An Opera at the Boboli Gardens (July 21)

July is the month during which Florence holds it's annual opera festival. Tonight, I went to see an outdoor showing of "La Traviata" at the Boboli Gardens. I've never been to a real opera before and seeing as Italy is the birthplace of opera, it seemed like the perfect occasion. Francine and my friend Olga had already bought tickets ahead of time, so I dragged Lee and Ben with me to the show. Our seats were way in the back, but it was still an enjoyable experience. The guys left at the intermission (I looked over at one point during the show to find Lee playing "Angry Birds" on his iphone), so I joined Olga up front in the vacated seat next to her. She had a much nicer view of the stage. I have to admit, the opera was quite long and toward the end I started nodding off a bit (the show finished around midnight). I felt a little bad about this, since Olga later told me that the elderly man sitting next to her was crying at the end of the show.

Figure Painting

I've been neglectful in writing about my figure painting class. It's probably because my painting isn't coming out as well as I'd like it to. This has nothing to do with the quality of the class or the instruction, just me hitting a block in the figurative road (haha). Anyhow, here's the in-progress painting. Hopefully it'll turn around soon...

Dinner with Friends (July 19)

Tonight we joined Francine and a few of our friends at a small restaurant on a side street just off Piazza Signoria. The place has six small tables and 20 chairs. Total. As our party of seven squeezed into our corner table, it seemed as if we took up half the restaurant. Francine, who had dined here before, informed us that the Osteria was entirely run by a family: the mother cooked in the kitchen, the father ran the register, and the son was the waiter. The food was supposed to be excellent.

We were given hand written menus in plastic sheeting (a single page with the specials scribbled in ball point) and left to decipher the Italian. Each sheet had a boxed notation on the side that read "NO ice, NO pizza, NO bisteca". I ordered pasta with mushrooms with tiramisu for dessert. So so good :)

Ok... the tiramisu may not look that impressive but it's made with raspberries and was probably one of the best things I've had in Florence so far.

We ended the evening with tea at Francine's apartment overlooking the Piazza, talked about art, and watched as lightning lit up the sky. That night, Kes and I also had the pleasure of running home under our first Florentine rainstorm.

Color study

We spent all of last class pre-mixing value scales for our color study. A whole 3 hours. My instructor was very adamant about getting correct value and temperature and arranging them comprehensively on a palette (I don't think I've ever wiped down my palette so many times before beginning to paint). I've been taught to pre-mix before, but never quite to this extent. It seemed a bit ridiculous to spend THAT much time setting up a palette.

However, when I finally began my color study today, I realized how much easier painting became. Having these neat blobs of paint arranged by value ready to go freed me up to to focus on just the act of painting and gave me one less thing to think about. It's far from perfect, but I don't think I've ever knocked out a color study this quickly before.

And... my instructor's quick color study demo:

A Bit of Scottish Home Cooking (July 14)

I met my first REAL Scottsman here in Italy. His name is Lee and he has a beard, river dances, owns a kilt or two, throws logs, bathes in Guiness, and can sort of play the bagpipes. He also likes to paint and cook. It took me about a week to begin to understand what he was saying (he has a really thick accent), and by then we'd become pretty good friends.

Back in Scotland, Lee owns a confectionary company that produces this amazing thing called "tablet" (Tah-blah). He brought some to the studios for us to try and now I'm hooked. It's basically a large block of sugary goodness made of all sorts of things that would make Jenny Craig faint: butter, milk, cream, and sugar. It seems pretty simple to make, but Lee swears that it's a rather complicated and delicate process and that the best tablet can only be created by the most experienced confectioner (such as himself). Curious, I went over to his place today for a lesson on how to make a proper tablet. Despite its simple ingredients, tablet-making is a sensitive process that involves a lot of precise mixing, boiling, stirring, temperature-checking, frothing, stove-switching, and waiting. When cooked correctly, the result is a hearty slab of pure caloric deliciousness.

...?

I was really looking forward to seeing this sculpture, too...

Second Still Life (July 14)

Today we started our next and final still life. I will be working on this for the remainder of the month:

Line drawing with vine charcoal

Raw umber block-in