Week 4

The weeks are flying by, this week we reached the half way point, I cant believe that we already been here for over a month. It is a strange feeling, because on the one hand it feels like yesterday when I was taking my finals back in Moscow and getting ready fore Rome; but on the other hand when I’m thinking back to the first days here in Rome and what I have seen, what I have sketched, what people I have meet and what I have done between then and now it feels like an eternity that I have been here. It is interesting how the perception of time can be so relative to the perspective you’re looking at it.
 After four weeks I can finally say that I start to understand the city. I can check off more and more sites of my to-do-list, but on the other hand that list is getting longer and longer with each day; so it almost seems like a race that I probably won’t win.This last week was a very important one for me. I had my first sketches that I am happy with. I noticed that I finally start developing my own style and carry that one style through all my sketches. Ofcourse there is still a lot to learn for me, and certainly not everything I draw looks amazing all of a sudden. But when I’m browsing through my sketchbook it’s first of all amazing how much we already sketched and then I can see how I became already a little bit better. This is a real motivation boost for me and makes me sketch even more. So although we did a lot of sketching this week I actually went out yesterday and today by myself to sketch for a little bit (and that in 95°F).
But the highlight of last week was definitely the second walking tour of Jeffery Blanchard, he gave us a tour about some of the Baroque churches around the Piazza Quirinale. The tour was manly about Borromini and Bernini; I say “mainly” because the topic was Borromini and Bernini Jeffery always put it into a larger context, so we covered way more then just these two artists. It was a great lecture/walking tour, Jeffery is definitely one of the most intelligent people I have ever met, he knew so much about everything, I was following him the whole 4 and a half hours of the walking tour trying to write down and remember as much as possible. (And that comes from a guy who usually falls asleep 15 min into the lecture).

It was another great week in Rome, I improved my sketching, I made some progress in studio, meet some new people and most importantly Germany advanced with 3 straight wins into the Quarters at the EuroCup so… I really cant complain…., allora arrivederci a la prossima settimana!