10/30/10

Probably finishing my second Bargue drawing next week. Just a couple more things to refine.
I unfortunatelt don't have an updated picture of my charcoal drawing. One more week with on that, though I feel like I need maybe only a day more with it.
Lucas, Jo (British), Amy (New Zealand), and I went to Lucca today. It's a small town a little over an hour train ride from Florence. We went to see the town and because this is the last weekend of the Lucca Game and Comic Convention. We really didn't expect it, but THE ENTIRE TOWN was the convention. Literally the entire town was taken over by the convention. Europeans definitely know how to throw a convention. They also dress up for them better. The costumes we saw were all really well made and very wide ranged. Although the Italians seem to love Resident Evil and Star Wars above all. They also had the gallery of Illustrators. James Gurney (creator of Dinotopia, if any of you know what that is) was there. He's Lucas's role model in terms of art and a great inspiration, so it was nice to meet him and he was very awesome about talking with us about art. Here's a photo dump of just a couple of the photos from today:

10/27/10

Halloween is almost upon us. It really doesn't seem like it either. I miss seeing skeletons and pumpkins everywhere. I miss the leaves everywhere. The only thing the same is the cold. It doesn't even have the Fall smell here, just the cold. I have no idea what I'm doing on Halloween. I think maybe going to a party that Rachel invited us to, but I won't know anyone there except Lucas and her and I'm not sure if I'm up to that. I'm sure the other students will have a party together and I think I'd much rather go to that if that's the case. If not, I'll see if Lucas wants to host something on Saturday night or something.

They turned the heat on in the studios but it's still necessary to wear a hoodie or jacket while working. We also have the heat set to 68 F (20 C) in the apartment and we've been dealing with that ok, just piling the layers on. We don't want to have the gas bill be more than it needs to and Lucas and I are both used to a lot colder weather.

I'm feeling down again. I think it could just be a mixture of the weather, my migraines and back and neck pain coming back, and just bordom. I have no idea why I am so bored with my work right now, but I have to kick myself to work on my Bargue and even my charcoal model drawing. I left early on Monday and didn't go to class yesterday mainly because of a constant migraine that seems to want to put me in a coma. I've tried everything to get rid of it but it seems to only be gone when I'm sleeping. It also dies down if I'm laying down listening to music or something like that for a couple of hours. Poop.

I'm getting extremely homesick again as well. Only 46(?) more days until I get to see everyone again. It's probably a bad thing that I keep daydreaming the day I get home from the airport.

I'm planning on going to Rome next weekend (Nov 5th?). I'm hoping to be able to hit all the places I want to see within a day. From what I've been reading, it is possible. Especially since most of the places I want to see are near each other.

Well, off to model drawing. I'm hoping to get something accomplished although I don't want to work anymore on the drawing. It's pretty much finished, though I know there's some tweaking that needs to be done. But not looking forward to the 3 hours of standing with a owee back and neck and pounding migraine.

10/23/10

Last night was fun. We went to Moyo, another aperitivo (buffet-ish bar) with a group of other students for one of the student's (Lynn, from South Africa. Her 28th) birthday. Had a good deal of fun there just hanging out and talking, then headed to a little bar afterwards and chatted a bit there as well. Here are some pictures.
Lucas's cousin is here this weekend and today we went shopping. We went to a bunch of little markets and I finally got some things that I've been meaning to buy. Stopped for lunch at a little cafe, then walked around some more. I saw the most adorable English Bulldog puppy that was following his owner around (leashless). Here I am going to reiterate how awesome and well trained the dogs are here. We've also been noticing a lot of wolf hybrids here. At first I thought a couple were just husky-type dogs, but they are definitely not as thick and you can tell if you look at a picture of a wolf how similar many of the dogs here are. I finally saw a min pin as well. Made me miss Chevy all over again. We hit almost all the 'tourist' spots in Florence but they're all places I've seen before. We also stopped at a vintage store and I bought a cool... er warm wool sweater. It's starting to get quite chilly here, especially after the sun goes down and in the morning. Chilly enough to see your breath!
We also stopped at the all-English bookstore. I found this amazing book, only 15euro! I'm sure in the states it would cost $50 minimum.

10/21/10

Nothing much going on. Working on art, coming home exhausted and passing out, repeat.

