About 30 years ago I found myself in a near empty classroom one day a week, learning how to draw ellipses for an airbrush project I’d been tasked with by a local graphic artist. The reason there were only a few people on the course was because computer graphics had already taken over, but there was some value in doing things the old way just to save a few quid and get things done.

The guy who did the teaching was a lovely old fella, he had a twinkle in his eye, he was in his 70s and clearly loved this old knowledge, old students of his were forever dropping in to pay homage to the master.

After a few weeks messing about I decided to redraw my work from scratch, improving on the original artwork to make a full 3d cut away projection, when you have 10 or 15 ellipses drawn close together, they need to look right as the angles get progressively acute – 3d drawing is like reconstructing visual reality – and yet it’s what the human eye does a billion times a second without you even knowing!

After about 6 weeks I completed my work, the tutor asked if I was going to stay on, more time was paid up so I could if I wanted to, it was very tempting! Looking back I remember the quiet tone of that room, you could hear a pin drop when we worked, polite chat took place during frequent tea breaks.

Nowadays, these projections are done by computers, a new version can be displayed at the click of a mouse, unimaginable back then! It could take months to complete one view, there was a middle aged woman on the course creating a sophisticated view of a traction engine, she’d been working on it for over a year, I’m sure she was on that course because she secretly (or not so secret) loved these lessons with this charismatic teacher.  10 years earlier, I was working towards a similar goal to hers, every graphic artist would have samples like that to display, I never got mine done as I simply ran out of schooldays!