Bouguereau First Kiss Streetpainting

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Last Monday, I assisted my streetpainting colleague Sukyong (from Korea) in recreating the Mona Lisa in chalk and pastel. In bed by 2:30 am that night, I was up early and streetpainting in Florence, Italy, again by 10 am the next day. My Japanese colleague Kumiko and I had agreed the night before to create William Bouguereau’s “First Kiss” (or as the Italians call it ”Il Premio Bacio”).

I decided on how I wanted to crop the image – the art of the madonnari is to create large works to make a spettacolo and then began making measurements in my space. I then sketched out most of the entire composition in white chalk. Just as I was wrapping that up, Kumiko arrived and we decided that she would create the masculine figure on the left, I would do the girl on the right.


Collaborating is often interesting and I think that Kumiko and I did a good job on this one. Although I have known this sculptor/madonnara for a couple of years now, we have never drawn together. You can see from this second image that she and I start off a little bit differently. While I was thinking of dividing my shapes into lights and darks and then layering in colors, Kumiko started off with a reddish base on the entire face, then adding darks and lights (and neutralizing the colors as she went along). I told her that her method was more like the classical painting method of starting with a campitura or more simply put: toning a canvas with a color that will show through a bit into the design.


After I smoothed all of my layers into the street with my palms and fingers, I stood up and back and had a good laugh. It looked to me as if I have drawn the face of a geisha, not a child! Kumiko agreed, jokingly suggesting that I just add a bit of color to the outer edge of the upper eyelid to finish the effect.


Bouguereau has always been difficult for me to copy because he is so subtle on his tonal contrasts. I have never felt gifted in the art of subtlety. I also love to draw hands and was enjoying this particular challenge today. Here I am laying in the arm (later to be trimmed down a bit).



Several times throughout the day, I offered a stick of chalk to a child. Earlier in the day, I must have met all of the shy kids. Later, two girls accepted. The first one is from England and was doing her “Oh my, this is hard work” pose. A future actress no doubt, her parents admitted. The little blonde girl is from Germany. I do find it fun to let kids participate. While technically, I am not supposed to have anyone help me with my work (unless they have paid the permit fee with me), no one has ever objected to my invitations to the children.




As the night wore on, my friend “Joe” that I wrote to you about a couple of weeks ago returned. “Joe” is the homeless poet from England who stole salmon and mushrooms in order to share lunch with me in the street. Well, he took a liking to Kumiko and I wish that I could share a few images that I took of him. He is very expressive with his hands and his body posture as he crouches down to speak with us.

Joe pulled out a new book he had started for pressing flowers and composed a poem on one page for my friend. To the left of the flowers he wrote:

Kumiko
Wake with a Smile
Walk with Grace
And the Day is Yours

He signed it to the right of his pressings, “So” with the “S” looking more like a long vertical squiggle and the smaller “o” tucked up inside the top curve of the “S.” I would not have realized that was what he was going for, except that he explained it to me. Here Kumiko shows off her gift.


Finally, I leave you with our final efforts. I must confess that the heart frame was actually my idea. This strikes me as funny since I do not particularly like hearts (in design – I tend to think they are too cheesey). However, for some reason the typical rectangular cornice seemed dull and I wanted parts of the wings to extend beyond the image border. I could not figure out how to make a circle around the composition without losing too much space around the figures’ heads, so … my desire for space and extended parts overrode my avoidance of cheese.

I include here a flash image and one with only the streetlight. I could not decide which situation I liked better. I was pleased with our work and Kumiko and I certainly have fun together: Not a bad way to spend my last day in streetpainting during this trip to Italy.

Mustaches and Art Florence Italy

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

This past Monday and Tuesday, my streetpainting colleague Sukyong (from Korea) and I recreated Michelangelo’s “Creation of Man” from the Sistine Chapel. There seemed to be a lot of variety in activity and people in the street these days. Sukyong chose to draw Adam, while I got God and his companions on the right side of the composition.



Across the street from us some construction workers continued to throw building stones out of the window to make room for whatever renovation they were doing – and I would love to be able to see! I was thinking that it would be fun to carve these stones and in lieu of that, throw them with the guys.


