The wonders of Paris never fail to delight both visitors and inhabitants alike. Like many before him, artist Alain Bouldouyre, a long-time resident of the City of Lights, has been snared by the city's charms. My Paris Sketchbook documents his deep attachment to the capital, presenting a selection of sketches made over the past few years, all executed in watercolor.

Bouldouyre takes us on a very personal tour, visiting both the well-known and less frequented streets and sites the capital has to offer. My Paris Sketchbook evokes the true character of the city's particular palette of colors, its imposing historical architecture punctuated by discreet contemporary interludes, and the eternal romance and beauty of the Seine and its banks. This book will provide a treasured addition to the library for Paris lovers, while enthusiasts of watercolor will appreciate the artist's mastery of this highly popular medium.

Alain Bouldouyre is an illustrator and the artistic director of Senso magazine. He has illustrated numerous travel guides published by Arthaud/Flammarion in his native France.

Christophe Auduraud is a film critic and novelist, and a past scholar of the Villa Médicis, the French cultural institute in Rome.

These two carefully produced "sketchbooks" offer the flavors of their respective cities through color washes and scribbled notes. Each artist is particularly suited to describing his or her own urban moods: Asch has a sort of New Yorker cartoonist style mixed with 19th-century pen-and-ink sketch art that playfully renders chaotic Italian marketplaces and dangling laundry lines. She has modeled her drawings, as well as her journey from the Italian north to south, in the style of the original Grand Tourists, sometimes depicting imaginary courtesans and baroque sculptures. Her pages are covered with images and handwritten notes by film critic Christophe Auduraud, usually in French with a typed translation. Bouldouyre's style is more hard-edged, fitting for the more severe lines of Paris-the architecture and fashioin, the Eiffel Tower. His travels are in time. Bouldouyre draws Paris from dawn through night, stopping to capture the image of a woman leaning over a bridge, or a mosaic sign of a braying horse. Auduraud here contributes a sort of whimsical travelogue for the streets of Paris: "I might be a figure from a painting by Watteau... were it not for the kiosks selling the brightly colored balls, windmills, buckets and spades which keep children busy once they have finished their sticky pink cotton candy." Both volumes are reminders of a typical journey to each place and will happily jog the memories of countless tourists who want to remember. (May) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.