Art & Design Courses - Online & in London  

Year 2 of CLFA (VM552) will enable you to consolidate and focus the various creative experiences and ideas you will have gained in Year 1, or from equivalent external courses.



This course enables you to identify, develop, produce, and exhibit a personal creative project.



You will adopt simple research methods to help you develop and produce a body of new creative work that takes an individual, self-motivated direction. The necessary self-motivated approach to your work will result in the development of a cohesive set of new artwork that should reflect your own interests. There will be group critiques, one-to-one tutorials and weekly studio production sessions that will challenge and enable you to explore and refine your creative intentions, plus seminars and presentations in which you will learn and engage with new contextual information. These are delivered by experienced, practising artist / tutors.



You should; be prepared to spend some of your own time developing your creative work, and enhancing your creative thinking by visiting exhibitions, reading, researching and planning your project.



Basic materials are included but you will need to supplement these depending on the nature of your creative work.



The course culminates in a group exhibition in the college gallery. This will be organised and marketed collaboratively by the student cohort with engagement and support from CLFA Tutors and City Lit technical staff.

Adobe Creative Suite is the principal software used by Illustrators and Designers all over the world. On this course, learn how to take scribbly sketches and inky splotches into Adobe Photoshop and transform them into illustrations, collages, pattern designs… the possibilities are almost endless; thankfully, you will also be taught a crucial skill of digital illustration - knowing when to stop!







Our Workshops enable you to take a deep dive into a specific process, media or tool.



They throw the spotlight onto niche areas of the visual communication field, enabling you to hone higher-level skills and gain deeper insights.







Workshops tend to have a practical focus, with little or no theory or context, although this varies by course.

Learn the essentials of Still Life painting from paint handling and colour theory to composition.



Dedicate some time to developing your painting in a series of controlled steps. Learn to select and prepare surfaces and materials, build a composition around still life objects and make supplementary studies to guide your colour application. For absolute beginners.

Learn how to produce work that mimics a painterly style using lithography printmaking processes. Lithography depends on the delicate balance between grease and water and can provide a broad range of outcomes. Learn how marks and brush strokes drawn and painted on the printing plate can be faithfully reproduced to create bold or subtle prints.

Want to give your portfolio or exhibition prints the professional edge? This hands-on course will guide you in printing top-quality inkjet (or giclee) prints as used by fine art photographers. Get to grips with Adobe Photoshop and our top-of-the-range Epson photo printers, and experiment with different paper types.

This one day workshop offers the opportunity to use Drypoint to produce a rich and unique type of drawn line, from which you will make prints using intaglio inking methods.



Try out specialist tools and techniques, and gain insight into how these sit within the creative practice of artist-printmakers.

This workshop provides a forum for exploring and discussing the process (and sometimes challenges) of working with clients over a commercial design brief or commission. While some design briefs are relatively straightforward, and perhaps require a simple rendering of the client's vision, at other times the client can be unsure of what they actually want, and it can be a frustrating, uncertain and time-consuming process for the designer to identify and produce a solution to what is, sometimes, a poorly-defined question. Referring to real-life examples and case-studies, this workshop will take learners through the process of making a pitch, deconstructing a brief to be certain of what the client wants and needs (and whether these are same thing), presenting proposals, and working within time, resource and financial constraints. These are invaluable skills for the design professional that are equally applicable, for the student, to project briefs and coursework.



For this workshop, you will need to have access to A3 or A4 plain paper, and a range of coloured marker pens, as well as a notebook. Basic materials will be provided, but you are welcome to bring and use your own as well.

Want to learn the secrets of composing beautiful photographs? Join this inspiring workshop to explore composition and colour controls, making the most of shapes, lines, colours, framing, the rule of thirds and simple camera controls for professional-looking results.

A concise study of colour usage. Investigate colour perception and how colour interacts. Explore a range of observational and expressive painting projects, relate colour theory to practice and develop confidence using colour.  An emphasis on colour mixing using acrylics and oil paint.

The term ‘design thinking’ describes an adaptive and reflective approach to problem-solving that is, in many ways, the same as the kinds of processes that underpin creative practice generally, and is fundamental to the development of many of the systems on which the world’s current production, logistics, communications and supply depend. Although generally considered largely in relation to system design, information and interaction design, and product design, it is a way of thinking through and deconstructing creative and/or technical challenges that is equally valuable as a lens through which to examine creative processes and problems in any discipline. In this professional practice workshop, we examine the 5 classic stages of Design Thinking, and look at how we can use them to refine our thinking processes, apply our insight and focus our imagination, to solve both creative and practical problems.



For this workshop, you will need to have access to A3 or A4 plain paper, and a range of coloured marker pens, as well as a notebook. Basic materials will be provided, but you're welcome to bring your own as well.