busy week!

I hand washed my laundry today, it took about an hour and a half total. I need lotion now but sometimes it feels good to work with your hands. I mean besides art, I guess that's work but it's not the same. I don't think I'll ever complain again about the washer+dryer being $1.75 at school. The washer here is 3 euro= $4.50 and there is no dryer... I might indulge one day but I felt like trying out the hand washing this time.
Our fieldtrip on Saturday is to Pienza this week and my group has a presentation so I have to finish that by tomorrow as well as get ahead on my painting. I'll think about what's due Friday after these two are done tomorrow...one day at a time. I'm not really comfortable speaking, especially loudly, in front of people so I'm looking forward to Saturday being over.

Today the three asians (one full, one half, one quarter asian) went on a hunt for a Chinese restaurant because we heard there was one in Camucia, the town a bus stop away down the hill. We got there and..... it's closed on Wednesdays. (It reminded me of when we got to Cortona, the lady introducing us to the town said "the pastry shop is closed today... oh of course, it's tuesday!"... i don't understand how people keep up) So we were very disappointed and went to the co-op that was our destination #2 in Camucia, and the guy at the register told us about another Chinese restaurant a bus ride away, so we went there. Speaking to a Chinese waitress in Italian was probably one of the weirdest experiences I've had so far...

first assignments

Painting still life:




Where I draw:




The view from the drawing studio:




Self portrait- Working on it...




Still in progress...



I have to be done by Tuesday and then maybe I can put up the final version that hopefully I'll be proud of...

Painting

Paint til 2am, wake up at 6:30am to continue...2 and a half days to go from underpainting-->painting is a little bit rough. I bought a men's white button up shirt to paint in. When I wear that, my paint stained jeans and glasses I feel like a pro even if whatever I'm painting doesn't turn out that way...
I bought more chocolate today, it was a candied fig covered in dark chocolate. It didn't taste like a fig at all, more like chewy sugar, but the chocolate was good. There's an Italian practice pre-dinner meeting and dinner twice a week where we can only speak Italian, so I'm learning faster by trying to use it more. I need to start studying from a textbook on my own though, especially all the unusual verb conjugations.
Last night was Carnevale so everyone went out. It's like Halloween, some guy was even dressed as Marge Simpson. Italians are fun to be around, I like it here.

School

I'm not sure how I usually manage 6 classes and other activities because here 4 is plenty, at least for the studio classes. I haven't been out to town much. I'm not so sure about the professors yet but I guess they make up for it by making you do more work so I'm teaching myself through success and failure in experimentation. Usually projects get a couple weeks but here we get 1 week including the practice sketches or paintings, I don't know where to begin beyond the practice that I've done so far, which is why I'm sitting here writing this blog. It's probably the usual overwhelmed feeling at the beginning of the semester. Hopefully I'll have something good by the end but if not at least I'll have lots of practice and maybe the the bad drawings and paintings out of my system. A few days and 12 self portraits later they are finally starting to consistently look like me. I've already learned something :)

music

I have 143 Bon Jovi songs... No matter what mood I'm in everything feels okay when I listen to them and life seems more simple, they are like a serenade to my soul :)

I'm becoming intense

There are a few indications recently that make me think I'm becoming an intense person. 8 hours at a museum was way too short, I spent 11 hours straight practicing drawing my face today (not homework, just practice for homework) and skipped lunch, while most other students are complaining about seeing too many Madonna and Child paintings and marble statues I can't get enough of them and take notes on subtle differences that I think are very interesting. I probably started out a little "different" but now I've gotten even weirder. But if that means I'll improve then I don't mind at all.
Besides that, while I was drawing today I noticed that I smile a lot here even when I'm alone. Things like finishing the last touch on a self portrait that finally makes it look like it's looking back at me, watching the snow collect throughout the day outside the window of the drawing room, noticing improvement in drawings, listening to Bon Jovi, feeling at peace, knowing that God is mending my heart and blessing me more than I could imagine... these things make me happy.

Ephesians 3:20-21 "Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen."

