Ups and Downs

My moods are apparently on a schedule. Tuesday and Thursday I have a great time. I'm cheerful! My classes are enjoyable! Monday and Wednesday I'm tired, grumpy, dissatisfied with classes, and aggravated at everything. I wonder why this is. I hope that I'll even out eventually, and either be rather happy all the time or at least running at average.

In any case today was a good day! Had breakfast with friends at a really yummy cafe near my Illustration studio and enjoyed a very interesting class. There was a weird moment, however, when I presented my little story booklet to my teacher, I think she said "much better". Which was puzzling. I thought that I'd done worse than my rough draft. Anyway. We worked on a new project, a sort of card-game collage that I found very interesting, despite my distaste for collage. We have to create three 2x1 cards that have the theme of travel, and submit them to a website. The website, when refreshed, will randomly sample three cards from the entire class and put them together to see what strange and wonderful combination it will make. I like this!

Here are mine -- I have one finished, one in the works, and one not started.

I got my first catcall today

I was wondering when that would happen. It wasn't particularly distressing or anything, but I thought I should mark the occasion.

In SACI's handbook they say you will reach a point where everything about the new country irritates you. I may have gotten to that point. It's so loud, it's very hot, there are more mosquitoes than I could possibly have imagined, the tourists are even more numerous than the mosquitoes, and just the fact that nothing is convenient. Nothing. I spent half an hour trying to find a street vendor that sells padlocks before I gave up. How much of a spoiled American white girl do I sound when I say that I dearly miss CVS?

I should mention though, despite all those things...this is still Italy.
So.

Scissors and Skeins

I have been a busy girl! And I'm tired. But it's a good tired.

Third day of classes went rather well. My wonderful illustration teacher gave us a presentation on Bruno Munari, who was a very weird, very cool illustrator/artist guy. He came up with a lot of cool stuff for children and early education, his most interesting contributions being his picture books. I highly recommend looking them up. In fact why don't you visit his wikipedia page.

Anyway, those picture books are made mostly through using cut paper, but cut paper in a sort of strange way that engages the page as part of the...thing. Um. Hmm. Oh! There's an image on one page, perhaps with  a little hole in it that is an eye or a star or a moon. You flip to the next page, and it becomes something different that contrasts in a cool way with what you saw before. He made lots and lots of these books. Our assignment today was to make one ourselves. Here's the cover of my attempt:

You may not be able to tell, but the white is the front page, and the black is what's showing through from the next page. Our theme was "travelling" -- so I did a story of a rabbit making a journey home. 

Sorry these are sideways...but you get the gist, I guess? These two are the only pages that I really like, I think you can probably see what's going on. From then on it goes downhill, mostly because...this was super difficult. You have to be aware of what's happening on the first second third and fourth pages, just so that you don't accidentally show cut out parts where they aren't supposed to be...ugh. Anyway, I have until Thursday to perfect it. Assuming I can find some scissors.

Also today I had my first Italian Fashion Design class. I missed the first session because I just recently added it -- I thought "oh hey I have space in my schedule and this looks like a fun idea", so I signed up. It wasn't exactly what I was expecting, but I enjoyed myself anyway. Along with 7 other girls, I listened to a presentation on the history of the "made in Italy" look, which actually only goes back to 1951. Huh. It was quite an extensive presentation. Ask me if you ever want to know about the early years of the White Room shows. 

The next section of the class was all about FIBERS! Natural, synthetic, artificial, mineral, animal, blue raspberry, you name it, I know...well, most of them, anyway. Then we got to make skeins. Of wool. With our hands. And some drop spindles. Here is me and my skein:

I may look a little overexcited about this lumpy rope of (really too thick) yarn, but I worked hard to make it, dammit. Those drop spindles are tricky. My assignment for this coming Thursday is to a. take 100 pictures of things I find beautiful in Florence and b. Do some sketches.
Of fashion design.
Clearly this woman has never met me. Because I have no idea how to draw fashion that isn't, not to put too fine a point on it, armor.
So I guess I'll show up on Thursday with my fantastical designs and see what she says. Maybe I'll be the next Alexander McQueen.

