University College Falmouth

Dissertation… finished! Just have to get it printed, bound and handed in, which, knowing my luck, will not go entirely smoothly.

It’s nice to have it out of the way, but the fact that dissertation time is coming to an end seems to have highlighted how little time is left. Everyone on our course seems to be panicking, from everything to their word count to what they plan to do with the rest of their lives.

I wouldn’t say I’m panicking, but I can definitely feel the pressure creeping in. This has been compounded by quite a major change in my way of thinking- I always planned to do a secondary school art and design PGCE when I finished my degree, but a few months ago I decided against it, for a year or two at least. Not having a plan for what comes next is a strange feeling to me, simultaneously exciting and nerve-wracking. It’s stranger because my sister Lucy (who also has a blog here but hasn’t updated it for a while… Lucy! Post something!) is going ahead with her PGCE plans, and had her interview yesterday. Being twins who have so far followed the same path in life, this will be the first time we’ve really gone our separate ways, and it will be interesting to see what happens.

The only way to really counteract the end-of-degree nerves is to try to regain perspective. I keep reminding myself that I’m not just going to stop learning when the degree show is over. Life after full-time education still seems like an alien world sometimes though!

Well, I didn’t get as much done over Christmas as I’d planned, but I did manage a few drawings. I’m intending to show some drawings in my degree show alongside my paintings, as I think they have an intricate and more immediate quality that is sometimes lost when they are transferred to paintings.

It was strange at first to think of them as pieces in their own right, as I’m more used to treating drawings as preparatory material for paintings. Some of them are drawn directly, others are built up in layers of tracing paper.

I’m quite pleased with how these are going, and it’s refreshing to be making work that’s quick and flexible. However, I am starting to consider how some of them could lead into paintings. I think it will be quite interesting to present these alongside each other in the degree show to see how they interact.