Paris Sketchbook

Fabrice Moireau's watercolors and sketches bring the City of Light to life, and vividly captures the atmospheric city with its teeming cafe life, historic buildings, and new constructions. The book is divided into several segments covering the historic center, Northern Paris, Eastern Paris, Southern Paris, Western Paris, and the Gazetteer provides additional information of some of the prominent buildings featured. Moireau's paintings and sketches are accompanied by Mary Kelly's impressions of Paris, and both perspectives provide a wonderfully warm portrait of the City of Light.

A "Paris Sketchbook," captures Paris superbly. Walk again down the streets of Paris, sit in a cafe, or in a paris garden, or wonder again at Paris buildings and architecture. It is all there and captured beautifully my Mary Kelly's precise and spiritual prose, with Fabrice Moireau's water colors of Paris. The pictures and prose combine to be more like a musical piece, one reads and then "hums" like a tune from time to time. If one is looking for that special gift or souvenir of Paris, this is it. Enjoy Paris again and again, or tanalize those who plan a visit to Paris.

If you've been to Paris at all, you'll recall some of the street corners and landmarks in this sketchbook. But if you haven't been there, these elegant and intimate illustrations done by Moireau will trigger your fantasy about the wonderful city. There is a plethora of competent guide/travel books about Paris with lots of pictures and photographs, but none capture the whimsy of the place like this book does. Mary Kelly's narrative asides complement the illustrations unobtrusively. Once again, Moireau's poetic portraits of the various areas of the city are a marvel to behold; I could really see the love this artist had for the city. The book also has a nice flow to it, so as you move through the book to the end, you feel as though you've taken a nice, slow walk through the Parisian streets. A lovely book.

I love three things: Watercolors, books and Paris. Author Mary Kelly and Fabrice Moireau teamed up to make the most delicious book on Paris that I have seen yet. Yes, I exclaimed "Ooo-la-la" when I opened this to a random page, but forgive me for the cliche. This book is magnificient in every way.I first travelled to Paris in 1976, then a number of times thereafter, lately last May 2001. Each time, I strive to capture the essence of this wonderful city, and aside from a few character sketches, I don't have much success. This book is everything I wanted to take back from Paris in addition to some wonderful memories. The format is a longer-than-wide book with excellent paper. The text is accompanied by good-sized watercolors and pencilled notes. It looks as if you are holding the actual sketchbook. The colors are very true; I do watercolors myself and I can tell you that the pages look as if the washes were just laid down. The look is fresh and really, it is stunning.If you love France, Paris, art, watercolors, travel, you will love this book. I treasure it.

For anyone who has been to Paris and love the city this book is for you. The watercolured sketches are staggeringly beautiful and the text is a bonus. The texture of the book itself of heavy, faux-canvas paper has a wonderful feel and look.For what you get the price is very reasonable