Now, my birthday was a while back (31 July) but packages do not always arrive here in a timely manner. So, I was very tickled when a friend brought a package from my sister Amber to let me open it in front of a few friends here on Via Calimala in Florence, Italy. Amber started a new business based on some party favors she made for her own wedding last year. It is amazing how far she has taken this business. Check out WhiskerWorks.com. In the meantime, my birthday package included two of her handmade mustaches-on-a-stick, a card with a chimp on the front, and a vintage dress. So, this next series of images show me using the mustaches with the street art.




Later on, after it was dark, a French family came by and I offered some chalk to each of the three boys. They stayed longer than most kids, the youngest sporting the bluest chalk-laden hand that I have seen in a long time! The parents really enjoyed the fact that their kids had an opportunity to do something so artistic and different than they ever expected during their holiday.


Also, later that evening, I continued what may become a little tradition for my other colleague Johnny and me. There is a local character here, Massimiliano, who comes to visit us quite often. He is a photographer. We have known him for years now, but we are getting to know him better and better. The last time that Johnny and I recreated Michelangelo’s “Sacra Familia” (aka “Tondo Doni”), Johnny had the idea to do a portrait of Massimilano as one of the nude figures behind the family. Max posed as I drew in his dark mustache and hair. Closer to midnight, Johnny added a camera and few other details for fun. We saw more of Max that day, as he brought friends over to see him in the famous artwork.

So, I added Massimiliano’s black mustache and also his dark curly hair to the small face behind God. He was a bit pleased the next morning that despite the streetcleaner’s pass over our work, the mustache remained.




On the second day, I seemed to attract quite a couple of characters. I will not mention the first one because he was a bit scary and I was relieved when he took off. But the second was a rather charming fellow from London. He squatted next to me that second morning as I was working to fine tune my drawing of God. After I looked up, we began to talk. He has a wonderful, Old World face, perfect for portraiture! I asked him if I could take his photo and he allowed me this as long as I did not put it on the Internet. Since he did not forbid me to talk about him, I will share a few things here. However, I will call him Joe.

I do believe that Joe is homeless. Joe likes to press flowers in books (and showed me this book) and write poetry. He loves Caravaggio and seems quite lovely to chat with. He is very expressive and curious about a lot of things. He asked me if he could bring me some dinner. I declined since we had a madonnari (streetpainters) meeting that night, so instead he said he would come back at 4 p.m. if that was OK. Well, I was a bit surprised when he did come back. And especially when he brought salmon, bright green lettuce, mushrooms, and some nice brown bread. I told him that this was quite elegant for a dirty streetpainter and then he confessed that he stole it!

Earlier I had been telling Joe how Sukyong and I had been shoeing away the gypsies, especially after one of them stole money from our baskets the day before. They have been getting more aggressive than usual and even working in pairs now to distract us a bit. So after Joe admitted his theft, he explained, “I would never steal from you. I never steal from individuals. I do not take purses or wallets or even things from a person. Only when I am hungry, I go into the markets and take what I need.”

Joe then told me that recently he lost his bag. He said that he has hidden away his most important things. He had his book of poems in the bag, but said that surprisingly this did not make him upset as much as losing the “green acrylic” that was inside. After all, his poems were “up here” as he tapped on his head with his index finger and “I still have them.”

One thing for sure, life in the street is rarely dull, although in truth, my muscles are quite sore and tired from my work there.

Happy Birthday to Nathan and Mark!

Hail Over Streetpainting

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Last Thursday was my first day back after visiting a model (and friend) in Spain for about a week. My cousin Heather flew into Italy that same night that I did and we met up in Piazza Santo Spirito near my flat in Florence.

Thursday morning I loaded up my gear and Heather snapped this shot of me before she climbed back into bed for a few more snoozes. I knew that the weather was iffy, but I wanted to draw Michelangelo and chose to draw a small version of his “Creation of Man” work from the Sistine Chapel.