The snow is beautiful but I was not prepared! haha

Getting settled

I've moved into my room with 3 other roommates, we have a door that opens out to a terrace, where we can also hang out laundry so that's convenient. Today we had short classes to go over the syllabus for each class. It looks like I'll be pretty busy. Drawing and painting are pretty much independent study classes so we come up with our idea for the semester. I'm considering plants for painting because I went to this da Vinci invention exhibit in Florence and in a video that was showing, it showed a painting that I had just seen a little while earlier that he painted with his teacher. It pointed out how da Vinci had studied plants and landscapes, and that's why his landscapes fade into the background naturally while his teacher had painted some palm tree that didn't really fit the space or the landscape. I always thought da Vinci's trees were weird but that's just because they don't exist in the states, but I've seen them here! For my drawing class our first assignment is a self portrait in Italy, whatever that means to you, so open ended! I have a potentially really good idea for that but it will take lots of practice for the background part and it's due Tuesday so I might change my mind about that.
There's a Nutella party this evening for the town. There are Canadian students here too staying somewhere down the hill so we'll get to meet them.

Week 1

We've been to Rome and Florence for several days each. My days started by waking up at 6 or 6:30am (i know, hard to believe) and i got back to the hotel before dinner usually around 7pm. We had set morning plans and then many options and some requirements in the afternoons. I'm inspired seeing so many famous paintings, sculptures and architecture. I'm actually sketching and enjoying it, probably because last semester I drew a lot and got better at drawing so I feel more comfortable sketching in public now even when every person who walks by peeks over and gives a nod of approval or a blank look which isn't very reassuring. This afternoon I drew two guys on the steps in front of Santa Croce in Florence and they knew it so they started playing guitar and staying in the same position and smiling, it was funny, I showed them the sketches later and said thank you so I wasn't such a creeper haha.
I won't include every single thing I've done because every day is so packed but maybe some highlights...
I spent the longest I've ever spent in a museum at the museum that included the Sistine Chapel. I've been waiting to see it since last time I came and it was definitely worth all the hype haha. I got to the museum at 9am and left at 5pm (8 hours but it wasn't nearly enough) to make it to St Peter's before it closed at 6pm. I was in the Sistine Chapel for 2 and a half hours out of those 8, sketching 2 of the figures on the bottom of the Last Judgment and making friends with the guards with my broken Italian. They seem to be excited about people who are really interested in it. One of them, Giuseppe, talked to other guards and had them let me into the pope's Crying Room, right under the Last Judgment wall, that was off limits. It's where the pope goes after he's chosen to change his clothes from the red cardinal robe to the white pope robe, pray and often to cry. There were decaying frescoes on the wall from centuries ago. Giuseppe called his brother who works in St Peters, so that he would take me up in the dome for free but the museum took me too long and I didn't make it out in time...too bad.
We went to see David by Michelangelo in Florence and it was SO much better than photos. Obviously everything is different in person, but this was much more different than I had ever seen in comparison to a photo. It's 17 feet tall on top of an already tall stand. In case you look up photos, David looks out of proportion if the photo is straight on but since Michelangelo's a genius he made the proportions perfectly skewed so that he would look correct from below, since the sculpture was originally meant to go on a buttress of a cathedral (very high up). I'm learning lots and lots of interesting things. I feel much more curious than I've ever been, about pretty much any subject even outside of art.
There's a whole range of different people on the trip, a lot from the midwest and south which is interesting. There are maybe 2 people from socal. The group is mostly art majors but there are a few Art Education and English majors too because they added English to the trip.
Overall it's been a wonderful week and i often feel like I must be dreaming.
Another side note, I've noticed how closely my emotions are tied with my interests, unless I'm just being emotional haha. For example, this morning there was a Renaissance musical instrument exhibit in the museum we went to and a Stradivarius was in a glass case and it made me upset and my eyes teared up. How could it be put away like that, never to be played again when it's one of the most rare and beautiful violins ever made!! I wanted to take it out and play it.
This is so long already. We arrived in Cortona early this evening. We have to take a 5 minute hike up a steep hill to get to the place every day for dinner or out to town, it'll be a good little work out whenever I go out. The view from our building is just like whatever image of Tuscany you find online, lots of green open land and some old houses, it's like we were placed on a movie set.