Enhanced Illustration - Pencil, Pen, Paint and Pixels

How do you make strong ideas a visual reality? By hand is always a great starting point - drawing, painting, etc. - but today illustrators often take hand-created work a step further, using digital tools to mix, layer and manipulate their handmade art work, without losing its freshness and 'human touch'.

This course will help you develop your visual ideas and own personal visual language through a series of projects giving a flavour of the BA Illustration at Central Saint Martins. You'll be thinking creatively and exploring traditional illustration methods, but you'll also see how hand-made work is manipulated via computer and do this with your own projects.

Our projects will emphasise:

• Ideas and visualisation
• Hand-crafting with pencil, ink, paint and other media
• Then digital development of your handmade work into expressive, vibrant illustrations

Digital development refers to using Photoshop to:

• Resize and reposition hand-drawn elements
• Add hand-created colours or textures to an illustration
• Edit line-work and change handmade colours
• Create transparent and overlapping colours/textures
• Manipulate handmade lettering

...and much more, all the while maintaining a personal, hand-crafted look to your resulting illustration. Beginning with simple steps, you'll see that working with your handmade work in Photoshop allows elements to be independently modified or replaced. Here’s an example: https://youtu.be/aAO6uGfvpTw

You'll move back and forth from the art studio to the computer lab, learning techniques and experimenting in both. Professional practice will also be discussed and the work of successful illustrators examined. Resulting illustrations should add an exciting, knowledgeable dimension to your portfolio!

For more on this course go to:
http://morecourseinfo.info/course.html
https:///tutorbill/

Course Outcomes

Those who take this course report a new realm of image-making has been opened to them. Some student feedback is below.

• ‘The course filled the gap between computer and hand drawn/fine art courses.’
• ‘The course was one of the best investment I’ve made in relation to my illustration world!’
• ‘Most important, the teacher is responsible and passionate!’

For more from students: http://morecourseinfo.info/studentcomments.html

To see student work: https://uk.pinterest.com/tutorbill/

Entry requirements
Elementary computer skills are needed, and an ability to absorb more of them without huge difficulty. If you find learning new computer skills extremely difficult, that would probably be the case here as well. No Photoshop knowledge is required.

Who should take this course
Typically we have a great mix of students from two directions - those with knowledge of drawing, painting or illustration eager to find ways to take advantage of digital methods, and others who know something about computer graphics and want to add a handmade aspect to their work. Both are welcome!

If you have no experience with art and no experience with computers, you might take a more basic illustration workshop first. On the other hand, both the 'What's Photoshop?' artist and the 'I can't draw' computer person have thrived in this course.

Please note: This course is for students aged 18 and older