Toxic love

I have a problem and I'd love to find a solution or hear about one if any are known. I use a lot of watercolor and to be able to get some of the colors I want, I have some paints that are toxic or carcinogenic and I don't want to have those things going into the water system when I rinse and clean my brushes but I also don't know what to do with the dirty water. I was just leaving the dirty water in the jar hoping that it would evaporate but right now I've got a jar of water that reminds me of when we had tadpoles. I need to go back to the drawing board and I'd love to hear about any better solutions.

Dear painting,
I have really neglected you of late. I got out my paints again today and I can't believe I waited this long. I don't quite recall why I stopped painting and only used writing/drawing implements for the last several months. I was reminded today of how much I love working in watercolor and color in general. I hope we'll never be parted so long again.
-the painter

Morandi

Photo found here

I've been learning more about Giorgio Morandi of late, he was a fairly well known Italian painter in the 20th century. Morandi is not all that well known these days outside of Europe, I never knew about him until a few years ago (this is the case for many artists though) but I've been interested in his work. Most of Morandi's paintings and etchings are landscapes and still lifes (still lives?). Morandi worked in a small messy studio where he painted smaller objects like bottles and vases over and over again.
I like the idea of focusing on some simple objects, we live in such a complicated world and often complicate it further. There can be real beauty in simplicity and often in the things all around us that get overlooked.

The National Museum in Rome

I wasn't expecting very much from this museum but I was blown away by it. By the end of this trip I was a little overloaded on marble busts and statues (they're just everywhere in Italy) but we went to the National Museum early on in our trip and it was just amazing. I highly recommend going there. The pictures here are only a small fraction of the ones I took there, which is a small fraction of what was there.

Art Barbie?

I got the link to this article and it sort of makes me sick. You can get a Barbie either posing as a work of art or wearing one. I appreciate that people are trying to get art and culture to the masses but how is a piece of kitsch supposed to make one feel inspired? Comparing the Mona Lisa Barbie to a picture of the actual Mona Lisa, it's just silly. You can't make a piece of plastic to compare with masterworks of art. (I'm sorry the pictures are so big.)

The Sistine Chapel

The Sistine Chapel, it's one of the hugest things in art and it was a pretty cool experience to be in there and to see the ceiling and the Last Judgment. If you just can't make it there in person right now, this is a pretty good alternative. This site won't give you the same experience as actually being there, but in some ways it might be better than being there. It was amazing to be there and to see it in person, and the room just filled with beauty but it was also filled with other tourists and cranky guards who were shushing the room periodically.

Alright, I haven't blogged forever, things have been crazy in my life and I just got back from an amazing trip to Italy where I was able to see more beautiful art than I could imagine. I was several times so excited that I was practically jumping up and down. I'll share some of the pictures from that when I get them loaded, in the mean time, I want to share this article. I've been able to see a lot of this painting and I've always loved it, I think it's really cool that it's at the Louvre right now. Also I'm a fan of the Florence Academy of Art, I have hopes to someday spend a little time there, and I've recently discovered their blog and I thought I'd share that too.