Hello Freinds

Hi Guys, Yes it's been too long again and it's time to restore the blog. So alot has happened since I last blogged, so I'll give you the basics. I got to go to italy for another study abroad this summer, I was there from june and returned to montana last week. It was another wonderful experience, I made a bunch of new friends and got reconnected with some of my old ones. I must say it had it's challenges as well. Many people think that going on a study abroad to another country to study art is just fun and glamorous twenty four seven. Yes it is all those things but there is a great deal of hard work behind it as well. This group was much bigger now that the printmakers are included and overall, despite a few bad apples, everyone was great and I'm so grateful to have shared the experience with so many talented artists. My plein air painting skills have improved considerably since the first study abroad in 2008. Aside from producing around fifty paintings on location, there was all the fun activities such as the weekend trips to florence, venice and rome, swimming, eating and of course doing something we didn't do the first year, going to giglio island and spending the day at the mediteranian. It would take five blogs to cover everything that happened. I was a bit sad to leave corciano because I just spent eight weeks with the group and they became my family. I'm home now, resting and not doing much of anything except recovering from jetlag and tying up unfinished business from before I left and slowly I'm getting back into the swing of things. I go back to work at shodair saturday, I dread it but it will be nice to have money again and see a few familiar faces. I'm regestered for fall and will take head painting 2 and still life painting 2 and have lots of plans for the future, including art shows, galleries, new artwork and hopefully a new book somewhere down the line. Well thats about it for now, cheers to a very fruitful summer! Robert