Illustration with Foundation Year

This is a 4 year degree course. Please ensure that when you apply for this course you choose Point of entry 1 in your UCAS Hub.

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.

The Foundation year prepares students for university level study. Successful completion of our Foundation course permits access to any of our Art or Digital Media BA (Hons) or BDes (Hons) degree courses, which include Fashion, Fine Art, Furniture Design, Glass and Ceramics, Graphic Design, Illustration, Interior Design, Paint and Print Making, Photography, Product Design, Sculpture and Environmental Art — The Foundation year begins with modules aimed at providing transferable study skills and then, in the second semester, gives students the opportunity to study more specialist modules, with a focus on various aspects of Arts and Digital Media.

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.