I can't help but be a bit of a romantic...

As the days get longer and the weather feels more like a New England early summer, it is hard to avoid errands turning into long strolls, sketching adventures lasting into evening and afternoon coffee runs turning into sit down affairs. Rome has not mellowed or exhausted my intoxicating fascination of Calvino one bit and sitting on the steps up to the Capitoline hill at dusk with a copy of Difficult Loves or If on a Winter's Night a Traveler has become a habit (Next to come is a re-read of Invisible Cities). I just realized that Calvino passed away in Siena where I was just a couple of weekends ago.
Under the cover of darkness I've been working strictly in studio on a few different projects, drafting a lot and painting. One evolving exercise that I try to spend a few minutes a day on is to take things that I've sketched and draft them out in axon based on only my loose sketches. I have to think about how the space is represented gesturally, emotively and in a seemingly architectural way and how it translates between the different methods of drawing. Each type of drawing has a different kind of accuracy. I've been adding parts together and the result is a conglomerate that is turning into a Calvinoesque dream city.

Calvino isn't strictly the only thing I'm reading and I should mention, Delirious New York. I was a little hesitant to bring it with me, but reading about the growth and origins of New York is helping me understand a lot about Rome because it is so different. It's like having two opposties; the contrast you realize helps you understand the most about both.

Despite the perceived increasing relaxation, I've still been producing a lot, lot and have caught myself still walking a lot faster than most Italians.