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In January 2015 I began to take photos of the Thames Estuary for my own photography calendar project. As I live by the Thames Estuary, and travel along its coastline on a regular basis, I became aware of how varied the estuary looked throughout the seasons. Sometimes the view is affected by the light and reflections; the weather; the tides; or from the various shipping vessels and social activities in the water. I decided to capture some of these changes throughout 2015 with the aim of creating a calendar for 2016.

Each month I visited a different part of the estuary, between Shoeburyness and Leigh-on-Sea, where I took a selection of photos. I then selected my favourite photo from each month to use for the corresponding month in the calendar.

These are the photos I selected:

Following on from the Creative Journal courses I have been attending at Metal in Southend, I was given the opportunity to attend a one day life-drawing workshop, also at Metal, and I took the challenge. The last time I did life-drawing was during my Art Foundation course (which was a good few years ago), so I was definitely overdue.

The workshop was led by Heidi Wigmore and combined life-drawing with the theme of theatrical/props/masks.

During the morning we had a female model and we began by doing a few quick one-minute sketches to warm-up.

This was followed by several longer poses where the model wore various props and theatrical accessories including a tutu, feather boa and mask.

After lunch we had a male model and again began the session with a number of one-minute poses to warm-up.

This was followed by longer poses using more theatrical props and a mirror.

The day was a lot of fun and I’ve really got the bug for life-drawing again. The next workshop I’ll be attending is at the English National Ballet in London, where we’ll be drawing the dancers during their rehearsal – very excited!

I’ve now completed my third six-week creative journal course, which are held at Metal in Southend. As this session began in autumn, our work was very much inspired by the vibrant seasonal changes in the natural environment.

Some of the themes we covered were decay, colour, form and repetition; developing our ideas with a range of mixed media including bleach, ink, pencil collaged with scrap paper…

…mixing natural and unnatural colours with leaf rubbings…

…making observational drawings with pen and ink.

I particularly liked the skeletal form of the hydrangea petal and the shadows I created with the leaves…