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| View of St. Peter' Basilica across the Tiber River. |
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| This is the triumphal Arch of Constantine...it's located near the Colosseum. Laure always tries to find ways for us to paint people. The next lesson was titled Street Scenes. I chose the 'mime'. You see them all over Europe. They are painted up especially well and stand there motionless...sometimes you can't tell if it's person or a manequin.  For this next lesson we were supposed to create a 'sampler' of several sites and it was to be done in ONE hour. I felt like I was playing 'Beat the Clock'...and felt very rushed.  The window, the fountain and the mail box. From Rome we moved on to Florence. So much to see though there is a lot of construction going on. In this lesson we were to use Google Maps to search out and paint something that appealed to us.   I don't care for Google maps. We used it in New Orleans but I didn't remember much from that trip. This was a mysterious little alley with the stairs at the end. I left out all the cars and scooters that were parked there. From Florence, we crossed the mountains for our next stop, Venice. I love Venice, it's like no place else I've ever been. And the architecture is just beautiful.  These are actually windows on 2 different buildings. The top is very Italian and the bottom is Moorish.  I couldn't leave Venice without a scene that included the iconic gondolas.  This page was to be 2-3 things that had something in common. I chose bridges. Very amibitious to do in 45 minutes. I fussed too much with the details. And I'm not sure what I thought I was doing adding that striped border in between. The next lesson was to date my least favorite; we had to design a Carnivale Mask with or without the gown. ( I should have tried to sneak my New Orleans mask in.) I took out a sketchbook and started the project. Then I just painted over the sketch with colors that I thought would go together. When I was done, I swore I was not going to do a "page" for the journal. But I did and I'm not posting it because it is horrible. If I had this kind of failure on a landscape I'd repeat it again....not people paintings.  This class and group is so inspiring, I just want to keep painting. So I did.  We left Venice and went on to Milan. The difference between Venice and Milan equals 'culture shock'. Milan is a hustling, bustling place. The cathedral is incredibly intricate. And everywhere you turn you see references to Leonardo daVinci.  We left Milan and headed for the island of Sicily. I know nothing about Sicily except that it is that triangle at the end of the boot. What a pleasant surprise; so many fantastically beautiful sites. Sometimes I had to remind myself what country I was in because of all the Greek influence. Our assignment was to do a page entirely in ink, no drawing with pencil first. It had to include at least 3 different images and each drawing was to take no more than 10 minutes. When we were done we could add one color in watercolor. After I completed the first page, I was so charmed by the scenery that I did a second one.   This was the best lesson. I had no idea I could do this much in so little time. As much as I enjoyed our pen sketches in Sicily, I was not a happy camper in Naples. We had to paint our scene using NO pencil or pen just go for it with paint. Now normally this would not bother me but we only had 35 minutes to do it. I tried to choose one of the easier photos to paint but it did not come out easily.  These are the sea stacks at Capri. Our trip is almost over. On our last day in Italy, Laure told us we could paint anything we wanted. Since we went out for a lovely 'end of the trip' dinner, I decided to paint the restaurant.  This was a wonderful trip. Laure Ferlita is an excellent teacher and tour guide. I look forward to my next Imaginary Trip. |
