11/26/10

My first Thanksgiving away from home and family. Thankfully I have friends here. Not many 'traditional' Thanksgiving dishes, but we tried. It was even harder because besides Lucas and I, there were only 3 other Americans there. We had to explain the meaning of Thanksgiving to everyone there. I cooked a greenbean casserole and some sweet carrots and got several marriage proposals as reward for my hard work, haha. There was chicken instead of turkey, foccacia bread instead of rolls, no sweet potatoes, and lots and lots of wine. I still really missed the day-long Thanksgiving with family back in the States (and the sweet potatoes and stuffing), but it was interesting and fun to say the least to experience it with people from all over the world.


Staying on the cooking subject, I recently found this at the market:
It's Romanesco cauliflower. I knew that picking it up and I've always wanted to try it, but it's hard to find back in the US. I cooked it and tried it and it was okay. It tastes like a mix of cauliflower and broccoli, only more... earthy? I don't know, it has a weird taste to it that I wasn't 100% keen on, though it could be because of the recipe I used it in. Maybe I'll try it later on with just simple butter and salt and pepper like I usually eat my cauliflower or broccoli.

11/18/10

I apologize for the long wait between posts!
My headaches and neck problems haven't been getting any easier. I've just felt like falling asleep every possible second as well. No idea why considering I haven't changed my sleeping or eating or daily patterns at all.
For some reason I have been getting dizzy as well. Mainly whenever I stand for more than 30 minutes at a time, but sometimes when I'm just sitting around or within a couple minutes of standing. Probably not a good thing.

Anyway, enough whining.

As I said before, we started the new charcoal drawing. Actually started working in charcoal this week instead of just study pencil drawings of the pose. The picture below is one of my pencil studies of the pose (different angle than the one I'm doing though).
I also have an updated of my second Bargue. Another week of the teacher telling me little things to change and then the next day the other teacher telling me a different thing (we have different teachers each day of the week, except Wednesday and Friday we have the same teacher).

I feel like I've learned all I can from this semester here. I know if I stayed, I would learn more because they start you on new things further on, but I'm not willing to stay. It's simply a matter of them ingraining the precision they've taught us. Practice practice practice. I understand the necessity, but I really want to be working on my own stuff right now, especially since I have to think about getting a complete portfolio together for graduation in less than a year now. I don't really know how I'm going to pull a professional portfolio together in that time. At least the students back at AAA had this past semester to work on it as well. Lucas and I only have the spring semester.

And this is just a fun photo. Vlado kept making disgruntled faces (subconsiously or conciously, I don't know) because one of the other student's daughter came and sat next to him and wouldn't shut up. Lunch is always amusing.

Yesterday was my 5 year anniversary with Erik. I'm not extremely upset about missing it because I've never been much of a romantic, but it still hurts not being able to be there with him. Especially with something as big as 5 years. It's hard to think that we've been together for that long. It definitely doesn't seem that way but the more I think about it, the more I cannot imagine my life with him not in it. We've agreed to just celebrate it when I return. A month late, but still better than nothing at all. We're trying to find something to do that's special but not too expensive. We've done the nice romantic dinner and the time with just the two of us and the jewelry for previous anniversaries so we're looking for something different. Erik suggested going and staying at a 'romantic hotel/spa' for a couple of days. I would love to, but I know those places are not cheap.

Less than a month left and I return to reality!

11/12/10

Ok, so now that I'm bumming around at the school, I'll post some of the recent work I've done. This is of my first charcoal drawing here (5 weeks worth of time). Honestly definitely not one of my favorite pieces and one that I don't care much about. All I can really see that I got out of it was a better understanding of getting the correct proportions and seeing shadow and light shapes better as well as slowing myself down... a lot.


Here's my second Bargue again. Still not 100% finished with it and this isn't an updated picture. It's from a couple of days ago. I was told to get softer pencils to darken it even more and to focus on the little shapes now instead of the large shadow shapes.

Today has been a bad day so far. I wake up and take a shower, then as I'm getting ready in my room, the power goes out. It went out a couple of nights ago and the landlord came and reset everything, explaining that when you use a certain amount of electricity your power gets shut off. We were using the oven, washing machine, and had a lot of the lights on in the apartment during that time so I can understand why it shut off then.
But today, Lucas was still sleeping so the only use of electricity was when I had the light on in the bathroom and then the light on in my room. I left for school but Lucas stayed behind to meet with the landlord when he came. I saw that the power box for the building had the red light on as well when I was leaving (instead of just the power meter for our apartment) so I think the entire building has a problem. I'm hoping the situation is resolved by the time classes are over because I don't want to have to throw out all the food in the fridge and have no light and no way to charge my computer and cold showers and no microwave.

11/10/10

A month left before I return to the US.
Here's some pictures from Rome like I said I would post.


I was a little sad that the Pantheon (first picture) was under construction. Half of it was covered in scaffolding. I would have liked to see it in person completely. But we were also able to go inside and nothing in there was under construction. The day was utterly exhausting, but we got to see what we wanted, even if we ended up taking a train 2 hours later than we originally timed.

We started on new model/charcoal drawings this week. We have a male model this time. I already had to start another preliminary pencil drawing because as the model 'settled' into the pose, his shoulders rotated a little to a different angle. I have a picture of my 'finished' charcoal drawing from the past 5 weeks, but the internet has been bad lately, so it took me all day to even get those few pictures from Rome up.

11/6/10

Sorry that I haven't updated in almost a week!
I've been pretty busy due to the fact that my dad and step mom came to visit me. It was a surprise visit (at least for everyone else other than me and my step mom). We kept it secret until my dad arrived to get his boarding pass for the airport. He thought he was going skiing or to Wisconsin for the weekend, haha. Anyway, it's great to see them both because even living back in the states I didn't get to see them much. And it's a lot of fun to be able to share this experience with people close to me and show them around the city.
We went to Rome yesterday, and I have to say to never try to do Rome in a day. We did pretty well and were able to see everything we wanted to see, but we were all zombies by the end of the day. I was a little upset because the Pantheon was under rennovation so half of it was covered by scaffolding. And we didn't get to spend as much time in the Forum or Palatine Hill as we should have. It's a lot larger of an area than I thought it would be.
I have pictures galore that I'll post later. My camera actually ran out of batteries and the last couple of pictures I took were pure luck because I turned it on, snapped quickly, and the camera died, so I just hoped they turned out ok.
Well, going out again with them today to do some shopping and walking and relaxing after yesterday. Sorry again about the shortness and lack of posting!