This is my first drawing from Prague. Prague is the shittiest art city I have ever visited in Europe. Now understand, the city is an artwork unto itself. It is almost impossible to walk more than 15 or 20 steps without stopping to photograph a scenic or architectural wonder which moves you to documentation. But the museums there were awful. Now my one caveat regarding this appraisal is that the 3rd floor of the Národní gallerie v Praze (National Gallery) was closed 3 days before my visit. This floor of that museum housed the city's collection of Modern Art and featured Picasso, Van Gogh, Monet, Cézanne, Rodin, Schiele, etc, which I was so looking forward to seeing and hopefully drawing. Of course no one working there could tell me why or when the floor closed and some seemed surprised to find it was closed at all. No, my opinion reflects the absolute poor quality of western art housed in its many other galleries and Prague's horrible habit of charging visitors by the floor. If you were not intimately familiar with where in a museum a particular piece or group of works was located, you would be charged an exorbitant amount to see all of the floors of that particular building. If you accidentally purchased a ticket to the wrong floor or floors they would not refund your money or exchange your ticket in order to purchase one for the correct location. Maps or guides of the museums were not provided but were, of course, for sell. In addition, the docents and ticket sellers were some of the meanest and gruffest people I have ever met. In my first museum visit I found myself being yelled at by the woman in the ticket booth because I was confused by my first encounter with this "which floor do you want to purchase" policy and hesitated for a few seconds. I was also the only person in line and was keeping no one else waiting. She even began throwing her own office materials around inside her little booth when I asked if I could have a minute to consider this baffling concept and how it worked. Again, I was the only person in line. The first docent I saw there would glare at the me and the other viewers, march 20 feet in a very overly exaggerated military fashion to another room, glare for a few moments, and then repeat his march. Also they have a lot of gimmicky museums. Their Salvador Museum claimed to have a floor of Dali's, a floor or Warhol's, and a floor of Mucha's (tickets sold separately of course). But it turned out to be just three floors of posters of their work. Their Museum of Chocolate was apparently just one room. But then I found the Mucha Museum. Alphonse Mucha was a Czech artist whose works are known to all western artists even if his name is not. And the museum's staff seemed to be the friendliest people in the city and the only gallery in town which allowed me to use a chair to sit in to draw while I was there. It was a very small space but seeing the original lithographs with their colors and textures was well worth the admission. It became my "go to" spot to work and I returned there on six different occasions. This is my first drawing from Mucha's "Ruby." I actually made this from a photograph after my first visit to the museum because I was too excited to wait until the next day after discovering I would be allowed to draw there and that they would not yell at me too much.

2018