Artist Feature: Leonid Afremov

These are just a few paintings by one of my favorite artists, Leonid Afremov. He's a modern impressionist artist who mostly uses a palette knife and oil paints to paint, which I find absolutely incredible. I can barely paint with a normal paintbrush! 

Right when you see his paintings, you instantly know they're his. His style is unmistakeable. Probably my favorite thing about his painting are his use of color and how he makes reflections. He manages to establish a certain mood and atmosphere in each of his paintings, whether it be grand and busy or warm and serene. I can't quite describe it, but you'll see what I mean. 

I try to imagine myself inside the painting, and what I see in front of me is what he has painted. It comes to life in my head, and it just transports me into this amazing world.

The painting above is of a bridge in Venice, Italy. I thought this would be a good segway into an exciting announcement. I'm going to be visiting Venice, Florence, and Rome next week! My excitement levels are at a new high, people! I will be putting pictures up on the blog after I come back, so stay tuned for all that jazz.

Hope you're having a fantastic summer!

Pictures from: afremov.com

A Peek into the Weekend #5

Well, it's been a while. Kinda got caught up in the end-of-year craze. Pretty much project after project after project. But now that's over!

Let me fill you in with what's been going on. I'm finally done with high school! Wooooh! I haven't officially graduated yet, but it's coming up very soon. I've had my week of post-school relaxation, and now I can get back into blogging (yay!). I haven't been doing much recently, just chilling at home and with friends, so I'll just show you what I did during the Memorial Day weekend.

On Saturday we headed to the city of Raleigh and visited Raleigh's capital building. It was quite fancy, but nothing too exciting. I mean, it's a government building, what do you expect?

George Washington

Then we walked around and headed to the museums. First we hit up the North Carolina Museum of History.

I've never seen such a wonderful statue. Someone described it as a "Shakespeare dog". Perfection.

After looking through the history museum we decided we wanted more and visited the Natural Science Museum, a place I hadn't been in since elementary school. This is by far my favorite museum. It just brings back so many memories of lovely school field trips. 

Blue whale bones, twelve o' clock.

While driving back home, we stumbled upon an event called Animazement. I had no idea it what was happening at the time, so when I saw an Ewok walking down the street, you bet I was confused. 

We also saw a vehicle called the Trolley Pub. It moves by the people pedaling, and at the same time they're blasting music and drinking while getting a tour of the city. I guess it's the safest version of drinking and driving  because the person steering is sober... What an interesting concept for a business. How did the owner even come up with this?

The next day we went to Wrightsville Beach. It was a lovely time with family friends (no pictures, sorry). We were exhausted when we got home, but I was woken up early on Memorial Day to learn that we were spontaneously going to a hot air balloon fest in Zebulon. Unfortunately, we got there late and didn't get to see the hot air balloons take off, but we did get to see this one called Papa Red. A reporter from WRAL was reporting while riding in the hot air balloon. You can see him in the second picture. 

We started heading home when we decided to explore the farm while we were there. Roosters were cockle-doodle-do-ing and stereotypical farm animals were all around.

This little guy was quite the character.

Then we saw the horses! Or rather, the horse and the two mules. They were all so friendly and loved the extra attention and petting. I gotta say, they are much larger in person than I used to think. And after reading Equus, I can never look at horses the same way (if you've read it or heard about it, you'll know what I mean).

We said a reluctant goodbye to the farm animals and headed off to Duke Gardens to see all the beautiful flowers in bloom.

Aww, how cute. Just two ducks on a date.

So that's all the interesting stuff that happened over my Memorial Day weekend.

Hope yours was great too!