Art School: Week 3

Gypsy Boy and I made a little more progress this week at art class. We both added more detailing to our paintings and here are the results below.

...Pink, by Gypsy Girl...

...A little street in Nice, by Gypsy Boy...

I think I'm almost done with mine, I just need to do a little more work on the background and I also want to finish the sides. Gypsy Boy will probably work on his for another few more weeks...

Shae at church

Last week, our art teacher Kamen asked us to try and do some sketching at home this week if we got time. I love sketching, but I prefer to sketch from a photo or from real life as opposed to trying to picture an image or scene in my mind. This is one of the quick sketches I did a couple of days ago from a photo taken of our flower girl outside the church we got married in.


I think my sketch makes Shae look a little older than she was when the photo was taken and I've also not included much of the brick detailing. Oh well, I guess it's not my best sketch but it was done in one sitting without an eraser...

Ditzy moments.

Today, Joy and I had our weekly lunch date except since it's Ramadan and from our previous experience, we were expecting all the eateries to be shut, so we planned to have our own lunch at home then meet up at the mall and watch a movie.

It turned out that neither of us managed to have lunch and as we both felt a bit peckish we thought we'd scoot next door to the Kempinski Hotel and see what we could find. During Ramadan, most eateries shut during the day, but hotels will usually have at least 1 restaurant open for its guests. We ended up finding Sezzam discreetly open and hidden behind heavy black curtains. We both had a drink and a baked potato each which was really scrummy.

...vs...

We'd planned to watch Take the Lead, but somehow I ended up getting us tickets to Talladega Nights instead! Hah! Both of us sat in the theatre waiting for Antonio Banderas to show up and for the dancing to begin. Of course, that didn't happen. Anyway, we both ended up laughing so hard our cheeks hurt because the movie was hillariously funny and also at ourselves for ending up at the wrong show. We loved Will Ferrell in Talladega Nights though but I still can't believe I got the wrong tickets. Duh!

Ramadan: Week 2

More random thoughts and experiences so far in our second week of Ramadan:

• After that mad rush grocery shopping at our local Carrefour 2 weekends ago, we tried shopping after iftar. This worked out well in that it was much quieter, but the shelves were also much emptier. No chicken breast (again!), no asparagus, very limited range and choice of fresh herbs and vegetables that I usually pick up too. Might have to try doing a mid-week shop during the day this week.
  
• Switched from my usual chewing gum to Smints - much more discreet.
  
• Lunch at home before heading out to meet friends rather than going out for lunch.

Yesterday evening while walking Gypsy Dog [around iftar time], I bumped into one of our Arab neighbours that has a Bichon Frisé. He was with a friend carrying grocery bags, obviously heading home to prepare for iftar. I found the conversation that followed rather amusing:

Neighbour: Hi! How are you? How is Gypsy Dog?
Me: Hi! We're fine! How are you? How is Brandy (the name of his Bichon Frisé)?
Neighbour: Good. Are you fasting?
Me: No, no...
Neighbour: Why?
Me: *Speechless and confused look* Um... why...?
Neighbour: *Grins* You should, it's very healthy for you.
Me: *giggle* Ok. I will give it a try...
Neighbour: Ok, see you later... and remember to fast - it's healthy!
Me: Ok. See ya later, bye!

More on art.

As promised some time ago in a previous post, here are photos of the recent additions to my little private gallery - 3 paintings I brought back from our trip to Europe in August.

The first, is an oil painting of a café scene in St. Germain-des-pres in Paris. It is also the smallest of the 3, and was purchased in Paris. I really liked this district [where the Musée D'orsay is located], and just loved the details the artist has captured here of the ubiquitous Parisian street café scene including the menu set out on the black board, and also the ornate wrought iron balconies.


The second painting is also an oil, and also purchased in Paris. It is recognisably a copy of Le Pont sur le bassin aux nympheas [Bridge over a pond of water lilies] 1899 by Claude Monet.


The last painting we purchased is from Venice and pictures a narrow, quiet canal in Ferrovia. The artist and her sister paints from photos they take of the scenery around Venice and to a lesser extent, other parts of Italy. It was nice to be able to chat to the artist and purchase one of her beautiful works. I love the way she has captured the light and the reflection in this painting.


All 3 were stretched and framed in Dubai. [Click on each image for an enlarged view].

Art school: Week 2

I didn't feel I made as much progress this week at art school and the 3 hours this morning seemed to go by really slowly. It probably had to do with the air conditioning not working and the room getting quite hot and stuffy. It got so warm I really just wanted to have a drink of water, but of course it's Ramadan now.

...Pink - unfinished by Gypsy Girl...

Gypsy Boy and I were fading at 1130 and we still had an hour to go till lunch time so we decided to take a break and browse through our art teacher, Kamen's portfolio and some photographs of his work that he'd brought in. We found an impressive range of work and read about his interesting background working as an artist in Europe and now in Dubai.

