Last month I spent a day at Stockport College providing feedback for third year students on their portfolios and a talk on working with an agent.
It was a pleasure to meet teaching staff Gary Spicer and Joanna Spicer who have been kind enough to invite me back next year
Our fabulous Illustrators Dominic Li and Matt Bray are ex-students of the illustration course which shows how high the standards at the college are
It's going to be really interesting to see their final show and see how some of my comments might have shaped their latest work
Here are some student comments from my visit:
“ I learnt the need for me to be more diverse in my portfolio, include the figure and show that I can deal with different subjects.”
“Lorraine’s talk gave me a good insight into what an agent does and what they look for in a portfolio to represent.”
“Her feedback was positive but she told me ways to improve my portfolio by including more description and context to help the viewer.”
“She was direct but friendly and honest about her advice. She was clearly very experienced within the illustration industry. It was good to hear about the role of an agent and from their side of the fence.”
“Lorraine gave sound and valuable feedback on how to make my work more appropriate for a commercial market. It gave me confidence in my ability when looking at older work in my folio and I will revisit this work.”
“I found the talk about the business side of the industry informative and it seems to be a taboo topic between practitioners.”
“Lorraine’s advice about my work was great. She was positive about my work whilst being realistic and discussed room for improvement. I have taken her advice on board already and begun to explore the suggested gaps in my portfolio.”
"She spoke about what agencies and clients want to see in a portfolio and the benefits of having an agent once you graduate.
She told me what she thought was missing from my portfolio and the work she liked in it. Her advice was more swayed towards children's book illustration commissions which is not my area of interest but I did still find her talk at the beginning of the day useful."
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