October 30th

Been a few days since my last post. So, what have I been up to?


After returning from Venice, monday was spent pretty much doing nothing as I posted the previous blog post and got some rest. Venice was fairly fast-paced and most of us were spent by the time we got back. Tuesday I mostly spent working on some sketches, but to be honest I did almost nothing that day. Wednesday we had our art history class and we went to the Museo San Marco. It was a place where people could go to meditate religiously. The building was full of small little cells in which people would enter for extended periods of 'negative meditation'. The cells all featured paintings of religious scenes from the bible, but the best thing was the Annunciation painted by Fra Angelico. Also, Peter talking about if you do LSD you'll see winged elephants and flying horses was pretty great, as well as him talking about the one time he smoked a joint. We also checked out the Cenacolo di Ognissanti. The main boon about it was a last supper painted Ghirlandaio. Great stuff.

Thursday, I spent the day actually working on a new painting. After Wednesday's class, I got a large pad of hot press watercolour paper (about 18" by around two feet), so I got to work translating my smaller sketches into larger more finished works, with a bit of an alteration. After that, I was invited by one of my classmates to join her and some of my other classmates to head to one of their places to learn to knit. I had no powerful reason on why not, so I went. I got a couple balls of wool with the intentions on building a scarf or something simple. However, it's a more difficult craft then what I originally envisioned and accomplished nothing more then learning the steps and constantly re-doing my mistakes.

Friday, we had art history again, this time we checked out the church of San Lorenzo, design by Brunelleschi, as well as the crypt where Donatello is buried. After that, we hopped across the street for a quick look inside the Medici Palace, where we got a seven minute window to gaze at the medici private chapel painting. Very neat stuff, but they have a guard stand in the room with you telling you to leave once seven minutes are past AND you have to make an appointment.

Saturday, all day painting and now it's Sunday. Tomorrow is halloween, so we're having a party at our place tomorrow night. Our professor and Peter are also invited, so it should be fun.


It's been fairly nice here weather-wise. Rainy on monday, so I had to got to the laundromat to dry my clothes. Besides that it's been sunny with a high of around 20 degrees the whole week. A bit cold in the morning and at night, as well as the studio being really cold, but it's comfortable. It's still quite busy with Tourists, but that's to be expected.

That's all for now, however here are some imagines.

First off, a bird has taken a liking to my sun-roof.



Here are a couple of the newer paintings I did. I'm not too happy with the interior one. Too purple.




Finally, enjoying a nice hot cup of tea in the cold studio.

Lovely Venezia

Hello Internet.

The weekend we had our highly anticipated trip to Venice. We loaded onto the train from Santa Maria Novella at 8:30 in the morning and rode the two hour train ride northeast to Venice. The trip was fairly uneventful. As much of Italy is mountainous, the trains frequently ride in tunnels, not really enabling much in the way to look at.

Our first view of Venice from the train station is that of a large canal and bridges all over. Also, there are no cars in Venice. The streets are all quite narrow (and mostly unnamed) so the main form of transportation is to take a ferry around the city. Our first order to business was to get our ferry passes, so Peter and our professor went off to buy them for us, while we waited on the steps. Our Hostel was on an island, (which is what all of Venice is but....), so we needed to ferry there. However, we figured that we'd go to the hostel at the end of the day as there was no point shuffling back and forth and eating up tones of time. We started with a look at the Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari (where Titians Body is buried). Afterwards, a group of us went to the Guggenheim collection, which was absolutely stunning. A few of us were rather ticked that our Professor told us not to bother go to it, as she said it was a "waste of time", which it wasn't.

We reluctantly left to meet back with her and the rest of the class, where we ran into Peter sitting at a bar drinking beer and asking for passports, claiming he was acting as border patrol for the Guggenheim. Two of our older classmates chilled with him there. I thought of joining, but I wanted to see the city, so I joined with Sarah and a larger portion of the class in exploring the city.hich was great. Weaving through the small narrow streets and over numerous bridges. We saw the famous Piazza San Marco, which was quite stunning. We saw a group of tourists feeding pigeons, which then began to climb all over them. It was really quite funny.