Good news: my camera decided to work again! I now have the camera cord as well so expect pictures soon.
Bad news: my hard drive was wiped. Long story, but everything is gone again which means it's going to be more difficult for me to edit photos and write papers and I can't use my wacom tablet anymore because I don't have photoshop :(
More bad news is that one of the other students just went home yesterday. Her dad was in a motorcycle accident and died. They wanted her to stay, but I wouldn't imagine staying away if a family member died, especially a father.

I was happy because I got complimented (?) today by the teacher. She asked me if I'd had formal training before when she stopped to look at and critique my charcoal model drawing.
She was also saying how she likes how I'm approaching my Bargue drawing this time. I started doing what one of the assistants suggested and made the cast shadow lines really sharp and the regular shadow lines fuzzier. Plus I have everything pretty spot on already unlike having to move every little thing again and again on my last drawing.

Lucas's cousin is coming in today and spending the weekend. I think we're going to go to the leather market on Saturday and I know we're going out to dinner with her tonight. It should be interesting.

I got all the care packages sent out (at least the ones I was told of). Everyone is amazing for sending stuff and I can say I'm happy that I have American junk food now. Haha.

10/16/10

Ugh. After probably 2 or 3 years of not getting a cold or virus, I get one while I'm here. And just when I thought I was safe too. Everyone in the school seemed to get the cold except me and a couple others. Even some of the teachers had it. Some got over it in a day like Lucas, some it took a week. But everyone seemed to be done with it earlier this week. Then BAM! Last night I kept waking up because my nose was so drippy, I had such a bad sore throat, and a bad headache.
I went to school even though I was feeling half dead. My brain doesn't seem to work that well either right now. Apparently I repeated something 3 times during breakfast with Lucas. Most of the day was spent with me staring off into nothing, sitting down zoning out, or changing a line or angle about 30 times before getting so apathetic towards it I just move on to a different area of the drawing.
Then after the first two sessions, Lucas and I tried running around to 3 or 4 different ATMs to try to get our rent money out. For some reason it wouldn't let me take everything I needed out so I had to wake up early today to run to the ATM again and get more out because the landlord came today for rent.

The landlord is also kinda a dick. I got a text from him around 11:30am yesterday saying that he was coming to the apartment in the afternoon. I told him we wouldn't be out of classes until 7pm, but we could probably hurry back real quick to meet him at 12:30 or 4:30 or we could just meet him saturday to give him the rent money. He said he was going to show the apartment to someone around 3pm and then just meet us at 11am on saturday to pick up the rent.
I know I'm not the only one who thinks that it was rude for him to just tell us a couple of hours before hand that a stranger was going to be looking around the place that we're living. Lucas and I had to hurry home during our lunch period and try to tidy up the apartment. Not that it was really that dirty, but I had clothes that I'd rather not have a stranger looking at lying around my room and the dishes needed to be done, floor needed to be swept, and Lucas's room (sorry Lucas) is a whole other story. I was going to clean the apartment this weekend, but we had to do everything in about 30 minutes instead.
Which was EXCELLENT with the fact that I'm sick.

Anyway. After the ATM fiasco, we got back to the school, had some wine and listened to/watched the Art History lecture. That's the one thing I'm going to miss about this school; just chilling with a glass of wine and snacks that the school provides for a class period.

Went to the grocery store to pick up a couple of things this morning before the landlord came and found some tofu and seitan patties (yay!). So now I don't have to walk 30-40 minutes to get vegetarian/vegan stuff. Although I got some awesome tomato crackers from that specialty store, so I'm probably going back there eventually.

Did my laundry last night and still waiting for my jeans to dry (oh, the luxury of having a drier, how I miss it). Now I'm finally just laying in bed relaxing some more, cursing this illness to go away.

10/14/10

I haven't been updating daily because there isn't much daily to update about. I will probably update 2-4 times a week now. I do a lot of the same thing; go to classes, come home, make dinner, go to sleep, repeat.

I did get passed on my first Bargue finally. Here's the finished product:

I started on my new one, which I feel a lot more prepared for. Here it is after working on it today:

Also, I'm progressing slower than normal (for me at least, but actually a little faster than the school wants me to) on my first charcoal drawing. No one else in the room has started shading the shadow shapes. Here it is:
Lucas is going to Lucca this weekend for an Illustration convention. I don't much care for it and I enjoy my time of sitting around doing nothing, so I'm not going with. Plus I have to do laundry and clean up the apartment a bit.

