I’ve been obsessing somewhat with facial features on the grounds that I absolutely can’t graduate this course without being able to render a decent eye or ear, or particularly a nose which never seems to fit the face properly when I’ve done it.

But now my second Level 2 (HE5) module has landed and there’s much about this to like, especially as it seems there’s quite a lot of freedom to mix and match among the four options available.

The task is to work on two of those options towards a body of paintings underpinned by a significant amount of research, but there is freedom to take elements from other options (while preserving the practical/theoretical balance), or to do all of them. The time allowed is 18 months from delivery, which was December 10th, 2021.

Much of my professional life has been taken up writing, reading, assimilating, and summarising documents of one kind or another – academic papers, court reports, business plans, trainee competencies, and clinical reports – so I am thinking that tackling the more theoretical side of the module, all of it, would be not only relatively easy for me but would give me a much better grounding in the nature and process of art-making and artists than I have now, and also exasperate me into being driven to paint at points when the mood has flown the nest. This is unlikely to involve noses and so, voila, here is what’s probably my last, short of a formal course requirement.

The image is based on an innovative AI/photoshop enterprise by Daniel Voshart who used lockdown to advantage by colourising statues. He won’t recognise this chap though – looking quite kind and reflective in his enhanced photo, I’ve turned him into a mildly alarmed Sylvester Stallone carved in mahogany which probably means I don’t have much of a future on Sky’s Portrait Artist of the Year!

My new OCA blog is here, in case you fancy following the angst.