We met Peter and co. back near the armory and headed off to the Hostel, which is on a quiet area of the city separated from the tourists. We had two rooms selected for us. So we unpacked and then a group of us with Peter went out for Pizza. Our professor choose not to stay in the hostel with us and stayed in a B&B in the main part of the city. Having dinner with Peter was hilarious, as he's a really funny guy and quite knowledgeable about Venice and Italy. It appears like he knows everyone, as he was chatting familiarly with the pizzeria owner and with other people all over the place.

Day 2.


We spent the majority of our trip at the Biennale. This is the big international arts festival. We woke up early, with the lights and power off, to breakfast in the dark, where my flashlight came in handy. During breakfast they got the power working again and there was hot water and coffee for all! We arrived at the front of the Giardini area of the Biennale at 10am, got our tickets and spent the rest of the day inside. Many countries are present in the Biennale, with many having their own unique pavilions which the corresponding countries built themselves. All the pavilions are unique works of art themselves and some are quite stunning structures. In the center was a 'main pavilion' which had works which are sort of the miscellaneous works that couldn't fit into other pavilions. A majority of the artworks were video based or installations,which I am normally not the most excited with. However, some of my favorite pavilions (Greece, Israel, czech republic and Korea) were just that. The Canadian Pavilion had work by Steven Shearer. It's easy to find his work online, mostly drawings of figures. Admirably made, but not my cup of tea. Also, the Canadian Pavilion is shaped like a maple leaf. Lulz.

Most of the pavilions focused heavily on political and social issues, which made a lot of them very heavy and dark to look at. Many were very graphic. True art is angsty so they say. For example, the Egyptian one was based on the recent revolts (and it was among the only countries which I feel should really have a reason to follow this theme). All the Polish works were videos talking about WW2, which was disappointing. Israel took the subject of land-grabs and border issues really well however and was among the best in my eyes. I cannot really explain it however, but it was done with a series of video works.

The main Pavilion was chock full of a variety of works, including three Tinteretto's, which didn't really fit into the whole 'Modern Art' feel which is the premiss of the show. Not that I don't mind Tinteretto's. Standouts for me from the 'Padiglione Centrale' was this one odd video which was absolutely hilarious and poked fun at art in general. It also made very little sense.I have no idea who made this video (I failed to get a name), but I want to find out what it was. When I do, I'll let you know.

By the time we finished, it was getting close to 6pm, so we collected (about seven of us) at Piazza San Marco, to find a place to eat. I don't know where it was, or what it was called, but away from the main tourist area of the town (well away from San Marco north east-ish) we found a nice little restaurant which served well priced three course meals. I had a Lasgana, Grilled Porkchop and a salad all for 13 euros, which was not too bad all things considered. Venice is the sort of town which sucks away your money quicker then you can say "ATM" so this was reasonably priced all in all. A few of the other folks in our class wanted to meet up with us, but we had no idea how to get to where we were. We managed to find our way back to the hostel afterwards (I have a good sense of direction (at least with the compass rose) in cities, so we found our way back to the San Marco, then onto a ferry back to our little island.

Day 3

On our last day, we spent until 2pm at the Arsenale segment of the Biannale. This was mostly works of independent artists along a long corridor. For the most part, fairly meh. There was a few works which were quite interesting, but for the most part I didn't consider it as good as the previous day. That is until we reached the Italian Pavilion at the end. Stunning is the best word. They did their best to blow the rest of the Biannale out of the water, with a veritable legion of artists and artworks. Also, this was one the only places in which there was paintings..All if it amazing. Outside they even had a sculptural garden. We had only 20min to see it, as we had slogged our way through the rest of the event, taking everything in. Someone could spend half a day in the Italian Pavilion alone, the time we had left (as we had no idea what we were missing out on) was a crime. Needless to say, we all arrived late at the meeting point with our professor.