I'm going picture crazy this blog. This is Elena making us arreppas last weekend:
And this is just fun/weird. I found Tobacco scented air freshener in a 0.99euro store. I kind of want to get it just because it's so odd.

10/10/10

This weekend was pretty fun. The beginning of the weekend, not so much, but otherwise it was.
On Thursday I started to get a migraine. As anyone who has had a migraine knows, it's pretty impossible to concentrate on anything when you have one. So I left halfway through classes and went home to rest.
Then for some reason, by the end of the night my back was in horrible pain. Especially this one spot. I usually get twinges and quick stab pains in that spot (right below my left shoulder blade close to or on my spine) but for some reason it was in constant pain. I couldn't really do much other than lay in bed because it hurt so much. I told Lucas chances are I wouldn't be going to classes the next day because of it and I didn't. More so because my migraine had not subsided either.
Lucas went out Friday night to hang out with Elena (the Venezuelan girl) but there was no way I was up to going out yet.
By Saturday morning everything was a lot better. My back still hurt like no other, but I could move around without wanting to cry and my migraine was gone. We went food shopping and then decided to stop by Elena's again, mainly because Lucas had left his bag there the previous night. Elena was home alone and really bored so we stayed there for a couple hours. She made us arreppas (probably spelled that wrong) and we each had a couple glasses of wine and talked and listened to music. We were trying to wait for her roommate Stephanie (the Irish girl) to get home to see if she wanted to come hang out with us, but by 7:30pm she wasn't home so we just left and headed back to our apartment. I made sangria earlier so we had sangria and then made some pizza as well. Then we got a call from one of the guys from school saying there was a party and we should go.
By then I was exhausted and my back was hurting again, so I passed. But apparently it was quite a time. Elena and Lucas bought some absinthe for the party. Ulrich (the German guy) apparently started himself and the table on fire there. Thankfully he wasn't hurt, but Elena and Lucas were quite inebriated from the absinthe that they left after only being there for a couple hours.
I woke up this morning to them both looking tired but not too hung over (by some miracle) and Elena has a couple new bruises and a fat lip from falling up the stairs to our apartment. Lucas left to go to the Pitti Palace again today and Elena and I are just hanging out in our apartment. We're getting hungry though and I told Lucas to pick up some corn flour for more arreppas. I think I'm addicted to them hahaha.
This weekend has been crazy. Lucas just got home and was saying that he and some of the students didn't even get into the Pitti Palace. Apparently someone broke their leg in the Palace so they held off letting everyone in for about an hour. They started letting some tour groups in after the first hour and then by 2 hours they took the broken leg guy out. Then they still were just letting the tour groups in and not people who have been waiting there for 2 hours. Then a riot broke out. Lesson: don't piss off groups of Europeans. Even if it seems to be a place that is nice and controlled like a museum.

Week two of school down. I'm happy that we're starting with charcoal tomorrow instead of still doing pencil. I was starting to get really bored with school considering we've been doing the same thing every day for the past two weeks. I'm also really hoping to get checked off on my Bargue finally. When the last teacher looked at it, she barely had anything to say on what was wrong so I'm hoping it's done now.

10/6/10

Lucas and I went to a 'buffet' (there's a specific Italian word for it that I forgot) last night with Rachel and her boyfriend, Fillepe (I probably spelled that wrong). The place is called Kitch and is actually about a 5-10 minute walk from our apartment. Rachel said it was the best one in town, and I definitely believe her after eating there.
With these 'buffet' places, you pay for a drink (usually around 7 euro) and then you can eat as much as you want. Apparently a lot of the places don't have a large variation, but this place was pretty good. Especially since a good deal of their dishes were vegetarian-friendly and they seemed to add different ones whenever one dish ran out.
It was also interesting talking with her boyfriend, who is a native Florentine, but spoke English very well. It was great because he knew a lot of American subjects and terms from Rachel. They want to hopefully do something with us this weekend as well.

I am getting so frustrated with class as well. Again, still not 'finished' with the Bargue drawing. And I'm still working on the preliminary drawing for my charcoal drawing that we start next week. I understand that they are just pencil drawings used to get an idea of everything before starting the final drawing, but still. It's so obnoxious how much they pick at your work. I also think that they're putting me and grading me at a different level. I see everyone else's work and honestly it is about the same as a middle-of-the-year/end-of-the-year freshman in Life Drawing at the American Academy of Art. Ugggghhhhh. I really had to beat myself up today to keep working on the drawings. And I still have another 2 hour session of drawing in about 40 minutes. I'm also fighting to stay awake right now, which is odd considering I have been getting 7 1/2-8 hours of sleep every night, drinking lots of water, and eating well.
I think Rachel puts it best: "This is an art concentration camp."

