Illustration

Helping the student to become someone who will make every effort to be an independent and responsible author, by guiding them to a personal approach, open to the many types of expression available in their chosen field, while remaining curious about the other artistic fields.  Mastering drawing, links between texts and drawings: apparent, underlying.

Illustration, a multicultural openness

The visual aspect is the fundamental element of illustration.  It is a type of expression that covers a very wide range of applications concerning several domains, starting with books, printed material and digital media. By its very nature, it flows with the meaning and uses a variety of expressions, while the supporting materials are even more diversified.  

These studies are part of a higher education institution of art. They offer quality cross-training, a recognised diploma and a multicultural openness.

The programme is interested in a narrative image that covers all forms of drawing, photograms, montages, collages, impressions. Illustration is developed from the sketch to its reproduction on the various support materials: paper, books, printed media and infographics.  The workshop develops other artistic areas that nurture, develop and energise it.

Being an Illustration student

Among their objectives, the illustrators discern, in the content and the meaning of the text, the graphic, expressive and artistic attitude to make the images an enrichment and a necessity.

The work of an illustrator is to take a position with regard to the content: optimal communication, at the crossroads between etching and art history, in search of independence as a creator of “stories” proposing expressive modulation according to an editorial context.

Also, in the accomplishment of a free creation, as an author who marks his territory combining graphic research and narrative invention.  It’s necessary to take as wide a field as possible by working beneath and beyond the text, the codes, the order, the caption, the story, the latest news, etc.

The illustration workshop

Structure of the studies:

The long type (five years) in two cycles, three years of Bachelor studies and two years of Master studies, the workshop is composed as follows:

Bachelor first year:  

The student discovers the creative tools that are available to the illustrator.   Particular attention is paid to drawing, allowing them to gain awareness of their expressive possibilities and of the complexities attached to each connection between an image and a text.

Bachelor second year:

Test the tools and the expression and learn to manage the questions that come up in the work of an illustrator (structure in successive stages, taking into account the format constraints).

Bachelor third year:

Towards personal artistic expression. The student chooses their tools and answers the questions that come up during the work of an illustrator: screenwriting, cutting, defining format constraints, optimising the layout, dealing with printing and bookbinding issues.

Master first year:

Artistic autonomy and the birth of an author.

The students are in charge of their autonomy in terms of personal artistic creation.

They define their objectives and commit to keeping a list of specific tasks during the year.  They commit to a moral contract which leads them to create a complete narrative object.

Master second year:

“Image and narrative”.  Training alternates artistic and

theoretical classes with participation in observation sessions of the different phases of building constructive images. The methodology aims to be interactive and open to the most up-to-date practices and technologies. The students choose the subject of their artistic work (thesis), that they will complete at the end of the academic year.