This week I have been working on a 'mood board' on the subject of 'childhood'. I was not sure of the size the 'board' should be and asked my tutor by e-mail. Unfortunately I received her reply after I did it. I reflect on the fact that I have paid for a distance learning course. It was very expensive for me, and I tried my best to make an informed choice before deciding. Someone I trust also told me they had a positive experience with the OCA. Nevertheless, it is distance learning - relying on the internet at the moment - and when my tutor is sick, as she has been for the past two weeks or so, I am left to my own device. Worse than that, this is my first course with this organisation.
Their website is not good for illustration students - in my opinion - it has 'doors' for many other courses, but not for us. As a result, every time I tried to communicate through there, the answers were from other students, not very quick to reply either. It probably does not attract many students, some of them told me that they had formed another forum which they found easier to use. I am not surprised. Either dieting websites have better chatrooms!
So at the moment I feel very much like I am left on my own with my folder with the course work (a very expensive folder). I am a person who needs lots of encouragement, and could get really disappointed. Luckily I still attend a weekly painting class, and my teacher there is a commercial artist. He is interested in what I am doing and is always full of advice and suggestions. On the positive side, I am learning some new things and I do appreciate the contents of my folder. It pushes me in new directions, and since I have paid, I make sure that I do do it! I didn't particularly enjoy this week's exercise but I gave it my best shot.
I started by following the instructions (although I thought A3 was a large size of paper to work on and later my tutor told me it may be too small), collected images which related to my childhood, all of them symbolic. But I did not like the visual aspect of the finished product, and so I worked on it with pastels - and went a bit too far, but there is no way I'm going to do this again!
I also made random sketches, not as many as I would have liked but it's important that I've kept sketching. Some are for a thank you/xmas card for a friend who works at the Tate gallery. She has given me 2 free tickets for the Gauguin exhibition! Plan to go with my daughter. It's particularly welcome as I have only seen one local exhibition lately, about african textiles. I was looking forward to it and it really did not live up to my expectations. There are certainly more colours and different examples in the shop windows around here!Let's hope next week is going to be happier!
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