I have finally been able to stop working. It has taken a long time, and there has been a lot of preparation going into it, but it’s finally here – yay!

What I have been planning for the last couple of years is to have me a year in art college.

However, I don’t want to actually go out, pay a ton of money, and have one or two lecturers teach things I may or may not be interested in and with whom I may or may not agree.

When I was younger, I went to A-level evening classes.  There was a great deal I enjoyed; however, I also found my confidence getting knocked quite a bit by what I’m sure the guys thought was constructive criticism, but I didn’t see it that way, and often didn’t like their suggestions.

At the end of the year, the tutors had an exhibition of their art.  And to my great surprise, the guy who had criticised my stuff the most? I didn’t like his stuff at all. So, why was I giving his opinion so much weight?

My husband is an amazing man. He is also an artist; his thing is landscapes. The (for me) most enviable quality that he has is that he doesn’t care what anyone thinks about his stuff. He just, genuinely, doesn’t care. He has then (along with his lovely ex) brought up two kids who have such brilliant self-belief, I’m just in awe. 

I have been in the education sector for 30 years now, and I have watched over the years how so many of my previous beliefs about education have been chipped away.

The teacher who is teaching you about XX often didn’t know much about it until the week before they were given the class and told to teach it.

I’m afraid I now have quite a jaundiced view of many of the areas that get taught. I’m talking about language / art subjects here, not science or irrefutable-truth subjects.  So, I realised that very often, art is an opinion. As they say, art is in the eye of the beholder.

So, back to what I was saying.  I plan to follow a new online course each week (ish), learning new techniques or ideas. I have about 40odd courses that I have lined up from various places, like Domestika, Sketchy and a few others.

I will report back if I enjoyed it, and explain why I thought it was worth doing.

So that is the plan, and that starts on June 1st, and I am very excited.

Today is the day, and so far it’s brilliant