I am feeling much better today. I start off my morning session with a nude male model. I spend the first couple of hours drawing the entire figure . The last hour, I do several quick head sketches from different poses. I’m still intimidated by looking at the model and then sketching, but I am told that after a period time you get over it.
For the afternoon session, I am given a picture of an old woman and I am required to render her using charcoal and a white chalk pencil on brown print paper. The paper is about the thickness of wrapping paper. Up until now all my sketches have been on plain white drawing paper. I rather like the effect of the brown paper. I work on this sketch with individual tutoring from my instructor. It is taking shape and I am not displeased with the results for one afternoon.
I am starting to get acquainted with some of my art mates from the group sessions in the afternoon. Last week there was a women from Brooklyn, New York taking a week long class on making frescoes. She was older than me and told me that she had been taking a variety of art classes as a hobby after she retired. I only saw her that first day. I am the oldest of all the students. Most of them have just graduated from high school or are in the early 20’s They attend the group classes in the afternoon and most of them are here to develop art skills so that they can get into a fine arts university. Their time here varies from 3 months to a year. At the end of this program, they get a certificate that will hopefully get them into a prominent art school. They are from all over…..Peru, Amsterdam, Brussels, and even Wisconsin. Most of the time they have their earbuds in and are listening to music while they paint….which limits conversation. However, we are expected to work quietly on our own without causing disruption to the other students.
My roommates have a 2 hour Italian art and cultural class on Tuesdays and Thursday evenings. It is held in an auditorium near where their day classes are taught. The school has been so generous to allow me to attend this university credit course without paying any tuition. Our 1st session was a brief history about the unification/reunification of Italy. It was absolutely fascinating .
I didn’t realize that Italy is about the size of the state of Arizona. Italy has a population of 60M. Whereas, Arizona only has a population of 7M. That is a lot of people crammed into a small land mass. The vast amount of the people reside in the cities. Add to that the number of tourists and you can understand why the streets are jammed full of people going in various directions. Almost all the buildings are 4+ stories. Usually the storefronts/restaurants occupy the ground floor and people live in small apartments above the storefronts. Many of these old buildings which have been modernized for the last hundred years don’t have elevators. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I climb 100+ stairs every time I enter our building to get to our apartment.
I also learned the prominence of the bell towers in Italy. In early times, they were a sign of wealth and power and rival towns competed with one another to provide the finest bell tower. That is why you find so many magnificent ones as you travel around the cities of Italy.
Cindy Mochel Livermore 