General Foundation DJCAD

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General Foundation DJCAD

So before I started Portfolio Oomph, I was really struggling with, like, focusing on perfection in my work. And I would spend a lot of time on one piece trying to make everything perfect, which meant that I didn’t have nearly enough work to put into my portfolio. And I also had no idea how to go about creating a portfolio, where I should start, start what type of work should be in it.

So that made me feel quite stressed and unsure. I decided to contact Julie because I applied to Uni twice. [General Foundation DJCAD]

The first time, it got very close to the deadline and I was really struggling with my portfolio and my parents kind of realised that I needed help. We contacted Julie and decided that we’d work together for the year because I just had no idea how to put together a portfolio on my own. And I also, from doing it the year before, I’d really struggled with the technical parts of it.

Working with Julie was great. She was so friendly and kind and she’s always there if I needed any help. If I was unsure about something, I could always just email her or schedule a meeting.

And she had a lot of really good ideas that were very helpful and the course was great and she was able to kind of tailor it to your own personal needs.

The biggest thing I think I learned from this course is actually right at the beginning when we did a lot of developmental drawing exercises, things like blind drawing and drawing with your left hand, single line drawing.

General Foundation DJCAD

And like I said, I was really focused on perfection before and with exercises like that, you can’t. So it really gave me the chance to just loosen off and not worry about everything being exactly right. It just gave me the chance to be a lot more free with my art. And I think, like, that from the beginning of the course helped me so much and it meant that all my work after that was a lot less rigid.

I found the calls that we had together the most helpful part of this course, because it was so good to just have someone there if there was anything I needed, anything I was unsure of, I could just schedule a meeting and we could discuss everything. And I was never kind of sitting there being like, ‘oh, I don’t know what to do’, ‘I don’t know where to go’. Because if I couldn’t work out on my own, I could always contact Julie.

So right now I’ve received two offers, one from RGU and one from DJCAD [General Foundation DJCAD], and I’ve accepted Dundee, which was my first choice. So I’m very happy about that. And I couldn’t have done it without Julie’s help and I’m just feeling a lot more confident in my art and it’s not really daunting anymore. I know how to go about handling things and I’m able to think outside the box a lot better.

Now that I finished working together with Julie, I feel that she gave me the confidence to go on and tackle projects on my own. Like, working with her taught me all the basics and it taught me how to go about handling a brief and coming up with ideas and developing them into a final piece. And now I know how to do that on my own.

Tony’s daughter Anna studied for success on my PLAN CREATE SUCCEED portfolio preparation course.

General Foundation DJCAD

I would say to someone who’s thinking about working with Julie to absolutely go for it. It was the best decision I made and the course is great.

It was actually a really fun experience and it gave me a chance to try all these new techniques that I would have never thought of before. It just took so much stress off and it, like, made me feel a lot more comfortable and, like, I really had a chance.

After finishing this course, I’ve noticed a big change in the time it takes me to finish a piece. I’m much quicker and I think I work a lot more efficiently. And also, I’m not spending, you know, hours and hours on one tiny drawing trying to make sure that it’s exactly perfect and exactly realistic.  I’m just able to sketch something quickly. Maybe I like it, maybe I don’t, and move on.

And I’m not stuck in my little comfort zone, my little bubble of pink and colourful and everything that I want to do. I’m able to work outside of that and create work that maybe isn’t what I’m comfortable with, but I have the confidence to do that.

This article was written by Julie Read, a leading educator in the Creative Industries, as featured in The Guardian newspaper, on a mission to create a legacy to ‘unlock your creative genius’.

My passion and mission is your art portfolio, to help to get you that place at college or university.

CLARITY, in particular around the creative process, sketchbooks, and what the Colleges actually want to see are the founding principles.