What?!! The news hit me yesterday when my friend told me we only have less than a week left in Florence. How sad is that? It’s flown by way too quickly!
Monday morning started off with finishing up our still life monotone paintings. Although I felt it wasn’t my best work, as it was such a new experience for me using a palette knife, I’m so pleased to have learned new techniques!
That afternoon, in art history, we went to the bapistry of the Duomo. Although I was disappointed that the pool had been filled in, the magnificent gold mosaics on the inner dome made up for it!
For the rest of the week in super arts, we’ve been working on self portraits in oil, using paint brushes and colors, which has been a relief! We took a break from self portraits to draw Michangelo’s David, which was a lot of fun to draw, because it is such a famous piece with unusual proportions (his head and hands are giant!). It really challenged us to look at the statue instead of considering natural human proportions.
One day, I spent the afternoon at the Gucci Museo where I saw a Gucci car (who knew such a thing existed!) and John Travolta’s trunk set, with the highlight being seeing Cameron Diaz’s and Blake Lively’s red carpet gowns! They’re truly magical princess gowns! TV cannot even begin to capture the beauty of these gowns.
This week, we also went back to the pool, and I got to jump off the 5-meter platform (the Italian lifeguards wouldn’t let me go off the higher ones unless I was a diver, which I said I was, but then they wanted me to prove it to them on the lower ones. I just couldn’t do it wearing a bikini!), and it was the highest diving board I’ve ever been off of! We then wrapped up the week by going to a disco club, which played pure American music. So does that mean there is not Italian dance music? So interesting!
I love receiving the new surprises Italy leaves me with everyday! -Phoebe