Heather arrived sometime around noon, I guess, and saw that I had drawn most of the composition in white chalk to help me see the overall proportions. And I had almost finished the face of Adam and had begun work on the focal point of the near-touching hand of man with the hand of God. It had sprinkled earlier, so I had already pulled out a sheet of plastic, but …

If it rains a little, I can usually keep working in pastels on the street. If I am limited in how much plastic or newspaper, I place it over the blank areas in which I want to draw next. Once drawn a light rain will not hurt a streetpainting unless it is touched. After the raindrops dry, the muted wet whites and light tones pop back up again. However, I cannot draw on a wet street, so it is the naked street that I prefer to protect.



However, shortly after Heather arrived, the skies darkened significantly and the heavy drops began their descent. And then the hail came. I could not believe how large the chunks of ice were that fell from the Florentine skies in mid-June!

The day before, my colleague Kumiko had drawn Botticelli’s face of Venus. Although the street cleaner had made his pass over her work that morning, there was still plenty of pastel left to morph her face into a fleshy stream. Strange how I find beauty in some forms of destruction.


The hail and the downpour made the rest of my streetpainting day impossible. One funny thing happened though: while lots of people took shelter in a nearby hallway, I met a woman who lived – or tried to live in my room one month before I arrived there. She felt that she had to leave because the room was not up to her expectations. I laughed because I chose that room specifically because it DID live up to my expectations and needs to create art in that space. One (wo)man’s trash is another’s treasure and this day was a fun reminder of how small Florence can seem at times.

So, just because I got rained out from streetpainting, does not make it impossible to create art with pastels. If you would like to get to Hawai’i to create art in this pure pigment medium while having all of the cooking and cleaning done for you in your lodging, check out my “Pastels in Paradise” workshop on the Big Island this September. It is not too late yet!

Pastels In Paradise: Art Workshop in Hawaii

: borsheimarts.com/art-workshops/hawaii-pastels.htm
And of course, Hawaiian Art Journey: www.hawaiianartjourney.com
Spend a week with a real madonnara (Italian street painter) and see more street paintings.

Streetpainting Italy

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

Last week I visited Vatican City and so this Thursday chose to recreate in the streets of Florence one of the Sybils on Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. I hope you like my self-portrait in this “work-in-progress” shot. I did not realize I did that until I saw the images later.

I was delighted later that afternoon as a class of Italian children came to watch me work. I offered one a pastel stick, but she shied away. Instead, her classmate asked if she could try and next thing I knew, I was passing out various orange colors and pointing to the sections of the Sybil’s skirt in which each child should color.

The kids and I had a blast together. I wanted a photo of all of our orange hands and one of the teachers offered to take it for us. I asked the kids if they wanted to be on my blog and the idea seemed to be fun to them. I handed out the last of my wet baby wipes to clean their hands a bit and then they were off to catch a train. What a delightful day and great experience for us all.





Later that evening, the capo of our group of madonnari (street painters), Claudio, arrived to see my colleague Johnny and me. [Johnny is not in most of these images because he had another job and joined me for only parts of the day.] Since he had another commission to work on with our colleague Tomo, he offered to let Johnny and me draw that next day (their normal day).

So, around midnight that first night, I wrote on the street in Italian, “Please do not clean” and we set cardboard boxes around our drawing in hopes that the street cleaning truck would pass us by the next morning. It worked this time, although when I arrived on Friday, an older Italian woman complained to me that it was bruttissima that I left such ugly boxes in the street overnight. And while protected from cars, I noticed that someone rode a bike and/or stroller through the drawing and there were lots of footprints in different directions, implying that at least one person was dancing on our work overnight!

Also, the next morning I arrived to see a man erecting scaffolding close to my work area. I am starting to wonder if the city really does own the scaffolding company as one friend told me. Florence has an abundance of this and I have yet to see the famous Duomo without it!

He was breaking off some of the metal “T”s that were used to adjust the height of each leg, telling me that it was for public safety. I photographed this one young boy who was fascinated by the process and kept telling his father to wait a moment more since he did not want to leave. He was quite cute. We finished up around 5:30 pm. People were out and complimentary, but I had dinner plans and needed to get home to wash up. Enjoy these images.