Anyway, aside from my complaining which I like to do but will do the work anyway, Lucas told me this morning that his mom is definitely coming in late November/early December. It's awesome because she wants to go to Rome with us when she comes in and she said she'd foot the hotel bill. Yay free lodging!

10/5/10

Ugh. This Bargue drawing is killing me. I've already put about 20 hours into it and the teachers and assistants are still finding things to make me work on. Everything is generally down and correct, they're just being nit-picky. But I understand because that's the point of us doing them, to get every little detail and measurement correct and to train our eye to see correctly, eventually without having a copy of something there to guide us.

Lucas did a neat little write up on his blog about the history of Bargue drawings if anyone is interested.
Click Here for a light history of Bargue drawings.

We're also 'starting' our first charcoal drawing. This entire week we're just doing pencil sketches/drawings of the model in the pose and then next week we're starting in actual charcoal of the same pose. I did one pencil drawing yesterday but I know I went too fast and so today I'm going to try to just work on the basic proportion lines rather than work it into a drawing.

I'm surprised at how much I've actually slowed down in my work process and I haven't even been in classes for two weeks yet.

10/3/10

Yesterday was a pretty filled day. We woke up and headed for the Palazzo Pitti or Pitti Palace. We stopped at Ponte Vecchio and took a couple of tourist pictures, like everyone should when they visit the bridge.
Finally got to Pitti and met some other classmates there. Our Art History teacher met us there as well and acted pretty much as a tour guide, though more artist trained than your basic tour guide. It made a lot of the paintings more interesting learning about the history and the artist (though I was familiar with a good deal of them already), but also to have a trained artist talk and explain about the lighting and color and composition, etc of the paintings.
Taking photos wasn't allowed, but I snuck a few with my phone. At least I wasn't like a couple people that I saw who were a little obvious about taking pictures, especially the guy I saw with the large professional nikon. He's lucky there wasn't one of the employees in the room at the time.



I could not resist sneaking a picture of a Caravaggio. It's so fulfilling to see his work in person finally. Did I mention he's one of my favorite artists? Nothing but stunning work. The guy was a little crazy, but hey, all artists are right?
After we went through most of the Palace, we headed down to the courtyard and some of the students got some pizza and coffee and we stood/sat around and talked for a while. Then we all went our separate ways.
Lucas and I ended up walking past Ponte Vecchio and down to the next bridge east, trying to find a place away from the tourists to get a bite to eat. We ended up walking through Piazza Santa Croce where the International Market was going on.
There were booths from most of the European countries. There were booths for food, jewelry, beer, clothes, baubles, incense, ornaments, statuettes, kitchenware, music, and so much more. I have photos, but they are on my camera so I have to wait for my cord before I can share.
We got 3 pretzels bigger than our heads. One was a pizza, the other a hazelnut and caramel, and the other was like a donut, only in pretzel form. We sat and enjoyed the donut one, saving the other two for dinner.
We finally found cheese other than just white cheese there too! We got two different types of gouda that were actually orange gouda and one of them tastes almost exactly like sharp cheddar. Lucas also got a herb cheese that I didn't much care for. There was a pesto cheese as well that was interesting, but much too pesto-y for my taste.
There were so many things I wanted to get there, but I knew I shouldn't be spending my money on random things. Plus there's no doubt that everything was marked up anyway.

Today starts the 'real' week of school. I will now be going there probably 5 days a week from 8:30am until probably 7:15pm. I'm going to be even more exhausted, if possible.

10/1/10

First day of October! I've been here for a little over two weeks and things have gotten better since school started, obviously.
Today after classes is the pizza party. Then a couple of the students were talking about going to a bar afterwards. Lucas and I are going to join them.

Here are some of the drawings I've done so far. Sorry for the crappy picture quality, I have to take pictures of everything with my iPhone until I get my camera cord that I forgot at home.




This is my Bargue drawing. The first is before I erased about half of it and the second was by the end of that day. I think I'm finished with it now, I'll post the finished picture on Monday or sometime this weekend, depending on the time I have.