The first task of the City and Guilds Diploma Course is to choose a theme that will stay with you throughout the course. It must provide enough visual inspiration and information to sustain all of the course work and set projects. I found choosing this daunting and have had one false start already. I have finally settled on a study of paintings in the National Gallery in London, somewhere I love and visit freqently. I am starting with a still life by Luis Melendez.

This seems to give plenty of raw material and lovely colours and I shall enjoy working with it. At the moment I am photographing and drawing oranges and walnuts and looking at all kinds of containers. I shall try to respond to the picture with my own ideas of the subject matter.