I always have such high hopes when I head off on a trip, thinking I’ll be able to share lots of great stuff with you here on my blog while I’m away, but it just doesn’t seem to work out that way. Things get very busy when I’m teaching a workshop, and there just aren’t […]
Category: Tuscany
Italy – Pisa and Cinque Terre
Hello from Italy! It’s been a whirlwind week since I left Pittsburgh with seven friends, bound for Rome. The trip was grueling, but we finally landed in Rome, and after several hours of standing in security lines and customs lines, we took off for Pisa where we were picked up by a driver to take […]
Tuscany Sketches + Video!
I’ve been working on painting some of the unfinished sketches from my teaching trip to Tuscany last fall, and I’ll be sharing them with you as they’re completed. It’s getting me in the mood to go to Italy again! This page was drawn during a day trip to the tiny hilltop village of Certaldo Alto, […]
Thumbnail Sketches – All Dressed Up!
One of the lessons I taught my students while in Tuscany was about using thumbnail sketches to zero in on a scene and test out various compositional options. I suggested using a separate sketchbook page for the thumbnails and later turning that page, with its accumulation of tiny scenes, into a dynamic page in its […]
2016 Tuscany Workshop
Imagine yourself wandering through the cobblestone streets of this medieval hilltop village in Tuscany. You stop at a sidewalk cafe for a cappuccino and pull out your sketchbook to begin drawing an ancient stone building across the way. Sip…….look……..paint……..see. This is the way we experience Tuscany, taking the time to meander and explore, or to […]
Step-by-Step Watercolor: Fattoria Bacio
In one of my recent posts, I promised I would show you the step-by-step process I used to paint a sketch of Fattoria Bacio, our workshop location in Tuscany. The villa is perched on top of a hill, surrounded by vineyards and olive groves. One pretty fall morning, I walked out along the ridge, about […]
Day Trip to San Gimignano and Saying Goodbye to Tuscany
It had been a fantastic week at Fattoria Bacio and our final days gave us more of the same. The sunrise Thursday morning was spectacular… and the skies cleared by breakfast time, forecasting a perfect day for our trip to San Gimignano. But as we ate our breakfast, a stealthy fog began to fill the […]
A Vineyard Tour and a Visit to La Meridiana
I’m back from Europe safe and sound, and I can’t wait to tell you all about Cornwall, but first, let me continue with the story of my week teaching at Fattoria Bacio in Tuscany…. After a morning spent painting at the villa on Wednesday, we enjoyed an afternoon tour of the Fattoria Bacio vineyards. Alberto […]
Sketching in Siena
We took the train into Siena on Tuesday and spent the day walking around the city. Siena is famous for the Palio de Siena, a horse race that is run twice a year around the Piazza del Campo, the large sloping square in the center of town. There were no horses to be seen on […]
Certaldo – A Hilltop Gem
The medieval town of Certaldo is just a few miles down the road from Fattoria Bacio. It’s so perfectly preserved that visiting it is like stepping back in time. Certaldo is a lesser-known Tuscan hill town, so we almost felt like we had it to ourselves yesterday when we visited. We spent hours wandering about, […]
