After a full day in the bustling city of Siena, it was nice to have some time to relax at the villa on Wednesday.
Wednesday morning, and every morning, when I woke up and looked out my window, I just had to smile…I was in Italy!
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| One of my sketches of the view from the villa (10×7, ink & watercolor in Stillman & Birn Beta series sketchbook) |
After breakfast, we all gathered in the upstairs dining room of the villa for class. It’s a pretty nice work space, don’t you think?
I delight in the work my students do, and I thought you’d enjoy seeing some of their sketches, too. They have all really gotten into the spirit of sketchbook journaling. Some of them followed my suggestion to begin journaling before the start of the trip…
and during the flight over…
Others began the first day of the workshop and produced new sketches every day…
After our lesson in the morning, we had free time to go out sketching. Candy chose to draw Garibaldi, the donkey…
Here’s her sketch. She included Anita the goat, Garibaldi’s buddy, too.
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| One of the exercises I had the students do was to pre-paint a page or two and use them as a base for their sketches |
Since the view from the villas was so irresistible, just about everyone painted it at least once during the week.
During our free time on Wednesday, I took a walk out the road…
and sketched the view looking back towards Fattoria Bacio….
I’m going to share that sketch and a few step-by-step photos of how I painted it in a later post.
I walked down into the olive grove on my way back to the villa.
The trees are loaded with fruit, but the olives won’t be harvested until November. The olive oil from Fattoria Bacio won a bronze
medal in an international competition!
Don’t you just love the colors?
I already introduced you to Garibaldi the donkey and his sidekick Anita, but there were also a whole family of kitties at the villa. They liked hanging out near the kitchen…
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| “Anything for me?” |
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| “Hey! Are they handing out snacks?” |
Well, I guess that’s enough for now. In my next post, I’ll share some pictures from our winery tour and a visit to La Meridiana, an international ceramic center that was a wonderful surprise.
