What's cooking?

Summer's in here in Florence and I'm taking a couple of workshops at the academy. Diving into the deep, deep end again. Fortunately for me, I have fantastic classmates and monitors so willing to help on top of Maestro John Angel's guidance.  Mediums are a brand new thing for me.  I've only used water-based oils before. Words like Dammar, Liquin, cobalt dryer and mineral spirits have just been added to my vocab. Learning to pronounce some of these mediums are a whole other story!!

For me, jumping straight into paints is doing me a lot of good. I see the full picture of what I will be doing in the next year or so and by the process of backtracking, I am seeing clearly what I need to be doing for the next full year starting this Fall '13.

New poisons... erm... chemicals I've been introduced to. It will be awhile before I find a system to get my tools in order. 

New gear: Large format panels, aprons, making campitura. I'm preparing a copy of Dali's in this 16th, 17th, 18th century method of painting class. 

This is a warm up 1st painting piece by Sir Thomas Lawrence.

It's a section of Charles William Vane-Stewart, Marquess of Londonderry.