Disegnare

This doesn't have much to do with Italy itself, though I figured after having been at the Accadamia for a couple of months now, I wanted to try my hand at drawing a few faces again. I'm still uncomfortable with drawing anything seemingly-lifelike, but I gave it a shot; I've also finally caught myself up with Game of Thrones and figured I could use Daenerys Stormborn as a model for this doodle ;)

You know, it's almost every day I pass by the Duomo and the Arno. Italy's my home, it's something I live with, all of the buildings and shops and streets, I know them all so well! But there are still so many times where I stop on the bridges of the Arno or wander the streets behind the Duomo and I get so wrapped up in how much I love the architecture and the water and I love this city so much!! It seems strange that I'm only here for a little over a month now!

Pisa

I can say I've been to Pisa to see the Leaning Tower as well now! It's funny, before I left for Italy, everyone I spoke to--and I mean everyone--told me to skip Pisa, that there is nothing there. That it was the Leaning Tower and that was it! Mom had really wanted to see it, so we decided to stop by on a failed trip to Volterre. Mom was excited to read about the making of the Leaning Tower which is actually pretty hysterical:

The campanile was begun in 1173 as the final structure of the magnificent cathedral complex on the Campo dei Miracoli in Pisa. The settling of its foundations and resulting lean became apparent before it was even finished - after only three stories were completed. The engineer, believed to be Bonnano Pisano, tried to compensate by making the new stories a little taller on one side. However, the extra materials caused the tower to sink even more.
Work was suspended several times as engineers worked to find a solution, but the tower was still leaning when it was completed in 1350. The architectural design remained unchanged throughout, as later builders stayed faithful to the original Romanesque designs.
Over the years various attempts have made to straighten the tower, including the injection of cement into the foundations and various types of bracing, but in the late 20th century the structure was still subsiding at the rate of 0.05 inches (1.2 mm) per year and in serious danger of collapse.

Once we got to Pisa, I was pleasantly surprised with the city. I was actually expecting nothing to be there. Modern buildings with no color, no cafes, no restaurants, I was thinking there would be nothing! It was actually a pretty sweet town with a lot of old book stores and some really cute cafes!

Despite the cute cafes and fun little streets, there's not much to say. We went to see the Leaning Tower and we did! It was much smaller than I thought it would be though...

Cinque Terre III: Porto Venere

Finally for the last (long overdue) installment of our Cinque Terre trip! One of my goals while I was in Italy was to explore a castle! I wasn't expecting to find that in Porto Venere, our last stop of the weekend. It was located to the far side of the city and was beautiful to walk through! For being a castle that you need to pay to get into, it was surprising authentic to its original design, ruins and all, not overrun with tourism by any means. It's the kind I had expected to see on a hiking trail, blocked off to the public. Fortunately, I suppose, I didn't need to resort to that ;)

The castle ran right into the city, which was pretty similar to Cinque Terre. The buildings were colorful and built in the same architecture, if not a little taller and a touch more spread out. Porto Venere was also quite a bit larger, central being very compact and slowly branching out to the other end of town into hotels, restaurants, and apartment buildings. When you walked up towards the back of the town, away from the water, you would come across walls from the original castle, bits and pieces of ruins. In some streets, on one side you would see the reds and yellows and oranges of the newer buildings and the other, old brickwork laid in the time the castle was constructed. It was a very cool mesh of the two eras!

I'm going through all my photos and I'm realizing almost half the pictures I took were in this castle and I have very few of Porto Venere itself... These two pictures should at least kind of give you an idea of the castle walls and newer buildings looked like together!

The architecture was just so cool!!! I couldn't get enough of it!!

The Royal Garden of Hyrule, anyone? It felt like
videogame material!!

Vigili del Fuoco

Right outside our apartment

Forgot to mention! Had a fun run in with some firemen a few weeks ago!

The story is actually really dull so I'll let you guys use your imaginations to guess what happened ;)

And now for something completely different...

