Tuesday 2-7-2013

The worst thing about intensive days, is that I never have enough time at the end of the day to write up these blogs, but lucky enough i've worked out a system, where I write out notes and expand on them in my free time.  So here is the fist of a few to come.

Tuesday was our fist outdoor class.  First we took the metro and meet up outside of the Colosseum at 9am.  Then we walked over to the  Arch of Constantine and drew a few pictures of.  In the mean while lots of tourists kept coming up to take pictures of us, so some of us joked that maybe we should put a hat down and collect money.

After that we walked around the area and saw the forum, and old ruins, which were pretty cool, but like I said before, I don't really know much about history to comment on what they were and dates.  All I know is that they're really old.

ruins

The ruins are owned by stray cats here... kind of like in Japan

After that we went to a museum, which had different kinds of columns and broken stones on display, (probably because it was burning hot outside).
There the teachers had us draw a few quick drawings of the landscape in order to capture the sensation of it.

buildings over the trees

the balcony

Then we split up and went off into the gallery to draw some of the old sculptures.  Since we were given about 2 hours to draw, I was able to concentrate on drawing detailed images without worrying about running out of time.  Actually I’m pretty impressed by what I did, since I haven’t drawn super detailed things in a long time.

headless statue 

lion carved block

Column cap

After we had finish we were dismissed from class and allowed to explore the city.  First we walked through a market place called Campo di Fiori where I got gelato.  I swear gelato is SO GOOD in Italy! The rock melon and strawberry flavors are really good and even have bits of fruit in them.

Later on me and Sharron (my room mate) went shopping for groceries to make dinner.  As some of my friends know, I have a terrible reputation for cooking and tease me about it often, (probably doesn't help that I keep posting these pictures and videos up though), so I decided to redeem myself by making an awesome dinner.  First I made a stir fry with onion, capsicum, tomatoes and eggs, which actually turned out good, but the rice...

We have a rice cooker at home, so using a pot to cook rice is weird for me.  In the end I burnt the rice and kind of destroyed the pot as well.

Mum would be so proud of me

In the end Sharron, whose not a very good cook either, made pasta and saved the day.  (She probably felt much better as well finding a person whose worse than her at cooking).

finished result

So much for redeeming my reputation...