Thursday 10/23

Drawing class at sites along the Via Giulia

Dana made the rounds as we settled into nooks and crannies along the Via Giulia, a small street which runs north-south along the river just west of central Rome, and which features two notable palazzi. Looking over my rather thin sketchbook, she expressed concern (which I echoed) about my work. I do seem to be having a hard time translating what I see onto paper -- part of that is, for better or worse, the seeming perfection of everything. I haven't yet gotten it into my head how to take a 500- (or 1000-, or 2000-) year-old architectural or sculptural wonder and turn it into lines on paper in a way that, for me, can do it justice. Dana reminds me that copying is all around in the professional art world -- some students will spend all day in a museum painstakingly duplicating someone else's masterpiece. She also can see, by taking a look at some of the photographs I've taken here already, that there's a definite sense of style and personality developing in my work. It just needs to include more pen, pencil, and paper, that's all. So I feel a bit heartened and chastised at the same time, and I do still have a few ideas in mind that I'm working over but haven't yet been able to drag out of my head.

In an effort to put some other sorts of media into my work, I made a rubbing of some text which was inscribed on a stone wall.