Loosening up

Spring term Week 6 at Art School

This week I was mostly trying to get my act together to work out what I want to do for the rest of the term and how I want to develop my portfolio for an illustration degree course. On Tuesday I went to see Annabelle Hartmann, one of the tutors on the BA Design course at my college, to do a portfolio review and talk about illustration courses (and the design course) . She has taught on some of the other illustration courses in London, and she herself went to Kingston which is my current top-of-the-list, so I got to find out a bit more about how the different courses run. She seemed quite pleased with my work, but I asked her how I could improve it and she answered "loosen up a bit more and don't be afraid to make a mess!". It's true - my drawings are small and tight because I'm afraid of letting go (throwbacks from my scientific days I guess...). So when I was stuck waiting at Liverpool Station on Wednesday for an hour, I did some quick loose sketches. VERY difficult mentally for me, but I enjoyed the challenge nonetheless - infact I quite like the the shoes/boots on the right hand page.

Also yesterday I went to another openday at LCC - this time on their Graphic and Media design, Illustration pathway one. I was initially quite taken by the broadness of the course, but then I realised that they had NO drawing instruction - drawing to me is fundamental to illustration. Infact they didn't care whether you could draw or not - it was all about being 'creative' and 'conceptual' - nothing wrong with that, but SO not me. Well that's LCC off my possible s list anyway.

Today I mostly spent talking to my own course tutor, working out how to progress from where I am now, cut some wood veneers into tree shapes and hanging out out with my coursemates. Nice.