I’m right at the beginning of what could be a five to seven year haul towards the degree and, coming as it does some fifty years since I did the Foundation year, I need to get a shift on or I’ll be grabbing that scroll while they’re nailing the lid down!

My blogs (learning logs for the course) are elsewhere but, as it’s going to take up much of my artistic effort and there might not be much else to post, I’ll be popping some bits and pieces here from time to time. Maybe there’ll be visible progress, you never know!

Most of it won’t be available for sale, the originals anyway although prints are always possible, at least until after the formal assessments. In truth, I still have to figure out how to sell anything that isn’t on a table in front of me but if I do, it will be on another page, properly described and detailed.

These things? These are pieces I never would have done without this course. They’re raw and, for me, experimental; and they’re works towards works towards works. When I’m not having teenage crisis-of-confidence tantrums, I’m having fun!

This is the underside of the Steyning bypass and a preparation sketch for the assignment at the end of this part of the Drawing module. Drawing seems to incorporate acrylics at this stage and that pleases me because I like carving out textures with a palette knife.

These two are, fairly obviously, fruit. An exercise in line-free application of paint for the first part of the Painting course.

These are my Pound Shop Rothkos – supposed to be graduated washes but hey, purty or what? The one on the right is a bit more, um, chunky than the task requires.

Wet on wet inks with sugar paper support. This is a metal bird (I find they stay still longer) that my sister bought me for Christmas. I’d bought her the exact same thing from The Basement93 in Steyning. I say exactly; I bought her one, she bought me three so I’m in serious bird debt.