Update!

It's been almost 2 months since my last post so I guess I owe you an update. I already mentioned I wasn't accepted into the Academy (boohoo) but I was accepted into another art school (yay) that's pretty much at the same level as the one I used to go to but with a whole different system and teaching methods. So I'm officially going back to being an art student!

In the last week of June and first week of July I was in Florence, Italy and it was just great. Not only is there art all around you; famous paintings inside the churches, great architecture, and of course the Uffizi (which was overbooked though so we didn't get to go), but we also saw some exhibitions of more modern, contemporary art. One of the last days of the trip we went to Siena and in the middle of the busy, tourist-crowded street there was a tiny gallery and one of the artists in particular appealed to me: Her name is Antonella Cinelli, and her paintings are very inspired by photos - both in terms of composition and technique - and the motives of her paintings for that exhibition were focused around femininity: Shoes, underwear, make-up, and portraits of women (possibly herself?) doing everyday activities such as putting on socks or pulling up her pantyhose. I guess you have to see it yourself to understand why it's interesting. The series/exhibition was called "Femminile, singolare...concreto".

The trip to Italy also inspired me to take my own photos as a source of inspiration to my paintings, instead of using film stills. After I made that decision I started taking a lot of photos of the streets, the people around me, people talking to each other, people waiting for the bus, or just wainting in general.

I've been home for a few weeks now so I've started on some paintings with some of those photos in mind.

I suppose I should have taken one picture of each of them but truth is I'm a little scared right now cause it feels like I have no idea what I'm doing.. and my self confidence is still not back to normal after the application refusals so I don't think I can take much criticism. I'm trying to find a liberating side to not knowing what I'm doing though...turning it into a good thing.

For the past year I've been worrying on and off about losing my technique and ability to draw and paint people (I miss 'croquis' sessions!!).. one of the things I've always struggled with is to draw and paint hands, whenever I try it looks like a big fleshy thing with sausages randomly attached to it. So I invested in this:

It's supposed to make it easier to draw hands. It works to a certain extent; the thumb can't be moved further from the hand than what is seen in the photo, and the fingers are too long. But it's fun, I've filled half a sketching pad with hand drawings already. I've named "him" Han(d)ibal. (it may seem obsessive to name ones art tools but we have a history for it in my family. It started when my sister got a similar wooden doll to draw and we all thought it looked like the Academy Award statue so it was named Oscar.)

That's about all at the moment, will add the two latest paintings (those I did before the ones I'm working on now) to the web site shortly.