Photoshop and Illustrator Courses at the Fashion and Textile Museum

Next month, more exactly 12th of January 2012 I will start my Masters in Fashion Merchandise Management, hoping to specialize in either Buying or Visual Merchandising, haven't decided yet. Anyways because I only have a business background I didn't get a chance to learn all these software programs , which are more than necessary for a career in fashion. Now with Photoshop I've played around a little bit, but I can't say I really knew much, but Illustrator was an enigma for me. So I browsed the internet to find some courses to help with this issue and found the best ones. First of all the location is absolutely fabulous, FTM London is just great and it's in a great area of the city too, close to London Bridge station , on Bermondsey Street, which is just beautiful.

FTM on Bermondsey Street - London

Secondly the courses are affordable for students, all the ones I've found were at around 400 pounds for three days. FTM offers one course for 175 but if you book 2 courses you get a discount and you can book 2 for 300 pounds, which is very reasonable. The courses are held by tutors Newham College of Further Education and they are super helpful. I will make sure to book the Intermediate ones because I was very pleased!

I took the Introduction to Illustrator Course on Saturdays, that was held every Saturday morning from 10:00 till 14:00 o'clock, with a 30 minute lunch break; and the Introduction to Photoshop - a three-day course starting on the 22nd of November till the 24th, from 10:00 till the 16:00, with an hour lunch break.

The Illustrator Course was hosted by David Wright and we covered everything from the basic tools and pallets all the way to creating clipping masks, simple repeat patterns, beginning and completing a garment trace and dividing shapes. I took some snaps with my phone of the things we did, just to get an idea. There is also a Repeat Pattern Course for intermediate students if you are interested in taking, it is very helpful for young emerging designers!

The Photoshop course was hosted by Deepa Panchamia, which is the friendliest and nicest person I have ever met. She is very helpful and has alot of patience with everything you ask her. I found Photoshop to be alot easier to understand than Illustrator , it's not so complex and so technical, it is more creative and playful. I heard that most of the students have the same feedback, let that not be understood that this is caused by the teacher, but it's just the program and level of difficulty which makes it more unpleasant to use.

So what we did in the three-day course with Deepa was very exciting. After learning the basic comands of the program like the image adjustment tools and the filter gallery. We played with the layers palette, we coloured hand drawn illustration, filled garment drawings with fabric and at the end we created a couple of moodboards and product sheets. Here are some of the things I managed to do and save to take with me:

 Do not analyze the colours and patterns too much, I was just playing around with the tools ! :)