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!

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.