The alarm goes off. It’s 8am on a Monday morning and I have a full day ahead of me. I like to do everything at a leisurely pace when I get up in the mornings (I am definitely not a morning person), so I get up slightly earlier than most and potter about making a packed lunch for the day and putting on make up. When I leave my flat at Liberty Court, I walk down the road to university, timing it so I can get a coffee with the other girls on the Textiles course before our lectures begin.
This term we are focusing on botanical illustration and mark making. As a result we’ve been on a lot of trips, such as to St Fagan’s and the archives at the National Museum Cardiff.
We take our seats every Monday at 10am and one of our lecturers will deliver a talk about an area they specialise in. This morning, Sally is doing a talk on 70’s fashion and how botanical illustration influenced the designers of the era. We sit and take notes, ask questions and then at 11am we will go for a break.
After the break, we go next door and start working, splitting into two groups so we can focus on a project. Our group has already done a mark-making project with Helen, one of our lecturers, but now we are doing Botanical illustration with Sally. Sally talks us through which materials to use and gives us advice, before we split off and start working on our selected flowers. It’s a lovely atmosphere to be in. It’s much more casual than school, we sit where we want and draw what we want. It’s always sociable, but at the same time productive – plus it’s always exciting to see what everyone else is working on!
Just before lunch we have our weekly cohort meeting, where the staff come and tell us about any exhibitions or competitions we should have a look at, and we ask any questions that we have, or give feedback about the module.
We have an hour for lunch. Me and my friends tend to get coffee and eat our packed lunches, but occasionally we will treat ourselves to a McDonald’s, which is a short walk from the Llandaff campus. After lunch we continue drawing, and at 4pm we are done for the day.
When I get home from uni I make a cup of tea and have a snack before getting on with either Uni work or work for my textiles business. Today one of the galleries I sell my work in has asked me to create a new image. I start by researching reference images on Pinterest and do some sketches of my idea before putting on Netflix and starting to stitch.
I’ll stop for dinner and possibly a drink in the Wetherspoon’s across the road from me with one of my house mates before heading for bed. It’s my favourite day of the week tomorrow – I’m looking forward to a day in the workshop with Steve, one of the technical demonstrators, trying out Shibori (a Japanese dyeing technique) for the first time!
