wagonized — drawings by France Belleville-Van Stone

I don’t have any formal training in art. I studied English in Strasbourg, France, and moved to the United States on a teaching assistantship at Penn State University. My day job is teaching high school French. Growing up, there were pencils and paper around, my sister and I played with clay, we went to museums, we attended local exhibits, my parents had art books and art was on the walls. Art mattered. 

I was fascinated with cars, having grown up next to the Peugeot plant in Sochaux, France — I wanted to draw them, design them, and my favorites of them all were the wagons. Hence wagonized. I have owned several over the years, mostly old Volvos and Volkswagens.

I started my blog in 2006 in an effort to document my daily drawing habit, and in 2008, my drawings were featured in Danny Gregory’s An Illustrated Life.

In 2014, my book Sketch! was published, and I have continued to make time to draw, between teaching and motherhood. I have taught online classes through Sketchbook Skool and Sktchy and have loved connecting with sketchers around the world.