General Foundation DJCAD

Scroll down for the video. Below is also the full *Transcript* 

DJCAD General Foundation

Before I discovered Portfolio Oomph, the lowest points for me were constantly applying to DJCAD General Foundation and each time that I applied just I would get lower and lower points. And I often found that while the feedback did show, like where your lower points were, I found they were like overall unhelpful with actually helping you develop your portfolio or point you in the right direction. They just kind of showed where you were going wrong and not really telling you kind of how to get out of that.

I decided to contact Julie and work with her because I was someone who had already done my HND and a lot of courses that were advertised as portfolio building or helping with a portfolio were mainly advertised as things that you do like once you leave school, not necessarily like once you’ve done college.

And a lot of stuff that was just a smaller kind of helping with your portfolio course. I was kind of gated out of a lot of other places. Whereas Julie’s course was very open to anyone of any level.

DJCAD General Foundation

Working together with Julie was great. I really loved having the hour long tutorials. They were really good to just talk about the work that I’d done at length both during the course, but also stuff I was doing outside of the course for my portfolio.

It was also great as well because I could contact Julie at any point to get some feedback on my work, so I didn’t have to wait to get my answers. I could just work a lot faster that way.

I think the biggest learning moment for me was right at the start where we were just able to take some materials and just experiment with them and create a piece without having to think about how it would look at the end or how good it would turn out.

And I think that was really good because I’d gotten into this mindset of everything had to be perfect because I had so little I could actually show in like 15 slides for a digital portfolio [at DJCAD General Foundation] that I had to do. So it was very good to have that right at the beginning to kind of break out of that cycle. And I think that was kind of the biggest breakthrough for me.

What I found most helpful in the course were the videos. I felt that they were great with just being able to show what Julie was talking about when she was explaining something in word, which I think is really good for specifically someone like me who tends to do better when you learn from seeing someone do something rather than just reading it all in word.

And it was also a great starting point. If you weren’t sure exactly what to do, you could do something similar. And then I found if I did that I could then branch out into even more different things rather than just like doing the same thing over and over again.

Kirsty studied for success on my PLAN CREATE SUCCEED portfolio preparation course.

DJCAD General Foundation

So right now I am in the process of getting everything organised to move up to Dundee [for DJCAD General Foundation] because I got my offer for general foundation. And I’m really, really excited because this is literally the university that I wanted to get in for years.

So I can’t really explain how happy I am [getting into DJCAD General Foundation].

Now that I’ve finished the course. I’m really, really glad that I did it. I think that if I hadn’t have done it A] I wouldn’t have gone in, but I also think that I wouldn’t have been pushed to actually be more experimental and do the things that would get me in.

And I think that really just having that definitely helped like, so much. If you’re thinking about working with Julie, I would definitely highly suggest that you contact her.

I think just starting that process is only going to be beneficial. I think that even if you decide not to do it, I think that at least you’ve kind of reached out and not just sat there because I actually found Portfolio Oomph the year before and I didn’t reach out and that was the year that I got the lowest marks that you can get.

So I definitely would have preferred to have contacted her when I found her, rather than wait like I did.

I think obviously the biggest thing that’s changed in my life is, is getting into DJCAD General Foundation. But I definitely think in terms of my artwork and the way I work, I think I’m a lot more open to experimentation and a lot more open to using media, stuff that isn’t considered art media for work, rather than just sticking to purely what I know will work or what I think in my head should work.

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.