Along with studying abroad, I am taking an online course through MCAD called The History and Culture of Food. I've been able to use my experienced in Italy a lot for the assignments and essays in this class and it's been a perfect supplement! Way back at the beginning of the semester however, we had to cook something from one of Julia Child's television programs and write about our experience.

I'd like to take this time to upload my essay I wrote for this disaster. It's been several weeks after the fact and I'm still dumbfounded by it (as well as fairly impressed at how much I did manage to screw up a recipe!) It also gives you a glimpse at what cooking in our apartment can be like!

Cinque Terre II: Corniglia, Vernazza, e Monterrosso

Ciao ognuno! Sono muto, perché... I seem to have completely forgotten to talk about the rest of our Cinque Terre trip! For some reason I thought I'd mentioned everything else in that other post, mi dispiace!! Andiamo!

After our first night in Cinque Terre, we visited the other three villages: Monterrosso al Mare, Vernazza, and Corniglia. On our train ride over, there had been a mother and a little girl sitting opposite me. They were headed for Cinque Terre as well and the girl was so excited she could hardly contain it! Every few moments she would throw her hands in the air and say, "La mare!!" which, plain and simple is, "The sea!!" It's a word we learned in class but I hadn't paid much attention to it. After seeing this little girl so excited for it (as well as "le barche!": "the boats!") I don't think I'll be forgetting the word!

We took the boat from Riomaggiore to Monterrosso first. The flattest of the villages, it is most well known for having been built practically on the beach. (Although, I believe mom had read somewhere that they import the sand every year for the tourists!) The train ran right through the town center making it a bit noisy, though as you got deeper into the buildings you would find the same quaint colors and style of architecture as the other villages. I remember it as the most modern of all five; although they all cater to tourists, this one kept up the vibe of being newer.

Dad smoochin' mom. Uploading just for fun ;)

When you take the boat from one place to the next, you can see all of the vineyards and olive plantations that were made all along the hills between the towns. We got fairly close to some of them when we hiked from Vernazza to Corniglia.

There was something about Vernazza that I really loved! We didn't stay long so my adoration for it is a bit out of place. I think it felt the most homey out of them all. It wasn't overrun with tourism nor was it a lifeless town, the buildings looked the most used, well preserved though not brand new. There was still laundry hung up, the cafes were busy, it was friendly and warm! It simply had a livable quality to it. There was also a cafe that was coated in yellow from the umbrellas to the chairs which of course I loved :)

This was also the city where I pointed to a house far up on a hill (a white one next to an orange one) and said, that's where I want my animation studio to be!

Corniglia was our las stop that day. It was built way up on a cliff, so it is inaccessible by boat. The only two ways to get there are by train to to hike. We hiked from Vernazza to there, probably an hour and a half or two hour trek. It was gorgeous to see from far away! I don't have many pictures of Corniglia, unfortunately. It was a bit secluded and the night we were there it was very quiet.

I do need to tell you about the pesto in Cinque Terre. Best pesto in the world!!! Virginia, my Florence-Minnesota contact who lives in Fiesole had told me when I go to Cinque Terre I had to try the pesto pasta dishes. Almost every pasta dish in Cinque Terre came with pesto! We tried loads of different kinds of pasta with it. Our store-bought pasta we have in the fridge of our apartment simply doesn't measure up anymore...

Well, it's taken two and a half months but I've finally found a workspace in this apartment I'm super excited about! Right outside the window!!! It mimics my drafting table which I'm severely missing. (I thought it looked cool enough to blog about, mhm!)

Those bikes are further away than they look, I'm on the
second floor (third floor by American standards ;) )

Artistica Anatomia II

 A few more drawings from my Artistica Anatomia class.  I'm having a tough time trying to figure out how to properly document them without a scanner.  (I've been spoiled by MCAD's facilities!)

And a super quick sketch with colored
pencils!

