Course summary

In the increasingly fluid and fast-moving creative industries, practitioners need to be quick in their thinking and multi-disciplinary in their approach. With traditional boundaries in constant flux creative professionals must, as a result, be fluent and dynamic. Our intention is to produce independent and informed visual problem solvers who are able to perform effectively in the industry. Our Illustration course aims to develop your potential and enhance your creative responses through a broad range of innovative challenges. We aim to foster your personal vision by providing you with opportunities to experience a range of material and digital practices. This experimental approach, in a specialist workshop and studio environment, encourages you to challenge established orthodoxies, examine, analyse, conclude, and embrace the new. We will challenge and support you to experiment, record, report and imagine. You will engage with original concepts and ideas and thoroughly explore and develop your visual language. You will be courageous, allow yourself to take risks and be open to unexpected possibilities and ideas. An experimental approach to drawing, printmaking and collage (both analogue and digital) is vital, and we will work with you to develop your abilities across a range of media. We actively encourage collaborative engagement with other specialist areas within the School of Art. Each level is structured in order to allow you time for introspection, in other words projects that encourage you to work on the development of your own visual language, as well as a more external viewpoint in which you will engage with directed briefs closely associated with industry. Our programme aims to develop understanding of the subject while encouraging you to develop a highly individual and increasingly professional approach to your chosen career. Drawing is fundamental to the subject. From this foundation we aim to develop your individual approach to your chosen career path; you will experiment with a wide range of media, drawing methods, printmaking and software programmes; extend your research and critical skills, and enhance your cultural and theoretical awareness of current practice. Our intention is to produce independent and informed visual problem solvers who are able to perform effectively in a wide range of creative industries. Course staff are industry professionals with a range of expertise and diverse experience.