and personal encounters really do matter. The “lasting impression” that you noted is so much more personal and individual than yet another shot of the Eiffel Tower. 🙂
Yes relationships definitely are the treasures above things we do or see! A very cool story!
Thanks. Indeed relationships do matter, even those encounters that occur during an overseas trip. I can always look at pictures on-line of monuments and museums because thousands of others have seen them. Meeting people, though, is much more personal, so it is nice for me to try to put them down on paper to share with others. I know that a good number of people were experiencing my trip to Paris through my postings and it was nice to be able to share details of my experiences with people I met.
Oh Mike, this is wonderful! Only just read your post as we’ve had some wild weather in the south of NZ and it affected internet connectivity over a large area. Last night in Dunedin we lost the internet, then found eftpos wasn’t working (luckily I had a little cash with me so we were still able to eat at the cafe we’d gone into). This morning we nearly got turned away from another cafe as the eftpos was still not working but it came on just as we were about to leave 🙂
Thanks, Liz. It is amazing how much we rely on the digital world in our daily lives. I am glad to hear that some sense of “normalcy” has returned. Personally I like to use cash and tend to have more with me at any given time than most people.
What an extraordinary word portrait of this extraordinary young man! Oh, and I like the images, too.
I love his drawings. I’m going to Check out his website on the laptop, so I can see better.
I completely agree that the people make the trip.
Thanks, Nina. This is the second of my Paris Portraits in which I have featured folks who made an impact on me during my trip. Unlike in my normal postings, my photos were of secondary importance to my words. Postings like this one required more engagement on the part of my readers–it takes a lot longer to read than to scroll through photos–but folks have generally responded really favorably to these postings (and it has been a benefit to me to put my thoughts down on paper).
It’s nice that there are now these types of ‘excursions’ available when visiting other cities and countries where you can immerse yourself in a deeper way. So enriching!
With Paris, the list of possible classes/tours etc. was extensive and many of them are quite affordable. I think “enriching” is a good descriptor. For folks that are doing a more traditional vacation in particular, they help break up the routine of churches, museums, and monuments.