We quickly hustled back to the Hostel to grab our stuff, then saw some Tinteretto's in the Squalla San Rocco, which was a huge confraternity and is an absolutely stunning building bristling with art. Peter talked to us about the Tinteretto's and then we had some spare time before we needed to return to the train and head back to Florence at 6:27pm.

All in all a great trip and a city I would love to visit again.

I took a lot of pictures, so instead of spending a long time uploading them here (as the blogger photo uploading system sucks) I'll link you to them on my google+ account.


Biannale pictures.


Venice Pictures.


Until later.

Mid-Terms are over!

Yesterday, we had Art Histroy and saw the end of our two days of Mid-Term Critiques.

Art history saw us meet Peter at the Florence Cathedral Baptistry, where he talked to us about the design of the structure it's self and about the significance of it's three doors (mainly who created them). Also, how the Baptistry was used as inspiration for early renaissance architecture. Peter, seems to know everyone in Florence, as while he was talking he stopped someone on the street riding a bike to engage in greetings (who is a great artist who we'll be visiting later). Also, later we visited a fantastic quiet little church out of the way of the throngs of tourists in the Piazza della Limbo, which is where they buried babies who died before they could be baptized. Anyway, inside the church, the priest came out who Peter also greeted warmly. A really funny guy. He kept on reminding us to bring a towel to Venice, as we'll need a towel.

Afterwards we had Crit's. It was long and tiring to go through it, but seeing everyone else's work consolidated together for the first time was really great to see, especially as I've not even really had the chance yet to see some of my colleagues work. I ended up going first today, by virtue of my last name. I got a lot of good feedback and ideas to expand from. Everyone else's work is quite stunning. We have a very talented selection of artists here. After we finished Adam, Iskuhi, Michelle, Megan and myself decided it'd be great to have a celebratory dinner, so we went to a pub near the school we've been calling "Sneaky Dee's" as it reminds us of a similar place in Toronto. Also, they have the most delicious Chicken Wings I've ever had. The drinks they have are terribly expensive, but the food is reasonably priced. After that, we hung out at Meg's place while calling the rest of our classmates to get together and hang out on the steps of Sante Croche and sort of party. Turned out well and we all had a very good time.

Tomorrow we head to Venice, which is really exciting. I'm not too sure what to expect there, but it should be great in any case.

Here are some random pictures I took while walking around. All around Piazza della Duomo.

October 17th (Games Day Special!)

Yesterday, I spent the whole day at games day in the nearby city of Modena. By nearby I mean a two hour train ride. So basically I packed up my chaos space marines, grabbed my tickets and my bag and headed out.

I cought an early train at the Santa Maria train station at around 8:30 and headed out. The train had little compartments and this italian family shared the six seat cabin I was in, however they got off halfway through the trip, leaving me in the cabin alone for the rest of the way. I arrived in Modena at around 10:15am and (with some initial trouble) found the correct bus to get me to my stop. Neat side note, I drank a ton of caffeine on the way to the train station, so at Modena I really needed to take a piss. So I get to the washroom and there are two paper towel dispensers on the wall. I thought that was a bit odd. However, when I got into the stall, it was just a hole in the floor. So yeah, fairly interesting toilet.

Anyway, back to the real story. I got to games day in this sort of large meeting hall based around a single large auditorium. Basically, the whole event was staged in hallways on the first and second floor of this place, while they had a few seminars in the auditorium. I decided to get my forge world order out of the way first and after a half an hour of waiting, I was able to pass my reservation order email to an employee to get my order. Some folks didn't get an order in ahead of time and were basically pointing at the catalogue taking ages to get through. Anyway, after that I got a book signed by the famous author Gav Thrope, who also wrote my chaos space marine rule book. I then followed him to the auditorium for a Q&A session, however there was a bit of a problem in that all the questions were asked in Italian and never translated (loudly) to english. Then Gav would reply in english and the translator would translate it back to italian. So, I got &A but no Q. Ah well, I leaned some neat tid-bits about projects he might work on, but nothing warhammer related, all Black Library related.

