Oils and Pastels by Margaret Dyer

When the day is finally over and I have some alone time to write, I'm exhausted. I tried, I promise, to write but I inevitably fall asleep at the computer. So my posts are all running late, but here's how our week has gone... Monday and Tuesday we worked from our photos of Margherita most of the day. Tuesday afternoon and evening were free time for us. Several of us made a bee-line to the  Scuola del Cuoio ,  the Florence Leather School, at the Monastery of Santa Croce, across the Arno River, just blocks from where we are staying. We had been told by our tour guides that much of the leather sold on the streets is inferior, but quality  leather and  craftsmanship would be found at the school. The Scuola del Cuoio was founded after World War II by the Franciscan friars of the Monastery and the Gori and Casini families, Florentine leather artisans since the 1930's. Their mission was to give orphans of the war a means to learn a...

For some reason, when I uploaded these pictures, they landed here in a crazy order, rather than the painstaking chronological order I had them in. So forgive me if they seem so random. Yesterday, Sunday, we rose to have breakfast in the little lounge here in the villa, having lovely artsy conversation over coffee, hard-boiled eggs, fruit and yogurt. We deliberated where the perfect artist commune should be. A little before 9:00 we opened the squealing iron gated door onto the gray drizzly streets for a guided tour to the Galleria dell'Accademia di Firenze . We crossed the Arno River via the  Ponte alle Grazie , just a couple of blocks from our place, with a view of the adjacent Ponte Vecchio , made our way to the Basilica of Santa Croce (Holy Cross), passed the childhood home of Michelangelo  and  the Piazza del Duomo and the Florence Cathedral . We made it through the drizzle and the crowds to the Accademia and got to see Michaelangelo's "David" and many of his ot...