Author: Portfolio Oomph

08 Jan Creating your digital portfolio

Get on with your art college

We are thrilled to be able to guide you through creating your digital portfolio for university with our eBook with a bonus video tutorial, that takes you to step by step through the process of creating your art college mini portfolio. Not all students will be needing this as not all colleges require a digital portfolio. However, if you are applying to Edinburgh College of Art, Glasgow School of Art, Manchester University, Newcastle University, Goldsmiths, UWE, and others please read on.

28 Nov Getting inspired to make art

We had a greatly inspiring workshop over the weekend of Off the Rails Arthouse in Fife. We call the workshop 'Ideas and sketchbook development' and much of what we cover is the sticky issue of getting inspired to make art. Although our main aim is to work with students making applications to art college this goal is not essential to study one of our courses. In fact on this particular workshop we only had one student making an art college application. The other participants were all artists are varying stages and abilities, some having graduated a few years ago, who were all looking to kick start their creativity during a difficult time.

17 Sep Improve your sketchbook ideas

sketchbook ideas.Great news once more! Our 'Idea and sketchbook development' at Off the Rails Arthouse in Ladybank is running again in November 2014 due to the success of the previous workshops in July and October last year.

Individuality of ideas or even just generating art sketchbook ideas and what to work from can be a real problem when creating artwork. Once you've decided what you are going to work on there also comes that really scary question of 'what I am I going to do with it?'

07 Aug 6 ways to improve your drawing

I've heard it so many times "but I just CAN'T draw". If you want to improve your drawing skills, read on. It's almost like someone has resigned themselves to not being able to draw or believes that you either can draw or you can't. I don't believe that anyone can't draw, learn how to draw, or improve their drawing skills. It is a skill and like any skill, it can be learned. Being creative is perhaps someone a little more complex and I can understand more why some believe they aren't very creative. However, there are still ways that creativity can be encouraged and nurtured rather than just accepting that you're not a creative person.

03 Jul #SBS winner with Theo Paphitis

#SBS winner.Some wonderful news came our way on Monday evening. We were announced as being one of 6 winners of the Small Business Sunday scheme as established by Theo Paphitis in 2010. Each Sunday between 5pm and 7.30pm Theo invites small businesses to tweet to him including the #SBS @TheoPaphitis telling him about your business. He then selects 6 from those entries to re-tweet to his 435,000 followers the following evening; this provides a massive boost to the chosen lucky businesses.

21 Mar Life drawing – or not?

Life drawing or not, that is the question?! You might be wondering what to put in an art portfolio for success. I feel compelled to write this blog post as we've been running a portfolio preparation workshop which included life drawing classes in Haddington for school pupils applying to art college. This is a great opportunity for students as it is a thorough academic session in developing and strengthening looking and recording skills. This is relevant to any art or design project to varying degrees.

05 Dec Life drawing classes in Midlothian

We are delighted to be able to offer life drawing in Midlothian in the new year. Having spent a bit of time liaising with the schools we have now finalised our classes which will be taking place at the new Lasswade High School Centre. We've talked about life drawing and how it can be a great addition to any art portfolio for art college but it is not essential. However, if you enjoy it or have never done it before and can get to class then by all means get on down there and get drawing.