When I was at school, I used to be pretty good at drawing and painting. I did it for GCSE, then A level. But at my traditional grammar school, art was seen as a soft subject, had zero funding and I was certainly made to feel that my talents were no where near as worthy as those who could do History A level. I didn’t really do much art after I left school, I had totally lost interest to be honest. I had a quick dabble with life drawing lessons about 10 years ago, but it’ll be a long time until I go back to the easel.

I don’t hold on to many things, so this weekend, I finally got around to chucking out my old school artwork. I never had my exam stuff or any of my best bits because the school kept it for displays. But I did have a few bits. Before they hit the bin, I took photos of them and here they are…

Some pencil/charcoal/chalk drawings. I think the top one is from Trainspotting, but I can’t remember.

My precious Cavalier King Charles – Charlie – featured in a lot of my pictures! This was watercolour on blocks of MDF I’d stolen from the Design Tech room.

This was a GCSE exam piece I think. I remember getting flipping bored with it, which is why it has random circles and it all spirals into the floor. Nope not intentional, just boredom.

I remember liking David Hockney, and I did this copy of one of his fantasy pieces where he has a fling with Cliff Richard.

My favourite thing to paint and draw was faces. This was from a photo of an orphan in Romania, I think. It was my first try at using acrylics.

It started a bit of a series on sad children!

This one is a straight copy of a photo. The sign resting on the van says “Welcome to Kosovo”.

I did get out the easel for Hazel at the same time and she is fascinated by my basket of paints and paintbrushes. She did a few paintings with her paints and she keeps asking to do more, so I think I may end up having painting in my life again. I should probably give it a go – I may enjoy it again – it has been 20 years!