Oils and Pastels by Margaret Dyer

In the morning, before we left for the studio, we had a short photo session. On Thursday and Friday in the studio we will be working from these photos. We had Diane and her daughter Sophie pose for us. Diane wore the sweet silk lavender nightgown she has not been able to stop talking about since she bought it here in Florence. The light from our living room window is very nice in the morning here and we got some good shots. Sophie posed in her vintage style bathing suit, a two piece similar to the ones worn in the 50's. We had her pose in the bathroom like she was preparing for a bath. We should be making some pretty paintings the next two days. This evening after class we took a cooking class at the Giglio Cooking School www.gigliocooking.com . We made lasagne. We made the pasta, we made the incredible meat sauce, full of tiny chopped onions, celery and carrots. We made the béchamel, which is a cream sauce we poured in between layers of lasagna noodles, and alternated wit...

We catch a bus every morning around 9:00 (here’s a picture of us making our way to the bus stop) to the recently vacated studios of The Florence Academy of Art. I hear the new place is beautiful, but we are thrilled to have use of their old studio. All the walls are painted a dark forrest green. There are black curtains blocking light in strategic places, allowing control of the artificial lighting to be used for lighting your subjects, portrait or still-life. To get to our studio, we walk down a long dark forrest green hall which is lined on both sides with small dark forrest green studios (large enough for probably one artist each) with black curtains covering the windows. Some rooms still have little tables set up for a still-life. Our studio is a large dark forrest green room at the end of the hall, with black curtains. Models, easels, a stand for the model and a spotlight were provided to us by the Academy. We’ll be working from 9:30-3:30 every day. This afternoon, after ...

We worked hard. We caught a bus home. We went to dinner. We drank. We finished it off with Amaro Lucano. No can blog tonight. http://www.amarolucano.it

Here’s where we’re staying, in the first picture, up on the top two floors to the left.  Breakfast today was from 7:00-8:30-ish—lots of fresh fruit, yogurt, prociutto, cheese, hard-boiled eggs, coffee, juice, and then Ivano walked in with a pretty wrapped package of fresh warm pastries.  We met our tour guide at 10:00, who led us from one side of the Arno River to the other, giving us a glimpse of the Ponte Vecchio (the old bridge), to visit a couple of artists’ studios. The first, Jason Arkles, a sculptor from the USA; he and his artist wife settled in Florence several years ago, and have a thriving business. He sculpts and teaches, as he did today when he explained to us how sculptors like Michelangelo reproduce so perfectly the human body. Actually, he enlightened me. He explained in great detail the sight-size method (Here's a simplified explanation:  https://www.sightsize.com/about ) used by the great sculptors and by Jason today. Check out Jason's web ...

You'll have to forgive me; it's been a long time since I've written in this blog. I am rusty. And tired. All 8 students and I converged  within hours of each other today, most of us wasted after crossing the Atlantic   through the night.  Our home for the next week is a centuries old villa in  the busy newer area of Florence , a 15 minute walk to Il Duomo. Debra and Ivano Zamperla, our hosts, made sure everybody was safely 'at home,' grocery shopped and prepared out dinner while a few  of us caught a few hours of recuperative sleep. 6:30--Dinner, cooked by Ivan and Debra: bruschetta, Tuscan white beans, salad, medallions of turkey and pork, tiramisu cake. We sipped  prosecco  as we became acquainted with each other; we are from Pennsylvania, Michigan, New York, California and Georgia.  We  are composed of a physician and her beautiful 16 year old daughter; a violin ist and her son, who leaves us tomorrow; 4 retired teachers, ...