I began my post-school career at art college and it was both beautiful and dismal. Beautiful in that 1960s Brighton was a glittering smog-free jewel next to the tallest most colourful sea I had ever seen; dismal due to my local council in Bradford withdrawing out of county grants for art students and requiring me to return to a place still trapped in the 1950s where towns like Halifax were invisible from the high moors roads due to the thick yellow fog of coal fire pollution. I declined the offer and so ended my education in painting and graphic design and artiness.

Now, after a bit of geographical back and forth and a lengthy detour into science (which turns out to be just as much a creative activity as any branch of the arts), I’m back. Not as an undergrad, you understand – small matter of a portfolio of any sort never mind a competitive one – but learning how to draw all over again, flinging digital paint around in a most spectacular manner via a programme called Rebelle2, and running or making all kinds of images with iPad apps such as Enlight and Procreate, editing and filtering in Paint Shop Pro, and getting lost in apps like ON1Effects, Perfect Effects (from the PSP stable), and Flame Painter (Rebelle software). With the exception of drawing, which is both muckier and harder work than I recall, it’s also cat-compatible so there are no footprints in your paint palette trailing off and onto the sofa. Obstruction remains an issue though – show me a cat that doesn’t like to sit on the keyboard and stare at you.

Some of the results are in the Rebelle2 online gallery hoping one day to make the ‘featured’ section. As there isn’t a search facility, may I point you at this Apple which, if clicked from the Recents tab, will take you to my small collection.

Other items, including some of the drawing class efforts, are on Instagram for which I have finally found a purpose, although my gravy boat is yet to appear due to the crime of being nothing like the actual item. My Dalek pepperpot, though … 🙂