Day One - And So It Begins

And So it Begins....

Do you remember how exciting  it was when you started school for the first time?
And then the first day at secondary school when you knew more about the potential for success, failure, bullies and school dinners?
As my beloved family were quick to point out, I have not been in a situation where my work will be constructively criticised for years so today was probably as scary as my first day in secondary school.

Will I like the tutors? Will they like me?
Will I get on with the other students?
 Will my 30 hours of pre-course work be good enough? 
How experienced will the others be?
Will my alarm go off in time?

It wasn’t my alarm that woke me, it was the Stornaway ferry.  I can both see and hear it from my bedroom window. For some reason it seemed to be going round in circles at 7.30am.


The studios where we are tutored are not huge hence the School only takes twelve Portfolio students.


Of the 12 of us only one is male. He is a post A level student. Two of the women are also young, one coming  from Stuttgart another from somewhere in Scotland. The three of them are in a shared house to give them an advanced  taste of the experience they will have at University.  The rest of the participants are women between the age of 30 to around 68.  One comes from Bangladesh, one is living in her camper-van for the duration of the course and another lives on a small motor launch which is moored in the harbour. She magnificently got up in time to bake us all gluten free chocolate brownies.

We are a decidedly motley crowd and it’s shaping up to be huge fun as well as demanding hard work.

The morning on this our day one, was spent getting to know something about one another and looking at the work we all came up with during our 30 hour pre course work project. It was fascinating to see how each person had interpreted the words ‘Inside Outside’ in so many ways.
The three youngest had wonderful and creative sketchbooks as they are fresh out of A level where this is a requirement and forms part of their assessment. Several of us including me, confessed to having panicked when we received our project instructions and were just hoping we had done what was expected of us.
The benefit of this particular course is that its intensive – four months rather than two years – and that all the materials are supplied by the collage. They are concerned that no student is penalised by having less quality material and media with which to work.
That would not have seemed to be a problem this afternoon as all we needed was:
  • ·         one large A2 sheet of beige sugar paper
  • ·         a couple of sticks of charcoal
  • ·         plus a large rubber
  • ·         and a clean rag
Our course director, Eleanor, demonstrated how we were to totally cover the paper with charcoal so it was completely black. Then like a magician she removed areas of the blackness with a rag and the rubber so that the still life she was looking at, appeared before us in all its tones.
It was astonishing to see what we as a group had achieved two hours later. I was not alone in being both thrilled and looking as though I had spent the day down a coal mine.

Without permission from the other course members I cannot show you their work but I couldn't show you mine either as I've just spent two hours failing to attach photos successfully.     And then, at the last moment.....C'est la Vie.

One day down and 111 to go.....






Comments

  1. RK23 October 2017 at 12:26

    Wow, that's amazing. And quite unlike your usual work (which, I hasten to add, is also amazing).

    ReplyDelete
  2. A new journey in my life23 October 2017 at 12:34

    love your work.Michale

    ReplyDelete
  3. Freya23 October 2017 at 13:16

    looking great, mum.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Gillian Henson23 October 2017 at 23:35

    Lovely work and only your first day!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Unknown24 October 2017 at 23:49

    Wow! That's really clever and I'm loving reading your blog X

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Step we gaily on we go. Heel by Heel and Toe by Toe

Image
Step We Gaily, On we Go, Heel by Heel and Toe by Toe We are already at the end of our first week. We have just seven weeks left of this four month experience. It has gone incredibly fast. Between New Year and our first day back I had to come up with a personal project. I fiercely rejected life drawing. I can't see the point and it has no interest for me.  There, I said it...now I am just waiting to be struck down by a wrathful classical artist.   One of our themes is Identity so I dithered over that for a while.  Should I concentrate on a subject I know really well? Me, myself and I? Did I really want to expose myself like that? What about archetypes?  O r portraits? The museum has a lovely quilt made in the 1990's by twelve women from the village. I bet I could make a lovely art quilt based not on the village but on the women who made that quilt. I distracted myself by making a couple of artists books roughly on the theme of Identity. I...
Read more

Bullocks Bottom and Boots

Image
Bullock's Bottom and Boots Sue's h usband has brand new RED power sawing boots. I am supposedly working on a project about shoes. I had not been out of the village for eight weeks and the  village is largely closed down until the first of March now that Hogmanay  is done and dusted. The weather has been awful: three named storms,  snow, ice, hail, rain and more snow and rain and hail.  The first dry weekend I escaped to stay with Sue, one of the students who has turned out to be a soul mate. She lives in a very beautiful home with her husband, seven chickens and 64 rare breed sheep on the outskirts of Inverness. Phil h ad been practising his manly moves wearing said boots in the hopes that I was indeed the foot fetishist of his fond imaginings. Trees on their land needed sawing, he was the man to do it a nd I was supposed to be the artist imm ortalising him.  Their house is unusual in that they have two private railway crossings on their l...
Read more

Freezing Cold Print Week

Image
Freezing Cold Print Week                       Print week went well due in part to the fact all three of our teachers are professional print makers and that we had a professional  printing press in the studio and did not have to resort to potato prints and a spoon to burnish the print onto the paper.  Well okay, in the name of scrupulous honesty I confess I did resort to potato printing actually and  thought it was really rather effective.   We had to come up with our own theme and as I live by the sea in the south of England and I am living on the coast of North West Scotland the beach was my theme. I took a bin bag onto the beach and gathered lots of seaweed, shells, dead crabs, dead gulls etc. No-one else wanted to work in the studio except James who didn't seem to have a strong sense of smell!!       I now know the difference between relief printing and intaglio having ...
Read more