...Untitled and unfinished by Gypsy Boy...

I burst into a fit of giggles though towards the end of art class. Kamen was helping me with adding more light to my composition when I absent-mindedly wiped my hand on my pants. I was horrified when I looked down and saw pink oil paint smudges. Kamen suggested I needed to brush the paint off immediately with solvent. Of course I had to take this advice literally and actually grabbed a clean No.10 paintbrush dipped in artist spirits and proceeded to 'brush' the paint off my pants! When Kamen saw me doing this he laughed because he actually meant 'brush' as in clean the paint off like with some paper towels.

What was funnier still was when Gypsy Boy and I were just discussing how messy we were with all the paint we managed to get on our T-shirts and pants and Kamen then said in his thick Eastern European accent, "Don't worry I was the same when I was 5 years old and first started to paint. I got paint all over myself...". I guess the slight difference is we're not 5, hee hee!

More change.

I decided to finally make a few changes to this blog [thanks to the new beta release of Blogger!], mostly aesthetic so you've probably already noticed the difference.

The new template has enabled me to post a few of my favourite pictures up on the sidebar - YAY! These are all photographs Gypsy Boy and I took on our adventures around the world.

Oh, and somewhere below above all these pretty pictures are the archive and post categories.

Well, for now anyway...

Suggestions are always welcome so if you do have any, please leave a comment.

Mmmm, nice rides

As we left our apartment to go out for dinner tonight, it was hard to miss the very shiny black Corvette parked next to us in the basement carpark. What's interesting is yesterday, there was a sparkling white Hummer parked in that same spot! Very preeeetty. We think they're new in the building as our previous carpark neighbours drove a white Landcruiser. Of course, they could've upgraded...

Anyway, we ended up at Gazebo for dinner - our favourite Indian restaurant. We like the excellent service and fabulous food at reasonable prices. In fact, the grub's so good we think it's probably the best North Indian food we've ever had. We decided to go for the lobster kurma, melt-in-your-mouth chicken, popadums, okra with tomato based curry, rice and garlic naan. I guess you can say that it was another case of our eyes were bigger than our stomachs [although we did eat it all]!

So, on the way home we stopped at the lights and a red Lamborghini pulls up next to us. Who are these people?!

Where shall we eat?

Cafés, restaurants, foodcourts - the choices are endless. Well, usually anyway. Yesterday, I was hoping to take Joy out for a special Birthday lunch and we ended up having a bit of an adventure looking for somewhere [anywhere!] that was open for business.

Ramadan is here and I knew that some cafés would be closed but for some reason did not expect everything to be shut, especially not at the Mall of the Emirates. It's our first Ramadan here in the Middle East, and we really didn't know what to expect. Apparently, some cafés and restaurants need to get approval from the Dubai Municipality to stay open during the day in the month of Ramadan.

As we walked through the mall we noticed it was strangely quiet, then realised there was no music playing anywhere - not in the shops and not in the mall itself. It was so quiet I could even hear some of the shop assistants chatting to each other as I walked past! It's funny how you never notice something, but once it's gone, it's so obvious? Throughout the month, music is not played in public until iftar, when only soft background music is permitted. Live bands and dancing is forbidden during this period so nightclubs usually just shut down for the whole month.

It's lucky that I just live one street away from the mall, because we had no choice in the end but to buy a couple of salads from Carrefour and taking it back to my place to eat! Not what I had in mind at all for treating Joy to a Birthday lunch!

Green, and proud of it!

With the introduction of recycling in the early 1990's on Auckland's North Shore [where my family lived in NZ], the City Council ran huge campaigns educating its residents about landfills, how to recycle, and the benefits of going 'green'.

This made quite an impression on me and as a young pre-teen, I took the role of making sure no recylable bits ended up in the rubbish bin by fishing them out [well, whatever was at the top of the pile anyway] and reminding the main offenders in our household about recycling.

Since coming to Dubai, I have to say that recycling is not made as easy. Most people live in apartments and use the provided rubbish chutes on each floor. I've not seen a green bin since we've landed here outside anyone's property and definitely not in sight at apartment blocks.

I have to admit I got lazy and everything was going down the rubbish chute. I did feel guilty though knowing I was tossing out recyclable materials that would end up in some landfill. However, after a bit of research on the web, I have managed to find that there are a few large public recycle stations around the city.

Since then, I'm proud to say that I've been separating all my recyclables and taking them down to a recycle station each weekend where we have been going anyway to take Gypsy Dog for some long walks. I'd forgotten how much rubbish this cuts out - for us, at least two thirds!

Really, it's such a simple thing that everyone can do for the environment. So I encourage all of you to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!

If you don't know how, find out more about recycling here.