Okay, Italians, let just make something clear here...

Supermarkets sell food. Anything that does not sell any food at all cannot be called a supermarket. Okay?
Supermarket (n) : A large self-service retail market that sells food and household goods.

I know it seems rather ridiculous to actually get a dictionary definition, but believe me, readers, it's necessary. I realized today after doing a lot of shopping for art supplies (see the rest of this post) that I needed to get some more food as well. I rushed home and deposited my purchases, then looked up supermarkets near my apartment.
The first one I went to turned out to be a department store that sold accessories and women's clothing. The second was a sunglasses store.
Why, for the love of god, did you list yourselves under supermarkets?! That is wrong. No. I refuse to accept that. I'm cranky because I did a lot of walking for no reason, and when I got back, my room mate was using the kitchen (as is her right) and now I'm sitting writing a blog post instead of making pasta. This is bad, because I'm hungry.

Oh she's done. I'll be right back.

Okay, I'm no longer cranky because I made myself my signature dinner (see if you can guess what it is. hint: it may be the exact same thing I had last night, and the night before) and now I have some of my Very Own Grapes. 

I went to the art supply store with a couple of friends this afternoon, after having class all morning, which was enjoyable if somewhat tiring...my first class began at 8:45 am, which is early for this nocturnal girl. And I spent a rather frantic half an hour trying to find all the things I need for all the classes I'm taking.

Ta-da! There they are, the fruits of my labor. And rather expensive fruits they were indeed. Still, I am now the proud owner of:

• 1 pad of peely-offy palette paper (say that 5 times fast)
• 1 little bottle of linseed oil
• 1 little bottle of damar varnish
• 8 little tubes of assorted oil paints
• 1 little box of 12 watercolors
• 1 little pad of watercolor paper
• 4 little canvasses, one slightly less little than the rest
• 8 brushes, not all that little
• 2 pencils, also regular sized
• 1 eraser, white. Regular sized.
• Oh and 1 palette knife.

And I still need rags and masking tape and something to get the seeds out of these grapes.
Here's a shot of the painting studio.

How were they born, the cornflakes?

I don't have anything particularly insightful to say this morning, but I thought I'd share two things with you. First, the box of Keloggs corn flakes that my room mate bought says "come nascono, i Kelloggs Corn Flakes?" The literal translation to English is in the title. For some reason that is quite funny to me.

Secondly here are two shots of the Piazza del Duomo, one taken at 8:30 am and the other taken at 11:00 am. Spot the difference!

Oh by the way, if you'd like to see the little nothings I draw in class (midst my notes, don't worry parents, I am paying attention) then visit the "Doodles" page up at the top there.

In which our hero visits the Uffizi

I don't know if I've mentioned this, but I live a block away from the Uffizi.
And I have a free pass.
To get in whenever I want.

So I decided, since I'm not in Ravenna right now, that I would visit this cultural Mecca. I went on my own, of course, because it's unfathomably difficult to get in contact with potential friends when no one really has a working cellphone. That was okay, though, because it meant I could stand and stare at/draw anything for as long as I wanted. Plus it's a lot easier to maneuver among Japanese tourists if you are only one relatively small person. I bumbled around the entrance to the building for a while before I found out how to a. get in with my student pass and b. get a ticket with my student pass and c. present said ticket to the ticket people. That process took a lot longer than you would imagine because I get lost easily and there were a lot of people around.

Needless to say I had a wonderful time wandering and sketching. I was stared at by lots of different tourists of many different nationalities, and a few of them paused to observe what I was drawing in case it was an important monument that they should pay attention to. This was infrequent though because the things I chose to draw were interesting to me because they were objects that looked fun to draw, not because they were Very Important Art. Here are the sketches I did while I was there -- I apologize for the bad quality of the photos, but I forgot when I was packing that a scanner might be a good idea.

