I mentioned before that I’d made the decision to take an online 12 week course. It’s called ‘ The creative Visionary Programme” and is run by Nicholas Wilton, a sacremento based artist and his team. The course started just before most of the world went onto lockdown. I decided to throw myself in , determined to get as much out of it as I could.

I’d heard about this course from other artists before but didn’t really understand how it worked so I’ll try to explain the format.

The lessons are uploaded once a week onto an online portal which you work through at your own pace . I’d say that would take 2 - 3 hours a week. Just before the lessons are uploaded Nick appears live on facebook, talking to camera, discussing the previous week and what’s coming up. He does demonstartions , and chooses participant’s work to discuss . There is also a live coaching call, by Nick or his artist team members that ties in with the lessons. As well as this there’s a private facebook group where partcipants post work, answer questions, to foster community.

Each week there is a task or focus. which from week 3 is carried out on 12 x 12 boards. The course partcipants are all working at their own pace through the lessons but if they have a question about what they are working on they can upload to that week’s album with a question , which may get chosen by Nick or his team to discuss in one of the live calls.

I think that 2 people could have a very different experience of this course depending on their attitude and how they decide to approach it.. The group facebook page made me realise that I couldn’t assume people were experiencing it in the same way and at times I was surprised at how differerent some people approached the course. I suppose that’s understandable with 2000+ course participants from around the world.

There were people in the facebook group who seemed to get stressed if they couldn’t make a live call or got themselves up in the night to watch. There were a few other participants who seemed to lose enthusiasm in week 2 and said , Oh I haven’t get around to this and have lost enthusuiam. What ? What kind of person spends that kind of money and doesn’t try to get every cent’s worth?

But most people were in the middle, going through struggles .Having ups and downs and it was good to read about how others felt as they worked through the same things.

I soon realised that because of the different time zone I wouldn’t be able to make any of the live calls- I think I might have put one on my phone as I was making breakfast in the kitchen. That wasn’t a problem because everything is recorded. I think this ended up being a good thing as I didn’t feel any pressure to ‘ keep up’ and try to fit everything in at the right time.

I want to write more about what I learnt. But I think I am still processing it and I plan to go through the lessons again, letting the learning sink in . I have felt an increased confidence towards finishing my paintings and have experienced a change in mindset, which was a big part of the course.

The boards - I’ll share some here and just say that I learnt a lot .If you click through you’ll see one board at the end of each painting session. I went from - Why can’t I paint anymore? - to then having this confidence to finish off paintings I had in my studio in a more considered way . With more risk taking and not caring about messing up because I can always turn things around.

Here are the boards one and two that I was happy with the results because the paintings look different to my work before.