I am a 75 year old retiree. Diploma of Graphic Art from RMIT, Melbourne, Australia - worked as a 'finished artist' in Melbourne (and a couple of years in the UK in early 1970s) until recession and retrenchment in 1990.
To keep up payments on my mortgage I took what I intended to be temporary work as a security guard. By the time companies started reemploying graphic artists, younger people had started coming out of art schools with computer skills which I didn't have and I found it impossible as an older person without those skills to get back into the advertising art field.
Continued working in security until my retirement.
When I worked in advertising I had little opportunity to express myself, most work involved assembly of typography and other people's designs and illustration. Once I was retrenched and began working as a security officer I gradually did less and less of my own artwork. I took this course as I want to get back into practice with my sketching and the ideas here have inspired me to forget about trying to get everything 'exact' - I love the looseness and freedom of this style of sketching. Now I just have to let myself relax into a looser style.
