Travels

Thursday October 30th

Yesterday we had an adventurous day traveling to three small towns Spello, Casteluccio, and Norcia. First we went to Spello which was a very quaint town, there were so many gardens all over the streets and the view of the mountains from the town was great. We walked around here posing as models for Dave every now and then and promoting the art program at Rocky. Then we were off to Casteluccio (an even smaller town) which has an absolute amazing view. We had to drive up a mountain pass to get to it and once you reached the top you suddenly passed a large herd of free roaming cows and then you get to the very top and get the view of the snow covered mountains and the town of Casteluccio in the valley of the mountains. It was gorgeous (even if it was rather chilly and I had to break out my gloves), I have a weak spot for snow covered mountains (hence the school in Montana thing). We started driving down to the town from the top and stopped along the way to say hello to the herd of horses and sheep on the side of the road. We walked around the town which was rather dead and made a puppy friend that followed us everywhere till we left. We had to head back up the mountain pass to get to Norcia and along the way stopped to take pictures of some Jesus rays (yes that is a highly technical term) and say hi to the ponies once more. Norcia we walked around visited a church and ate some pastries before getting back on the bus to head back to the Villa. Today we had our last watercolor class with Jim (who left us after lunch, sadly) and our final critique. Everyones work was amazing this last week, without a doubt I can say we have all improved a lot since we first started painting. Anyway here are some pictures of the last two days (theres a lot of them).

Overlooking from Spello.

Gatto on top of the machina.

More gatto.

Ana modeling for us.

Mike the gatto whisperer.

Cassandra, Ana, and Bailey modeling some more. 

Dave sparta kicking Megan (but not for real).

Some pretty mountains outside of Casteluccio.

Yay mountains.

Cow cows! And they're wild.

The hilltop town of Casteluccio, they have a pretty sweet view.

More Casteluccio.

More mounains (apparently I don't pronounce the t so I'm not putting it in there anymore).

Cows next to the road. I bet Lucy wishes she were here.

Cassandra sheep whispering.

Aww it's a baby.

Closer look at Casteluccio.

Bailey making friends with the donkeys.

Italy made of trees.

Majestic picture of Sorcha.

Majestic Christopher.

The puppy we almost took back to the villa.

Look at how cute she is.

Aww. But then she threw up a few times and it smelt gross.

JESUS RAYS.

Hussey and jesus rays.

More jesus rays.

Jesus rays shining on Norcia.

The final painting of the war is hell soldier.

The last few weeks at the Villa

So I'm just going to catch everyone up on the last few weeks that I've been back here at the Villa. Monday the 20th we had our Art History final exam, it was actually a lot of fun as we were all in teams (with Harry Potter names) and played jeopardy status (the best part was that it was after dinner and so we had all had a little wine to relax ourselves) and we all did very well (my team would've won if Mark had accepted our spelling in the final jeopardy question, thanks Mark). Any who after that we resumed our Italian classes and Started our watercolor classes with Jim, previously I didn't think I like watercolor but I've come to find out I'm actually pretty good at it. First week of watercolor we had to replicate a master work of art from before the 1800's, I chose to replicate Da Vinci's horse statue focusing on only the legs of the horse. The second week of class we had to replicate a modern or contemporary piece of art, I choose a piece by Adonna Khare with an elephant jumping after a balloon animal, I was really happy with this one though people brought to my attention my lack of backgrounds or much color. This week we were told to do whatever we want for our final piece, this was difficult (still is) first I was going to do a picture of my horse at the beach but that didn't pan out so I scrapped it then I was going to do a close up of a fox but that also wasn't to my liking, currently I am working on copying a black and white portrait of a Vietnam soldier and this one is going much better and I'm even adding a little color to it and a background (eventually). Right now we are waiting for our pizza dough (that we all just handmade) to rise enough so we can go back and put some delicious toppings on it and have for dinner, this is a competition between everyone and the winner gets two bottles of wine so lets hope mine tastes pretty good. And here are some pictures I've taken since being back here in Perugia.

Delicious pastry shop in Vienna.

We visited Vienna two weeks ago and this church is there, super cool. 

Chocolate people at the chocolate festival in Perugia.

More of the Chocolate festival, these people are serious about their chocolate this festival goes for 9 days.

Some break dancers at the festival.

An over look of Perugia, so pretty.

Sunset yesterday in Corciano.

Little slice of moon yesterday.

First weeks final product, I gave up on the last leg because I realized the front leg was too low and it bothered me too much to finish it.

The real sculpture.

Second weeks final product.

The actual image by Addona Khare.

My work in progress right now.

The actual picture.

Back to the Villa!

Sunday October 12th

So today we came back to the Villa, however before we got back here it was quite an eventful day. I woke up at 5:30 so I could take sunrise pictures at the Colosseum. Since Sorcha was unwilling to wake up with me, I went alone. Being in Rome by myself early in the morning was hardly scary at all as no one is awake yet. The 20 minute walk to the Colosseum was spent in blissful peace and quiet. I had the Colosseum to myself, I was in heaven. I took way too many pictures of the Colosseum even though the sunrise was kinda lame since it was overcast but besides the point. On the walk back people started to appear on the streets, a lot of bikers (not motorcycle bikers but bicycle bikers) showed up. Like hundreds of them, apparently there was a race this morning starting at 7:30 so I hung around for that. Once I finally made it back to the hotel everyone was still asleep so I had my breakfast and went back to bed for a short time, as we had to check out at 10. Once we were all checked out we had until 3 before the bus was coming to take us back to the Villa so a group of us went to the Borghese Gardens again to watercolor. I don't like watercoloring much so I always felt weird when tourists would come over to us and look at what we were doing like we were street artists. At 3 we all regrouped to wait for the bus. And wait. And wait. It just so happens that the bus got stuck behind an accident for a while and right as the driver was leaving the car clustered area he was then in an accident himself making him even later. I sat on the street with all my bags and people were giving me the weirdest looks (I probably looked like a homeless person begging and if I had a cup out I probably would have gotten change). Two hours later we were on the bus headed to the Villa. Finally at 8:30 we had all returned in one piece and had eaten successfully putting an end to the long day. But here are some pretty pictures of the Colosseum. Yay Colosseum!

The moon was pretty sweet this early in the morning.

And Colosseum!

And more Colosseum!

I have over 80 of these.

Pictures, not Colosseums.

Because 80 Colosseums would be ridiculous.

So many.

They just keep coming.

Finally not Colosseum, bike race!