They had demo tables for all the current and no-longer supported Games Workshop games. So they had Warhammer 40k and Fantasy battles, but also Mordheim, Warmaster and Aeronautica Imperialis. There was also two xbox's set up with the new game "Space Marine", but I didn't care for that. I ended up getting a game in with a guy from Sicily and you can read about that here.

The event closed at five and I found myself heading back to the train station (with less concern this time and som italian fellow almost had a heart attack when the bus stopped violntly and my army cas fell off a seat. He didn't speak english, but I cought the jist of what he said. I then overheard him talk to some other folks about their forge world orders and I could pick up a bit of what they were saying as I knew what they were talking about, at least. When I went to change trains in Bologna to head back to Firenze, I made the fatal discovery that what I thought was the 'departure time' on th e ticket, was in fact the estimated arrival time and ended up missing my intended train. by like ten minutes. Note to self, when I don't know when an event will end...don't by return tickets in advance.

All in all, a really great day and besides a couple of hick-ups well worth the trip. Also, while stranded in Bologna for a little bit I found out that one of my Favorite bands..Fleet Foxes..Will be playing there next month, so a negative turned into an opportunity to see them live at long last.

On the way back to Firenze, I got a message from one of the girls that I should stop by the studio as soon as I got back, as it was a friend, I thought that something serious might have happened by the abruptness of the message. In reality, they just wanted me to change a lightbulb for them. I then got an opportunity to describe what I had done, to an audience which didn't really care.


Train cabin


Venue


Some of the hall



My Banner!



Gav @ Q&A



Some of the cool stuff (Armies on Parade and random tables)

October 13th

To be honest, the last few days have been fairly uneventful. Wednesday, we went to the Museo Del Bargello. It's this huge building that used to be at one point the center of law in Florence. The high judge would live the place and people would be executed in the court yard. We went for our art history class, as the place is now houses the single largest collection of renaissance sculpture in the world. The place is also quite large, with multiple parts closed to the public too. I failed to take any pictures while we were there, as we had a rather rapid-fire tour through some of the more important works in the museum. I was more focused on listening to Peter (our proff) then I was with being a tourist.

However, the things we saw, can be seen easily on a google search though. We saw Donatello's David and St George, Michelangelo's Bacchus and Madonna Tondo, as well as the two competition peices for the second door of the Florence Baptistry, submitted by Brunelleschi and Ghiberti.

Fairly exciting stuff. The place is only about a 20min walk from where I live. Also, with this neat-o museum card I have I can get in for free as many times as I want.

There was one part which was closed (unusually), which featured a bust and a wall fresco. It was blocked by a cast iron gate. Peter mentioned that we could have asked a guard to open the door, but as Peter said "Florentines will only open the door if they want to".

Sunday is games day, which I'm excited for. Next week we are all going to Venice between friday and sunday, so that's going to be exciting too.

Anyway, my wall I've been storing my pictures is getting a bit more crowded.





Also, a picture looking east along the Arno from one of the bridges.


That's all for now!

Happy Thanksgiving.

Last night, we had a Thanksgiving potluck. Everyone brought stuff to the studio, we jammed a whole bunch if tables together and enjoyed a dinner with our class. It was a lot of fun and I ended up eating far too much food. Edison, has had a couple of friends (Recent OCAD graduates) staying with us the last few days, who are really quite nice folks. They gave me a fezz. In case anyone is wondering, I brought a salad (Goats cheese, balsamic and tomatoes thrown in). Everyone from what I picked up on was making some sort of carby meal, like pasta and such. I figured some greens would not go amiss for a healthy meal. Plus, I have the stuff now in the fridge at school to eat more salad later. The balsamic was made nearby and was fairly cheap as well. Only like a euro or two for the bottle.




