Art Travel Diary Thing

While I was traveling in Italy, I tried to draw/paint a little. Mostly we were walking around cities and sightseeing, so I have far more photos than drawings. I'm going to make a little scrapbook/art journal of my trip.

First, I need my CD of photos that I left in Italy so I can figure out how many photos to include. I might add some drawings, because sometimes a photo captures all of the ugly things that you didn't notice when you were taking the picture. With a drawing, you can single out the beauty that caught your eye, and just leave the extra bits out.

Here's a page from the hostel we stayed at in Ravenna. It is my most complete page at this point, and even this one I am planning to add to.

New Twitter Account!

I just created a new twitter account for personal use. I feel obligated to write about accounting on my other one, since Accounting is part of my username!

You can now follow me @cecimeanspeas

We went have seen the 4 big sights that we bought an entry ticket for here in Ravenna, as well as the local beach. It is also raining again, so we are just having a quiet afternoon in the hostel.

The big group of Polish students is gone, although we saw them once today while sightseeing. Tonight there is another big group, only about half the size (33) people, but they are Italian, and the woman who runs the hostel tells me that they will be much louder than the Polish students.

I haven't been able to sit down and draw much this trip because it has been raining outside. I did some sketches at a fwe museums. I'm going to wander around now and see if I can find something to paint to pass the time.

Tomorrow we go to Perugia! It is supposed to rain more the two days we are there, but it will be rain in a new place! So... exciting!

Maybe the weather will clear up for my birthday in Firenze??

Packed and sorta ready!

Everything I'm taking is in this bag. And that totally hip fanny pack! (Almost-there's some stuff that's going in a plastic target bag until I meet up with Dad at the airport and then HE gets to take it.

Today I sewed us little cotton "sleep sacks" to protect us from potentially dirty sheets. I hemmed my new jeans, which took hours... I ripped some audiobooks for our iPods and those long train rides.

Oh and I put little ladybugs on my backpack so I look really badass and intimidate pickpockets.

I'm getting really excited about enforced downtime without a computer or a book to read. I'm hoping that some creative juices start flowing and I can work on some projects that I've been turning around in my head for awhile.

Now I just have to get some copies made of a couple of things, and print out the confirmation numbers for a couple of reservations.

Time for... a gratuitous cute photo of Mel and Andrea from this weekend! Claw hands!

Folksingers

Mel and I headed downtown tonight to see our friend's band Pholksinger Josh. They are pretty entertaining, but the guy who played before them, John Craigie was awesome. Dude is hilarious. Apparently he just drives from town to town playing music wherever he stops. I needed some relaxing folksinging experience to round out my week in Athens!

After all the drag shows we went to this week, when I looked in my wallet I was thinking "Score! I already have a whole lot of ones! I won't have to worry about getting change!" And then I realized you don't need dollar bills for folksingers, haha. But I ended up needing them all in the end, to buy that John Craigies's CD.

I spent a lot of time randomly chatting with Athens townies this week, and meeting random people downtown. I guess that's what happens when you're in Athens without classes or work. Tim, the guy with long white hair who paints buildings around town, was gave me tips today about my upcoming trip to Italy.

Tom Walker, who plays guitar downtown a lot is now my friend on MySpace, haha. And then I met this girl who bellydances, but I recognized her from a drag show. And I met her friend, who turns out is an old friend of my friend Matt... It was a weird and wonderful week of meeting people.

Tomorrow it's back to Atlanta and trying to get everything organized before we leave for Italy. I'm hoping to get some decent pictures drawn/painted while we're there, so maybe I can share them when I come back.

Creating... Meditation.

When I was younger, I really wanted to EXPRESS myself when I drew or painted. And I was always frustrated because my drawing skills are not strong enough to do that. Now, I draw and paint as a way to meditate.

When I feel so strongly about something, and I want to DO something about it, but there's nothing I CAN do: I draw. I pick some random object and focus on copying it for an hour, and it calms me down. It gives me a way to just not think about what it is that's making me anxious.

It's a new discovery that I can calm myself down like this. I can feel hurt and angry and it feels like what I really need is to go out and run 5 miles, or do something to prove to the people that hurt me that I'm worth it. But what helps the most is sitting down and making a crappy drawing of my car keys. Amazing.

(I did this car keys drawing a long time ago, and actually I'm pretty happy with it. So maybe not that crappy. But still, it's car keys, not great expressive art.)