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Traveling to Sketch in Art Museums on a Thin Shoestring — The Faux Louvre pg249
Colorful companion to my memoir The Incompetent Psychic
2005
The amazing Cynthia was a client who turned into a friend who was a wiz at favor trading. I would help her with a project in exchange for free miles on Southwest. (“I travel so much for work, the last thing I want to do to relax is get on another plane.”) — From Chapter 14
Among many good reasons to embark on this huge art series was a passionate intention to travel to the great museums of the world and study the old masters by sketching in front of their original paintings. The problem was, I didn’t have much money for airfare and hotels in the early days of leaping into this flight of fancy on a credit card. There was even less after the interest compounded and the economy tanked. Cynthia’s Southwest miles helped big time.
I had been to Paris thanks to my antique-buying friend William. A circuitous voyage got me to the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena the next year. I was invited to crew on a great big beautiful racing sailboat for the Mexico rally, but couldn’t afford six weeks of time for that much fun. I did help sail the boat down the California coast to San Diego. From there I drove a rent-a-heap to LA, studied the old master’s…
