Today I have “submitted” Assignment 1. In this case, the submission consisted in an e-mail informing my tutor that I had completed the work on part I, referring to the appropriate sections of this blog and including the two assignment drawings as attachments. I don’t know if this is a proper and digestible form of submission, because my understanding of the the traditional assessment demanded from students to be selective of what they presented for rewiew. But on this blog, there is simply “everything” I’ve done. Maybe it would be a good idea to do more reflection at a later time, and trace back which were the more important works.
But I feel that at this moment, I do not have enough inner distance to know which of the drawings might represent an important milestone or turning point. It feels more like a gradual and smooth development, during which I became more and more aware of the breadth of approaches, the complexity of the tasks, the many problems, and my lack of technical ability in approximately everything.
I thought that making a brief pause between course parts might do some good, but then I was so curious about what awaited me that I read through the whole course materials of part II. Now I changed my mind and think I won’t make a break, because I’m really looking forward to continue working. It was interesting to read through the exercises of part II, because they seem to address many of the problems I encountered while working through part I. So part II looks like a systematic way to improve my drawing skills, this is quite motivating. I also look forward to drawing animals, I’ve always wanted to draw my three cats and here’s the reason to finally do it!
As concerns the time planning, I was able to submit Assignment 1 two and a half weeks before the agreed date. I found this surprising, because I didn’t have the feeling of rushing through the course work, although I deliberately tried to keep a steady pace through the projects and not over-extend the time for each task by becoming too perfectionistic. I tried to work seriously without loosing myself in the tasks. I know that I could easily have worked much longer on each project because the topics lended themselves to be explored in much more depth. But I don’t want to loose the focus and the feeling of flowing trough the coursework, and I would like to complete this course within a year. I think I function best if I try to keep going, rather than letting pauses and inactivity or excessive exploration of single topics creep in. There is a danger of becoming superficial in this approach. Also, I’m not at all sure about the quality of what I’m doing. The focus of this course seems to be on developing technical skills for accurate representation. Currently I’m not very good at that. So I know I must take care that I’m really on a path of improvement, rather than repeating the same errors again and again. Hopefully the tutor feedback will provide the necessary pointers, if I’m not able to see myself.
So I’m about to start part II, excited again but much more relaxed than with part I because there’s already some sort of routine in doing the coursework and reflective writing about it in the blog. There’s one thing I realize though. My blog is very descriptive – it’s more an ongoing protocol of my thoughts and feelings around the coursework, than a well thought-through afterwards evaluation of achievements or problems. Maybe my writing will become more focused as time progresses, but for now I’m really enjoying to communicate about the process.