I had a few instances of flusterment in class today, first arising when the model started speaking to me, very quickly, in Italian. Upon my usual "Mi dispiace, il mio italiano è non bene" routine, she had grabbed another student to translate. Unfortunately, they didn't speak English either! We went through several different students (I believe there were five of us in a circle by that point, all flailing our arms and making exaggerated motions in means of explanation) until I finally realized the model was not staying long today because there were some power shortages in the school.  After that little incident, a student had walked up to me and had asked, "C'è una modella oggi?"or something of the sort to which, I was so thrilled to have understood I could only excitedly reply "Sì!" without much further explanation. Time to pull out my Italian study guides again, I think!

Cinque Terre I: Riomaggiore e Manarola

While my parents were here, we took a trip to what may be one of my favorite cities on this earth: Cinque Terre!!! There are five little villages, as the name states, that are contained within this region of Italy: Riomaggiore, Manarola, Corniglia, Vernazza, and Monterrosso al Mare. Further south is another town by the name of Porto Venere which is often considered an addition to Cinque Terre for its similar colors and architecture.

I'm having a hard time deciding what photographs to upload! I took about five hundred on our three day trip... And I love them all, no matter how bad they may be haha! The city was simply so gorgeous, the colors, the view of the sea, all of it was stunning. It had a beautiful gradient of forest, city, and sea all in one, something you so rarely see! Riomaggiore and Manarola were the two towns we visited on our first day and both are sloping towns, leading right up into the mountains! It's a bit of a trek walking up and down, but it's worth it for the view and seeing the gorgeous reds and oranges and yellows of the buildings.

There are three ways to get to each town: train, hike, or boat. We took the boat the most often (it was the most fun in my opinion ;) Sadly, the most expensive as well) and it gave us a great view of each town as we passed. The weather was absolutely stunning and perfect for the boat rides!

For this post I'm mostly trying to get my photos together (five hundred is a bit excessive!) but I'll be adding posts for the other cities as well in the coming days which will include much more text as well!! For now, I can't quite find words to express how beautiful Cinque Terre is. It is definitely worth the trip if you ever find yourself in Italy!!!

La Pimpa!!

Let me tell you a bit about a little dog who's been teaching me a bit of Italian here and there!

La Pimpa! created by Francesco Tullio Altan began as a comic strip in Italy about a little white and red dog learning about the world around her. Pimpa and her comic was featured in a children's magazine soon after its creation and has since wandered into the hearts of many Italian children as the comic strip, in the 80s and later again in the early 2000s, was turned into an animated series. Targeted towards preschoolers, La Pimpa! teaches Italian children about colors, objects, phrases, counting, and the ground necessities to learning Italian. Not to mention Pimpa is an awfully cute character!

We happen to have a television in the apartment. We hadn't turned it on once since the first night we arrived in Italy, though without internet, we were a bit desperate in the evenings for some entertainment that didn't involve wine (it eventually involved wine) and turned towards children's programming in hopes to pick up a word or two, as any other channels were far too advanced for any of us to understand anything in the language. We discovered Italian Spongebob (which is much more entertaining then English Spongebob) and Hamtaro (a favorite from my childhood!) as well as a few Italian shows such as La Pimpa!

I've asked my Italian friends if they watched Pimpa as kids and they all (after reminding them what exactly it is) melt into a grin and a chorus of "aww!" Most kids my age grew up with Pimpa here as American children grew up with Spot or Clifford. Since Pimpa's been teaching me a few words in Italian when I get the chance to watch the show, I felt I needed to dedicate a bit of art to her in my own style!

Artistica Anatomia I

Mamma mia, ciao, raggazzi!!! Sorry for the huge lack of posts, we got our internet back a week ago (infine!!) and just afterwards my parents came to visit and I had a blast spending time with them!! I'll make a separate post for that however. For now, I have just a couple of figure drawings to show you all that I did at the Accadamia a few weeks ago.