I was awake last night, as usual not able to sleep much, and thinking about how you get into this art lark. It started in my teens as far as I remember, did "A" level art and went on to do a Foundation Year at Guildford Art School (as it was then). It was suggested that I leave at the end of this - had been involved in student protests culminating in a sit in in the admin block, and it was not approved of at all.
Anyway art got put on the back burner while I got on with getting a job, and so on. However, I kept on drawing though all through the years, and then in about 2000 or thereabouts had the idea of doing a OCA postal course in painting. It was a great course, in the end I did Painting 1 and 2 from them. Really good tutors and lots of feedback very helpful - good constructive criticism along with plenty of encouragement. At that time FIG paid half the cost of the courses on completion, which was a great help. I'm sure the OCA (Open Collage of the Arts) is still going and would recommend it unreservedly. At that time each course cost around £450 from what I remember.
I was going to go on and do Painting 3 and maybe 4 as well, but the projects involved a lot of work from live models, in rather short supply here so I decided against it. Not that I have anything against figure painting but trying to organise models would have been a pain in the backside!
Anyway I finished the two courses in 2003, and have been painting every since. You never stop learning and hopefully improving, although that process does tend to be two steps forward and one back - I have quite a lot of work that doesn't see the light of day, I just look at them myself sometimes to remind me of mistakes.
Anyway art got put on the back burner while I got on with getting a job, and so on. However, I kept on drawing though all through the years, and then in about 2000 or thereabouts had the idea of doing a OCA postal course in painting. It was a great course, in the end I did Painting 1 and 2 from them. Really good tutors and lots of feedback very helpful - good constructive criticism along with plenty of encouragement. At that time FIG paid half the cost of the courses on completion, which was a great help. I'm sure the OCA (Open Collage of the Arts) is still going and would recommend it unreservedly. At that time each course cost around £450 from what I remember.
I was going to go on and do Painting 3 and maybe 4 as well, but the projects involved a lot of work from live models, in rather short supply here so I decided against it. Not that I have anything against figure painting but trying to organise models would have been a pain in the backside!
Anyway I finished the two courses in 2003, and have been painting every since. You never stop learning and hopefully improving, although that process does tend to be two steps forward and one back - I have quite a lot of work that doesn't see the light of day, I just look at them myself sometimes to remind me of mistakes.
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