nonstop art-ing

Hello all!

This week's been pretty nonstop with classes ending soon. Our art exhibition is next Thursday, we don't have school Monday, and our last day of classes is Wednesday! SO I've been in the art studio for 6+ (usually closer to 8) hours every day as busy as a bee so that I can get all my work done before Greece. I won't have any time to finish things up next week since we get back late Monday night, I have class all day Tuesday, then only a few hours to work in the morning on Wednesday! AH. So it's been a week full of paint-filled clothes and chemical-smelling hands.

final - not the full effect because of the
lighting, but you get an idea

The week's kind of blurred together because I've been either painting, fresco-ing, or printing pictures every day haha. So I'll try and remember highlights, but this post will be short and sweet:) I finished my portrait of India! I mean...painting real life things aren't my FAVORITE - I'm more of an abstract kind of girl, and quite a messy artist so abstract fits more than the straight-edges and fine-lined realistic form. Every day this week I've come home COVERED in paint head to toe. I really don't know how it happens. All my teachers make fun of me for it. They've started not telling me that I have paint all over my face before I leave, so I get home and realize it's on my nose, forehead, chin, cheeks - you name it. Hooooowwwwww does that happen??? Whatever, it's just my style:)

detial of west lodge!

The painting looks good, I think! I did it in my more rough-edged and thick-painted style, and my professor commented that it worked for me which was good. I think it's more of a based-on-India thing than actually India (yes, that's an excuse for being terrible at realistic stuff haha). BUT it's at CMS on the athletics field with West Lodge in the background, and she's wearing Buff clothes! Her little yellow tutu. Perfecto. In portraits, it's important to put the figure in a setting that describes them and gives the viewer an idea of who they are. I thought this was perfect:) Painting it made me miss camp so much though, I listened to camp songs all 7 hours of the painting process! I can't wait to be back at cms this summer with the loves of my life <3

Photography has been going really well. Serafino offered to pay to print pictures for people, but when I showed him my photos that I self-printed, he told me that I was too good to get them printed at a store. SO he assigned me 8 more pictures to print before the exhibition next week. AH! I love printing, so it wasn't awful that he's getting me to do it, it's just lots and lots and LOTS more time. I finished up all the pictures today (Serafino even gave me special shiny paper to use) after a total of about 11 hours of working in the dark room this week. SUCCESS! Maybe some day I'll get this stinky smell of developer and fixer chemicals off my hands. I'm excited about my pictures, though, and I printed lots of extras to make cool mixed media pieces when I get home. Yippee! Note: the photographs on the blog are ones that I scanned into the computer and photoshopped (most are from Morocco and Turkey) - I haven't scanned in the ones that I've printed this week yet.

The fresco is officially COMPLETE as of liiiiike 4 hours ago. So. Exciting. A semester of work all came down to this. (I forgot to take a picture of the final thing, but I'll put it up next week). I completed the sky today, did the top of the big tree, and worked on touch-ups using egg tempura paint. It was really cool to learn to paint with tempura because I've learned all about that type of paint in my art history classes, but never was exactly sure how (or why) people painted with it/made it. It's made from the yokes of eggs, although you can use the eggwhites if it is a delicate color (like whites, lighter or pastel-y colors, etc.). Mixing the yoke, water, and dry paint and voila! You get tempura. We did touch ups with this kind of paint because the egg-y parts make it thicker so that the paint actually stays on the wall. Since you're supposed to paint frescos while they're still wet (hence the meaning of fresco = "fresh"), just water mixed with paint wouldn't do the trick. The egg fixes it all! So I finished up everything today - for fresco, painting, AND photo! It was a productive 8 hours there today.

The mornings I've been doing longer yoga and meditation practices since I had been slacking with all my travels and visitors. It feels really good to be back in the regular routine. That's something I'm really looking forward to about coming home - the schedule and dedication to my practice. There are more and more things that I'm excited about coming home for...I can't believe it's almost 2 weeks now! I'm definitely ready to be back. I've missed everyone too too much!! I'm looking forward to my last couple of weeks though.

Last night, all the roomies sat down together and made a list of things we wanted to do before we left Rome. We crossed off one thing yesterday - group piercing in the Eternal City! Haha we found a clean/polite/very friendly place right near school so we went for it. I got a little stud in my nose (although I wanted a hoop - they didn't have them there so I'll have to switch it out when I get home) and two other roomies got piercings also (another nose and a part of the ear - I can never remember what it's called). Before the piercing excursion, though, we got pizza at an incredible place around the block from John Cabot called Dar Poeta. Mmmmm Mmmmm. Their motto: "We are neither thin and crispy nor thick and softy". Haha aka PERFECTO. (pictures to come!)

Soooo that's about it for this week! I'm excited tonight because GLEE was new last night (for the first time in tooooo long) so I'm gonna watch a little glee and pack for Greece! We're leaving at 8am tomorrow and be back around 7pm on Monday evening. I'm looking forward to a nice, relaxing Easter weekend soaking up the sun on the Greek island of Corfu:)

I hope you all have a wonderful Easter filled with love, friends, and family. Know that you have my love from across the ocean! <3