What to paint..

Painting.  Well, seems like all you need are some brushes, or not.  Well you definitely need a canvas.. or not.  However, you do need pant.. yes, certainly paint.  Alberti went beyond the basics of simply painting a picture.  Before reading On Painting, I had no clue how much time and work is supposed to go into painting a picture.  Although some do not follow Alberti's style of painting, to him only great painters did.  It seemed like there was only one step to painting a picture:   paint it.  After reading his work, however, he described three very definitive steps:  circumscription, composition, and reference to light.  His words described each aspect in great detail (which means I was lost through a good portion of the book), but after meeting in class each part became somewhate clearer.  Little did I know, painting a picture requires much more than what I thought it did.

The Black What? Oh yeah, Death.

Alright, so not really the type of topic to be joking about; and cmon, how could anyone actually forget about a disease that wiped out Europe?  Especially when we've been singing out it since we were kids, "Ring around the rosie.."  (some might argue its origins, but it makes the Plague so much creepier, don't you think?)  I found our class periods discussing the Bubonic Plague extremely interesting.  As a man said during the videos we watched, sometimes he tries to imagine what it would be like to live during that time.  First of all, everyone around you would be dying.  When sixty percent of the population is dead, your chances are not very good.  Some might say they would not abandon their sick family and leave, but given the circumstances, you might not act exactly like you think you would.  I like to believe I would stick it out, but even just thinking about it gives me the heebie jeebies.  Secondly, everything you grew up to believe would be put in a blender and messed around.  Your life would change in the matter of seconds, and you're just supposed to be okay about it?  Today, we criticize the way the Europeans acted, but get real - you'd probably do it too.  Their spirituality and belief system was shattered.  I don't know, maybe they were a little crazy.  For sure, I'd blame whoever I could but myself if I were in the situation, but the Jews?  Let's be honest, haven't they been through enough?  Granted, they took whatever leads they could and tried to make things better.. what can we say, they had heart?  Nah, they just lived in a different time period.  We can't say we would do this or that, and we can't say we wouldn't blame the Jews (okay, we probably wouldn't), but I know for a fact we can't predict how we would act.  Let's just hope we'll never have to find out :)
Until next time...