 

In the first room of the second floor, where the gallery actually is, there were these two statues of dogs looking upwards. I loved them. I think they were my favorite sculptures that I saw. Of course I had to draw one -- I spent a long time working on his muzzle. The other drawing is a bust of Seneca, who I chose to draw because he was one of the only actually aged-looking busts I saw*. He had an interesting face.

A boy and his goose. A lot of the statues didn't have any signage or plaques to point out what they were. I liked this one, though, because the youth appears to be leaning on thin air, or possibly his drapery, and the goose had an excellent expression on its face with the drapery clamped in his beak. I saw a few other versions of "Youth and Goose", and I'm still not sure what myth it refers to.

Two quick sketches of figures in interesting poses: one gladiator-type who was lunging with a spear, and a satyr perched on a ledge who was either trying to tempt the youth playing panpipes beside him, or take the panpipes away. In any case I liked his feet.

I've recently become enamored of drapery. I used to hate drawing it, but now I love it. This lady had a lot, so I took a seat and drew her. The notes are paintings which I wanted to look up for later reference.

I also took a look at the paintings -- a lot of paintings. I discovered an artist who I'd never heard of before, Filippo Lippi, whose Madonnas all looked to be, to my eye, what Madonnas should look like. They were young women with soft expressions and messy hair. I liked that. Also his hands were pretty.

I wandered into a room of Botticelli soon afterwards. I love Botticelli. The figures in his paintings all have such open, lively faces, and that makes me happy. Also he paints badass armor. Check out this lady!

*Maybe he was the only old-looking one because he's named Seneca? I don't know. I'll have to ask Blair.

It's JUST an EMOTIONAL ROLLER COASTER over here

Having stayed up until almost 3 am last night, I woke up at 1:30 pm, and was immediately and horribly homesick. It was brought on by nothing but a vague feeling of the loss of something important. Homesickness really, really sucks.

After crying into my teddy bear I had a semi-productive day. I went and signed up for the waiting list for the  field trip to Ravenna tomorrow (I did not get in, oh well...) and also registered to get our apartment checked out by the nice people at SACI. When I had another attack of weepiness*, the housing director Daniella sat down and talked to me. "Five people have already told me they want to go home," she told me. "The first week is hard. By the end you will be crying because you don't want to leave!"

That was nice to hear. Out of the hundred-odd students at SACI, five of us are still having trouble finding our feet**. Afterwards I went to the pharmacy to get some aspirin, which I had forgotten at home among many other vital objects. And I had my very first conversation, completely in Italian, and I feel pretty amazing about it.
After I'd told the nice older man behind the counter that I wanted "aspirin, the kind you take with water", he told me that my Italian was very good. My accent was perfect. He asked where I was from -- I said I was American. He asked what I was studying, I said art.
"Oh, you have the air of an artist." He said, and then told me his name was Carlo. When I told him my name was Alice, he said "Oh, Alice, like Alice in Wonderland!***" He then said it was very nice to meet me and to come back again soon, after shaking my hand very warmly. I felt a lot better when I left -- I'd had my first conversation in Italian, and I only had to ask him to repeat himself twice! Maybe this won't be so hard after all.

Even the things that aren't supposed to be beautiful are beautiful here.

Oh, and BY THE WAY. I managed to get my stove working tonight and made myself a nice little dinner. Yes, the pasta was a bit too al dente, and the sausage may or may not have been completely cooked, but I made it and it was mostly yummy. And I have cookies for later.

Not super sure why this photo is sideways. Deal with it.

*The worst part about breaking down and crying is that it will 100 times easier to start crying again at the slightest provocation, even when you thought you were finished.

**MUCH LIKE THIS TINY BABY DEER

***What, is that the title of this blog? WHY YES IT IS.