After the party, Dianne, Iskuhi, Michelle, Megan and myself went to Dianne and Iskuhi's place for a rousing game of Settlers of Catan. Got to bust out the 5/6 player expansion and it was quiet a lot of fun. Unfortunately, my tips during the pre-game were no absorbed and I won a convincing, quitck, victory.



On a side note, I found a neat part next to a wall to do some painting yesterday and paint I did. I also did another painting next to the Arno, but I killed I by making the middle too dark accidentally and was unable to really recover it.


Next to Arno.


In the Park.

October 8th

Long time between updates, apologies.


Been working on some more paintings since before. I'm really in the mood to start pumping them out. (especially since I've bought a new box of tea). Well, what else have I been up to? Wednesday, for our art history class, we visited Santa Croche cathedral, which was quite fantastic. Lots of memorials for some really big florentine folks inside. Michelangelo, Donatello, Dante, Machiavelli and others. Big place and was quite fascinating to see it while we did.

Today, I went out to a park on the south side of the Arno, west of where our studio is. I feel I had a fairly successful time and spent about 3 1/2 hours chilling in the park drinking tea and painting (well, the former not for too long). Also, I found out that I won the local warhammer 40k league championship. So, that's pretty super.

Anyway, some pictures.

Here's me next to Machiavelli's tomb.



And a picture of my studio, better pictures of a couple of last updates paintings and the one I did today.









Until next time folks.

October 3rd!

Well, the first month has gone by already, only seven more to go. I feel that the time is going to just wizz by. In two weeks today is our mid-term is two weeks on this day. I saw my professor today and I'll be meeting with her tomorrow to go over the work I've made so far. She seems to be expecting a lot from us, however I don't think anyone is going to have produced as much work as they might have in the city as we've just finished our new month in a new country, we're just getting over getting settled so to speak. I have twelve paintings done so far (there are some more, but I don't care about them). It's not as much as I'd ideally want to have done for the mid-term, but I still have two weeks to pump out more work. I want to at least finish my watercolour block off (which I am working from now) and then do at least one painting in larger scale.

My days since the Gori Collection have been fairly quiet. I've been trying to pump out paintings, mostly. Saturday, was the Launch of the new games workshop game Dreadfleet. It looks like a cool game, but too ungodly expensive for me. However, I went to the launch anyway and spent the morning with a whole bunch of Italian gamers dressed like pirates. It was fun, but I didn't spend to long.



I ended up getting two paintings done that day ( I felt productive). I'm finding that some days I'm a lot more 'motivated' then others. Just natural I 'spose. I'm still searching for good painting spots where I can chill out unmolested by tourists. I've encountered a lot of people taking photographs of me while I am painting/sketching, or creeping over my shoulder. I zone 'em all out though as I enjoy listening to podcasts while painting.

Our art history professor, Peter, invited us to the art show opening of a friend of his in a local bookstore. I showed up late (as I was finishing a painting) and only my Proff, Sarah, Melissa and Heather were there. I got a seat up from with my classmates while Peter read from a five page script in italian abot his friend and his work. Peter then provoked us into asking questions. I asked a fairly uncreative question about preference for the artists scale and shape of canvas, so at least one of us said something. Afterwards we had champagne and orange juice.

Friday we had a surprise birthday party for Iskuhi, which was rather nice. A good number of people showed up.

Today, it was Agata's birthday, so we made some Pizza's and then were going to watch "A Dangerous Method" at the local cinema, but it was canceled due to another movie playing and that films director in audience. Oh well.

We went to a Dali and Rodin show near the Uffitzi, however the Rodin's were all copy's of copy's and looked pretty quite terrible. The saving grace was a collection of water colors by Dali, inspired by Dante's divine comedy. They made the whole show worthwhile, as the Rodin's were laughably bad.

Speaking of bad, here are some terrible pictures of some of my paintings I've done since the last update. I promise I'll better document this stuff in the future.









That's all for now!