A Morning Of Immersive Italian

Weird day today. I got up at 7, coffee yogurt for breakfast, and then walked down to Brunella's studio for the internship. It turned out, however, that I wouldn't be doing any picture book work today, and would instead be tagging along with Brunella to visit a potential artist for her gallery and then a children's bookstore. Also coming was an Italian art student with a bowl cut and hipster glasses named Samuele, who was not very friendly and did his best to ignore me.

The artist lived on the other side of Florence, so Brunella drove us over. I sat in the backseat, and it turns out in Florence there's no law that requires backseat sitters to wear a seatbelt, so there wasn't one. That was different. Also kinda funny was that Brunella made a joke about her car being old and big, but it was really just an average USA car... I wonder what she would say about the minivan.

We got to the artist's apartment at around 10 or so. He lives in a non-touristy part of Florence on the fourth floor of the building. We all squeezed into a teeny little elevator to get to the right apartment, and the artist welcomed us in, and we sat in the living room. The artist offered us water and pineapple juice to drink, and then Brunella and the guy commenced to discuss the artist guy's art. All in Italian. For about 2 hours. I understood maybe 50% of it, a lot from context.

The guy's art was different: he drew and painted landscapes on top of sewing patterns. He went through each piece with Brunella, and they discussed the inspiration and merits of each individual work. All I can say is that the fine art world is very strange, and I don't get it.

Following that visit, we walked over to the nearby children's bookstore. Brunella had some sort of meeting with the people that worked there, so I was left with Samuele and the books. Samuele walked off into his own corner, so I just went ahead and tried reading the books. I could actually understand the Italian fairly well. I think reading Italian is the easiest for me, compared to speaking or listening.

Italian Harry Potter. Nice cover!

John Green is universal.

Brunella finished up at 12:30, and then drove us back, dropping me off in the middle of the city, closer to the school. I had a lot of time, so I leisurely walked to class and ate my packed lunch (consisting of a peanut butter and jelly baguette sandwich, a peach, and a couple cookies).

Drawing class began at 1:15. We walked to the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, which is a museum next to the Duomo and most of the original Duomo sculptures and other associated art. We took over the bench in front of Michelangelo's Florence Pieta (aka The Deposition) and just drew the sculpture for 3 hours. It was fun.

Jesus is having a hard time again.

When class ended, most people split, but me and a couple friends stayed behind to finish the drawing and then look around the rest of the museum. Unfortunately, I left my phone, and thus my camera, in my backpack which had been checked in at the lobby, so I didn't take any pictures. But there were a lot of great sculptures and an in-depth look at Brunelleschi's dome, which was constructed just as the book I read said it was.

Our tickets for the museum were also good the Baptistery next to the Duomo, so I went ahead and visited there as well. The inside is just a single room, but it has a massive mosaic across the ceiling that is really amazing in person.

This is the least blurry picture I took.

Following that, I walked back to the apartment, made very good baguette pizza, and then back to SACI for another 2 hours of drawing from a model. Lots of drawing on Wednesdays. Also the prunes I got have started to kick in. They don't kid around, those prunes.

And now I'm back at the apartment, where I think I'll start soaking some beans and then call it a night.