Hi i'm new to this site, living in england and have just finished my first year of college. (AS-Levels) However, the school i'm at is by no means geared to art and design, and although i gained a B off the first year i know i could have done much better with the correct guidance (i'm constantly advised to drop art as are the other 2 in my class as it "won't get me anywhere").

I was wondering if i would be viewed any differently by design schools if i were to drop off my A-level courses (also got an A in history and a C in economics) and just started a 2 year Art and Design BTEC National Diploma?

Apologies for the long first post but i'm desperate to become a designer, looking at applying to Coventry University and any guidance at all would be really appreciated.

Many thanks,
Brad Prosser

Any advice on this would really help me

Also, i've been looking round the site and am starting to worry the advice my art teacher gave me (having had a past student accepted into transport design at coventry) that i should not draw cars in any shape or form for my portfolio interview was the wrong advice again?

Or are the courses just looking for the sketching and drawing skills rather than specifically the car skills at this pre-degree stage?

Sorry for all the questions just could really use guidance of some form right now.

Hi, I did a 1 year art and design access course then applied to Cov. From my personal experience the guy who reviewed my portfolio (I think his name was Neil Birtley) said he was only interested in my design work and not the fine art stuff I'd done, he was more interested in my black and white line sketches.

You're portfolio is what sells you so gotta keep drawing and work on it in your spare time.

The advice your teacher gave you not to draw cars is not good advice as thats how you learn to draw them, he should have told you not to only draw cars. Everything I learned about vehicle design and sketching were from books, dvd's, tutorials and showing some of my work on these forums for crits and advice, it helped alot.
As for grades Cov said my conditions were for me to have an A-C gcse in english and maths and at least 60 credits from the access course I was on.

If your a mature student and don't have these grades you can do the Learn Direct keyskills 3 online course in english and numeracy as they said they accept these as Equivalents.

Oh and another thing, don't only show you can draw cars in your portfolio, show you can draw different kinds of transport like trains, boats, helicopters and futuristic vehicles.

Also show your sketch work in an A4 portfolio and your tighter/finished work in an A3 one,(I did 5 A3 pages in black and white and 4 in colour with about 30 pages of A4 sketches in 2 seperate portfolios) don't add too many final colour renderings, show the process of how you ended up with them and show more sketchbook work (pens, prisma pencils etc)than final rendered stuff. Show some coloured renderings done in photoshop as well as traditional media.

Hope that helped,
John.

That's brilliant help thankyou so much, really needed some guidance thankyou for going into so much detail is really appreciated

So it's not so much what grade you get on the art courses but more what you show in the portfolio?

Thankyou again,
Brad.