Yes i am that guy.....

I am that guy who does not update his blog because he gets caught up in the exoticism of said country... i am sorry!

Well right now i am in an internet cafe in Lucca and it is the most amazing little city ever. It is smack dab in between Pisa and Florence. It is very compact and impossible tog et lost in due to its walls that enclose it. These walls were built for protection from enemies whent the city was first built...now it serves as a wonderful place to take bike rides on. We looped the whole city on our bikes in about 20 minutes. We spent all morning in the train station because we bought tickets at the automated machines to go to Pisa, we soon discovered that the train workers were on strike and spent an hour in line getting our refunds. Our friend Travis Parker was supposed to be in Switzerland today, but ended up staying with us tonight again due to the train situation. The strike is supposed to end at 9 pm tonight, which is wonderful due to our reservation in Cinque Terre for the coming days.

On a side note, i still cannot upload photos here. I just attempted it here on blogger as well as on myspace and cannot find success in either...so i must wait until i return to upload these suckers.

The three week study program was pretty amazing. The first week we studied tempera painting with Granchi, the second we studied watercolor with Steinberg, the third we studied oil painting with Cretara, and the last was life drawing with Scolini. Like i said before, every morning we would go to museums and churches. The highlights for me. were the Academia and the Uffizi. Michelangelo's unfinished sculptures of the prisoners escaping from the marble were breathtaking. At the Uffizi were so many paintings and drawings that i cannot sum up in a paragraph. I liked the Michelangelo, Del Sarto, Lippi, Rembrandt and Titians...i did soem sketching in there and got some bad stares for standing so long in front of paintings.

Once we were done with the program and we set up our artwork in the rooms and the teachers chose our work for the gallery show. There was a mess up apparantly, i was supposed to have 3 pieces in the show, but only got two in....bad communication i guess. At the show we all acted obnoxious by taking millions of photos and said goodbye to the amazing group of people that enhanced this experience so much. Domenic Cretara also announced the 10 art pieces that were chosen to be displayed at the CSU Chancellors office for the year. One of my landscape paintings was chosen and will be displayed for a year, along with it getting framed and printed in a little catalog book! I am pretty happy about that and if anybody is in Long Beach, you should go see it.

Well, for right now i cannot think of anything else...if anybody has questions then drop me an email and i shall try to reply. Luiseltarugito@gmail.com


CIAO