BA Illustration students at Falmouth University have just enjoyed a series of visits by range of visiting lecturers covering themes such as professional practice, editorial illustration, collectives, illustration agencies, life drawing, painting techniques, children’s picture book illustration with a workshops in digital illustration and web site optimization still to come.

Following on from Gary Long‘s scenario based life drawing day in the previous week, Tim Clarey, successful local artist and illustrator worked with Level 2 students on Tuesday, providing additional specialist advice to students interested in ‘wet media’, painting techniques.

On Wednesday both Holly Wales and Emma Yarlett visited. Holly is an established illustrator and academic, working in both the UK and the US. She gave a fantastic presentation of her work to Level 3 students and then held portfolio reviews on the students New York portfolios.

Emma is a recent graduate of Falmouth who is already making waves in the publishing industry. Her first author, illustrated book ‘Sydney, Stella & the Moon’ has just been published by Templar Books. It was this book that formed her presentation in the morning. In the afternoon she was able to look at students portfolios.

On Friday we were able to welcome back Robert Fresson, another former graduate of the course. Robert, who left the RCA last year gave a demonstration of traditional Japanese Woodblock printing (Moku Hanga) normally associated with the Ukiyo-e artistic genre. This was a fantastic opportunity for students to witness such a specialist technique at first hand. Robert spent 3 months in Japan learning this technique from a master print maker as part of his studies at the Royal College of Art.

Thanks to all of the visting lecturers who took part. We look forward to next week’s sessions from Jago Silver (digital media) and the extra web optimization session for Level 3 students with another session from Gary Long (for Level 1 students) still to come.