And if you are interested in learning pastels in a fun and beautiful environment that allows you to focus on art and nature, please check out my pastel workshop in Hawaii in September. http://borsheimarts.com/art-workshops/hawaii-pastels.htm

Street Painting Festival Italy

Cari Amici (Dear Friends),

I recently returned from the annual street painting competition in southern Italy. Nocera Superiore is a small city up the mountain from Salerno and the Amalfi Coast. I wrote about some of my experiences last year at this concorso dei madonnari (madonnari = street painters in Italian). This year was a bit different.

There was still the long train ride down, meaning that although I was up until 2 am, as is my usual, I rose (but I am pretty sure that I did not shine) around 5 am to finish packing and get to the stazione. Dozing off occasionally on the train was not enough and so I took a little nap shortly after arriving in Nocera Superiore. This year, there were over 100 artists - street painters from Mexico, Holland, Italy, and more.

The streets of this Italian town have glass embedded in them. Pastels and chalk do not stick to glass and thus, we must prepare the street to “give it some tooth.” This is not unlike a fine art painter preparing the surface of a canvas or board. Some of the real pros get quite elaborate with this, even coloring their surfaces like a campitura. Like many others, I used Coca-Cola: the kind with sugar. I cannot think of a better use of this soda water than pouring it out on the street!

The weather had cleared up and most of us, with the exception of my eager colleague Wilson, got started after the dinner provided by the festival organizers. In order, the images I include here are of madonnari: Toto, a famous streetpainter of over 50 years with a very Dante- or Leonardo da Vinci-style profile; Tomo, a Japanese streetpainter who resides in Florence; Wilson from Columbia; yours truly; and Taka, another Japanese madonnaro. There were many more artists in my group from Florence, Italy, but these were the artists who worked in spaces closest to mine.









Taka’s shoes made funny noises as they ripped away from a very tacky surface and we had some laughs in the middle of the night about that. I was so tired that I called it a night around 3 am, thinking that I might be more efficient after about 3 more hours of sleep. On my way to my provided bed, I photographed this bronze figurative sculpture of a priest holding glow-in-the-dark rosaries and sporting a neon halo. Fresh lilies were put at his feet daily, at least while I was in Nocera.


When my alarm went off around 6 am, it was pouring rain outside. Quite frankly, I was happy to have a reason to stay in bed. However, it had stopped by about 7:30 am and many of my colleagues had gotten up to see what was the situation. Not so good: many artists lost their protective plastic sheets in the strong winds. And on the other hand, those who had thoroughly taped all edges of their plastic to the street still had water underneath the plastic. Many drawings were ruined and some became beautifully ghostlike. As with the case of the black and white design of an image of Christ, I actually felt that the crinkles of air in the plastic resembled cracks and were an interesting addition to the artwork underneath.







The weather alternated between short bouts of dumping rain and wee bits of sunshine, but ultimately once our deadline of noon passed, it was apparent that even if we waited to finish on Sunday, it would all be in vain. I took another snapshot of part of the church as we all checked out, then asked a friend to take this image of fellow street painters Giovanna and Angela with me where we hung out for breakfast.



After another nap and a wonderfully warm lunch of ravioli with gnocchi followed by slices of meat, peas (which I left on the plate as I have done since babyhood), and French fries, it was time to head to Rome. On the way to the stazione, I took this image of some high school kids using their plastic as a “fort” and under it they were drawing, socializing, and talking on their cell phones in the drizzly weather. Pretty cool, these budding artists!


I wanted to see the Caravaggio exhibit in Roma, but having changed my plans at the last minute after Nocera’s event and having no reservations (and arriving in Roma just before midnight), I could not find ANY available beds. It was a Saturday night, which turned out to be Rome’s “Notte Bianca” and packed with tourists. The wet weather made a “park visit” (homeless-style sleeping) impossible. So, I amused myself in some bar with dancing and a bizarre movie until I could get on the 5:57 a.m. train back to Florence. What a weekend! It was sad that the rain destroyed this year’s streetpainting festival, but that is the way it goes sometimes.