My main takeaway from this was that my sense of developing a personal voice is not a delusion and that I’ve succeeded in upping my game with regard to the research elements. I think the latter is due to growing into the subject matter and I’m very glad I put this module on hold until I had finished the Drawing module because that was really the place some elements fell into place.  I found a ‘buddy’ who was also struggling with this new vocabulary and had no background in any sort of historical or artistic canon and we have nudged and kicked and cheered each other forwards by email through those early frustrations. Thank you S, you know who you are.

From a practical point of view, I need to spend more time on mixing and blending on the palette rather than using the support for that; and using sketchbook ‘rectangles’ to plan compositions instead of just plunging in. A bit more subtlety via tone would be helpful too. This was in reference to my still life with flowers where, as I recall, just making the marks for those flowers had taken up all my processing capacity! Noted.

I was pleased to hear a positive evaluation of the courgette and lemons exercise as this was one where I really felt I’d achieved something, albeit by accident rather than design.

The observation that, in the exercise using complementary colours, each object seems to have been painted in a different way is absolutely on target. In retrospect, I seemed to be finding my way as the work progressed and even a short temporal distance between tackling the various elements seemed to result in a different approach. Not ideal for a single piece but quite an interesting developmental phenomenon.

I was also pleased to hear that the looseness I was beginning to feel was showing up (the interiors study) and that this piece came over as a whole rather than a series of separate elements. That’s an interesting observation that I hadn’t considered.

Finally the assignment. I had been in something of a dilemma about the submission – the first red-based piece or the second, darker one that, to me, felt more mature. I liked each of them for different reasons, but chose the second on the basis of gut feeling and an endorsement from my Printing graduate sister.

I need to use my sketchbook as a warm-up area more, to look at more contemporary painting, and to get hold of a copy of Vitamin P3. Amazon has this in stock and will dispatch as and when conditions permit.

I have some pointers for the next part of this module. As expected, this is requiring a degree of inventiveness to progress through so I was pleased to hear that OCA is adjusting its expectations in the light of the prevailing crisis.

And will I ever get a handle on Harvard referencing? When I first started out in science, there was no standard format then suddenly there were several and which one you used depended on the journal or the examining body, or sometimes just an editor’s preference. I’ve been winging it. I need to get a grip.

Time taken: 2 hours.