San Lorenzo Market - my illustrations

here are my illustrations in order of how you'd look at them. theres the close up of the stuff you'd get at the open airmarket or the images you'd be bombarded with. then it zooms out to just a vendor and his stall --> to an overall market street.--> then to the San lorenzo church dominating the image with a bit of market (this drawing isnt done, but its middle stages are in the previous post)...basically i'm saying that the church is only really noticed after one goes through the market becuase the market is so overwhelming and such.. the fourth image isnt done...i have to finish my architectural drawing then transfer to water colour paper and water colour it.

San Lorenzo Market - with church - perspective

Venizia - Carnevale

On Friday Feb 9, Nicole and I, along with about 55 other SACI students, took a bus to Venice for Carnevale. We were there until Sunday evening. Carnevale is basically a time of celebration in Italy. It is the last time people have do crazy things, feast and what not before Lent and Easter. I think it ends 40 days before Easter...not sure though. It's celebrated everywhere, but Venice is the popular place to go to see Carnevale festivities. It was fun and interesting and frustrating (mostly because the TAs were disorganized and they were late getting back to the bus so we didnt leave Venice on Saturday night to get back to the hotel until 2am). And because no one was told until we got on the bus that the rooms were mostly triples, a few people were randomly placed. So Neal ended up in my room with me and Nicole. It turned out rather fun though, and the 3 of us did stuff together. Here are my thoughts:
Pros:
-lots of fun, walked around a ton. On SAturday we went to the Accademia and saw all those Venitian painters and what not - it was all to religious for me though, I got bored after a while.
-tasty food
-lots of colours, crazy outfits and masks (some were rather cheap looking but some were AMAZINGLY crafted and were hella expensive ..I'm talking up to 300 Euro).
-um...what else? the gondola people were funny... they would be standing around in their striped shirts and funny hats and yell "gondola gondale" (translated: gondola, gondolas). we were walking around looking for a place to sit down and take a break, and this gondolier was tying up his gondola and climbing over the fence to the path and as I walked passed him he started singing. Hehe, we got a laugh out of it.
-When the sun was out, for the few hours that it made an appearance between Saturday and Sunday, Venice was nice, becuase it wasn't unbearably cold in the shade and we weren't walking all wet everywhere with loads of people around us.
-I got a few Venitian glass jewelry pieces. Man, I practiced some serious self control. Haha. Everywhere I went there were temptations. We also found this small hidden mask shop somewhere further away from all the touristy areas. We walked in and saw the artist who runs the shop and also has her workshop next door. She had a table where she was working on some masks, adding paint and details etc. So we got genuine Venitian masks, for a decent price, and they were different from what you'd get in the touristy areas or from street stalls.
-the place we had lunch on Sunday was very yummy.

Cons:
-EXTREMELY TOURISTY. There were way too many tourists. It seemed like there weren't an local people around unles they worked in a shop. And the few Italians mostly came from outside of Venice. Apparently a lot of people don't realy live in Venice, but outside of it and commute in for work or whatever. So the whole place gave me a Disneyworld kind of feel...even though I've never been to Disney, it's one of those places everyone goes to but no-one lives there. It's where EVERYTHING is overpriced (a can of coke = 4.50 euro!)
-weather was mostly AWFUL - was rainy and overcast 85% of the time we were there.
-Hotel had no hotwater :(
-too many drunk people everywhere not looking where they were walking.

Anyway, here are some pictures:



Near Piazza Romana


Feed the birds...(soo many pigeons! it was insane!! one landed on Neal's shoulder and sat there for a few minutes then flew off)




crazy Italian hippies singing and dancing away. it was fun to watch though.


some church, dont know the name of it.







Nicole and I with our masks.

First attempt at something fancy on Photoshop

more pictures of Mamma's trip

I'm can't remember the name of this room but it was very golden, so I'm going to call it the Golden Room. There are mirrors on either side of the walls on the left and right, and the mirrors had paintings on them - so you could see yourself among shrubbery and putti, etc.
The second two pictures are two details of the ceiling. The first is in the center of the ceiling and the second is a corner near the doorway.







The stairs in the Medici Palace were cool cause they were solid stone but self-supported and the bottoms were just plastered to look nice!




San Lorenzo facade...there's some construction going on in front at the bottom of the steps - the orange fence area.



View of the Cloister. The really bright wall is where the famous Michelangelo staircase is and also the library.

Mamma's Visit to Firenze (Feb 2-5)

In the very short time that Mamma came to Firenze, we did so much.
Day 1 (started around 2pm):
We walked around, had a late lunch, Mamma took a nap at somepoint so I did some work.
Day 2:
Started the day off at the San Lorenzo church and saw the inside, the Old Sacristy (designed by Brunelleschi and decorated by Donatello. Apparently Brunelleschi wasn't happy with the decoration because Donatello had painted scenes in roundels that made the roundels look like windows...so Brunelleschi, the very passionate, precise, OCD architect, got mad because the outdoor scenes in the roundels imply a void in the supports (quinches?) of the dome therefore making the structure seem unstable.) We then saw the cloister. We tried going to see the Library where Donatello's famous staircase is, but its under restoration so we couldnt..HOWEVER, my illustration class got permission for 15 minutes to go in, so i got to see it Tuesday morning (sadly, a few hours after mamma left).
After San Lorenzo we went to the Medici Palace and looked around there. I forgot I took pictures with the other digital camera so I don't have all my pics up in this post - will make another post to add what i left out.
After the Medici Palace we walked to the Duomo and the Baptistry. Spent some time in both.
We also went to the Duomo Museo and learned the history and stuff about the Duomo and about the competition held for the creation of the dome. Got to see the original bronze panels by Ghiberti from the Baptistry. Those were pretty amazing, especially the level of detail.
We went out to dinner with two of my friends, Nicole and JQ, had indian food :)
This is after dinner, we were looking for an open gelatteria but all were closed but we found this shop that was selling swimsuits and stuff...and the sign said "gone tanning" instead of "closed". We thought it was funny and took a picture...


Ponte Vecchio by night with us:



Day 3 (Sunday):
We went up to Piazzale Michaelangiolo on a hill on the southern side of the Arno River and climbed up many stairs to see San Miniato al Monte (made in the Ettruscan period).


Composite view of the church facade:


the stairs leading up to the church:


We also saw Firenze from atop a hill. It was quite the sight. All red from the terracotta roofs!


We walked back toward city center, walked along the Arno river and crossed over Ponte Vecchio. Went to Piazza Signoria and saw the fake David by Michaelangelo. We were going to try to see the real on in the Galeria Accedemia but didn't get a chance to do it. We got huge huge servings of gelato on cones, a lot larger than we were expecting...and a lot more expensive than we were expecting! Who knew, a single waffle cone could be 8euro! After eating the gelato we were done eating for the day - soooo stuffed.
Monday morning, we got a taxi to Boboli Gardens behind Palazzo Pitti BUT apparently, all state museums and such are closed on Mondays...so we walked back and went to see Santa Croce instead and did a bit of shopping.
Piazza Santa Croce:

I went to class, and Mamma made some Indian food for me to eat and freeze for later consumption :)
After class we walked around, had dinner, hung out and played cards.
Tuesday early early morning, Mamma took a taxi to the airport, ending our time together :(
But it was definately loads of fun.

Randoms 2

Santa Croce and its Piazza with puppet people (in Spanish):







Detail above the middle door:





Puppets...kinda cool, kinda creepy, but fun to watch.




Composite of photos of the Duomo...it's soooooo big!!!!