In September 2011, I began a part-time (evening) Art and Design Access to Higher Education course at Leeds College of Art & Design (LCAD), and just last night, I finished the first of two years.

Since before starting my English & History degree uni in 2005, I’ve wanted to get into jewellery design. However, having absolutely no background in art or design (I don’t think year-8 art class counts), I deemed myself to be utterly scuppered.

However, after a few years of believing this, I finally realised that it’s never too late, and decided to sign up to this course… And I haven’t looked back since!

I began the journey by doing a couple of terms of the jewellery design evening course at LCAD to satiate my interest, and while it was a nice place to start, it was pretty basic.

A couple of tears later, I decided to dive in and start on some kind of path to retraining as an artist/craftsperson.

This course is the proverbial bomb – in less than a year, I’ve learned a massive amount about art history and tried my hand at photography, textiles, ceramics, lino printing and screen printing. Oh yes, and a bit of Photoshop.

(<< Sexy gold number I tested…)

So I thought I’d write my first post about the final piece (a screen print) I came up with for my big first year brief. It felt very good to produce – I worked hard on the research side of things and sincerely feel like I arrived at something very proper, in a logical and informed way. I’ve learned that I perhaps spend a little too long on the research side of things, and not enough on the practical/materials research side of things, which is something I intend to iron out next year.

★ Fi