Portfolio How-to: Starting from Nothing

Hello everybody. Welcome. Thank you so much for joining us today. Today we are going to be doing one of our portfolio how two sessions specifically focused on asserting a friend. Nothing with your portfolio. If you have any questions during the session, please feel free to enter into the chat area which will be located on the bottom right corner of your screen. But today we are joined with Osman Ori who is an alum of Pennsylvania College of Art and Design, but also in an admissions counselor here as well.

And he will kind of walk you through how to build a portfolio starting from nothing.

Take it away, Osman.

All right.

So let me go forward a little bit. As Julia said, I am an alum of the class of 2011. I just to give you a brief intro to myself. I went through this process as well coming from a different college that had nothing to do with art and not knowing where to start as far as a portfolio went. So a lot of these tips I'll be giving you today are things that I actually applied to myself and help other students, you know, move forward with their portfolios and actually starting them because I do get that question a lot.

But the first question we can start off with is what is a portfolio?

It's basically in a nutshell, I'm a thoughtfully designed visual selection of your work and that can be, you know, a very various amounts of rework. But it also, it basically encompasses everything that you are as an artist, whether it be, you know, different disciplines, different portraitures, different mediums used and things like that. But it's an all-encompassing piece of work and I can, you know, you know, stretch for years or stretch to a couple of weeks and things like that, but it's it's ever changing as far as the portfolio goes, but it's.

Essentially a concise concentration over your work within roughly 8 to 10 pieces.

More specifically, getting into that, for pcad, we do have portfolio requirements as you'll see listed here on the screen. We do usually have the students you know have 8 to 10 recently finished pieces of original artwork that demonstrate your abilities. Out of those two pieces, you have to have at least 2/2 pieces, sorry, made from direct observation. That could be a landscape, a portrait generally if you can Draw Something in front of you.

That's what we kind of derive as directly from observation and this can be in a different medias as well. It doesn't have to be just traditional. And then lastly showcase showcasing equal amounts of breadth and depth. Now going to the next slide, what is breadth and depth? It's a little bit of confusing term. When we do throw that out there we that's one thing we do look for within our work. But breath in a nutshell is variety. When we talk about breath it's showing a range of skills or you know getting outside.

Comfort zone and trying. You know, if if you only do portraiture, try some landscapes or if you only do photography, try doing some sculpture, drawing, etcetera, things like that within your portfolio. But then going down to the next point, depth. This could be like a concentration. Usually an example would be like a senior thesis project or let's say a capstone project in your art class. This is another example at the bottom you have listed here Picasso, Blue, period. Essentially it's a concentration.

It was heavily into one subject. So let's say half of your portfolio can be, oh, I did this series of portraits of, let's say, my family or this portrait of my dog in different mediums. That's kind of a way you can think about putting your portfolio together. To start off with, I'm splitting into two parts of like a really solid concentration and then the other four pieces really showing your variety and what you're uncomfortable with doing, kind of pushing yourself outside that comfort zone.

One big thing I try and tell students to think about what you already have. A lot of students, you know, start off. Hey, I have all this work, but I don't know where to start.

You got to think about things and start from scratch essentially. Did did your friends help you do these things? Do you have any pieces, pieces posted anywhere, any pieces that are really, really strong that you really want to include in, in in your portfolio as a whole that really help you shine or things that are that you're just really generally proud of? Questions to consider. What have you done creatively in the past, in the past year I should say, and that could you know, range from school projects or things you've done outside of work as well?

If you haven't created recently.

Excuse me, excuse me.

You can look at a number of different places to kind of get your create creativity up and kind of think of ways to challenge yourself in a number of different ways. YouTube and social media are always thriving with artists that are always creating things or doing challenges for people. On some popular ones that I've always seen on social media or 30 day art challenge, Inktober is coming up in October. So a lot of illustrators tend to go towards that and create work as well. And then there's tutorials you can see on YouTube and on social media like Tik T.O.K and Instagram.

Where students will, you know, have tutorials on how to keep creative and how to keep yourself active and things like that.

Another thing you can do, one thing I did is take pre college courses. You can look into our Center for creative exploration and we can also looking to taking courses around your local high school or classes that are offered within your town and or city. But it allows you to talk, be taught some skills that you may not, may not be familiar with. Also you can get feedback on your work while you're there in those classes with different artists and different it and it ranges from age as well so you could be getting critiqued.

By people who are older than you and people that are younger than you. But it gives you kind of that melting pot of skills that you can kind of bounce ideas off of and grow as an artist as well. You can also learn things that we as a school may not offer. So if you're really looking into, you know, going into heavy sculpture and using clay and things like that and getting into account and things like that, you might find spaces that provide.

Those kind of faculties more than we can, so it's just a different way of thinking and getting outside and before you come into the school. It lets you learn a lot of different things rather than kind of being pigeonholed into one thing, so to speak.

Also, another big point. See what pieces make sense. Generally you don't want to put like a Hodge ***** of pieces all together in one place without them making coherent sense when talking about them or putting it together.

The other thing about what goes together, what doesn't, pick up the ones you're really proud of and if it's a series kind of think about you know how that series kind of message together with the rest of your portfolio or splitting in half like halves. Like I said before, it's more or less thinking about like alright, go to ABC within My Portfolio and figuring out how all flows together in one concise piece. Also staying organized thinking about how the what pieces you're proud of as I mentioned before. But also can you talk about the pieces?

I'll mention more about talking about him later.

But as long as your pieces are organized in a fashion where it makes sense, it's a lot easier for you down the road to talk about it. The councilors or our teachers or anyone else trying to evaluate your work and things like that.

So next, as I mentioned before talking about artistic process, when you look at your work online or in person, we all we always want to hear about your work and like what the thought process was of how you got to this point, why you made this piece, what what was your thought process between behind the whole thing. Generally you just want to think about overall the overarching factor of like can I talk about this piece in detail, can I explain myself in a in a concise way when talking about my pieces during a portfolio review?

And then one big overall question to think about is, does the piece that you're looking at in the portfolio have a meaning or concept? This lends itself to you being able to talk about it because if you drew something in your portfolio just for the sake of it and it's going to be a lot more difficult for you to talk about the piece because you don't have reasoning behind it or you didn't have a concept in mind before you actually drew the piece?

Another thing is that the practice I'm talking about your work, just talk about your pieces out loud. Generally a lot of people get nervous when talking about their pieces within within that platform of having an online portfolio, portfolio review, excuse me, or in person portfolio review. So you want to talk about your pieces out loud.

Whether it's practicing in a mirror or talking with someone that you may know.

Here are some questions to consider when you're actually talking to someone about it too. I mentioned before, what techniques did you use to create your work? Were there any challenges in creating the work? Were there any challenges you had to overcome to make that work better? Anything you faced while doing that and then they just get discover anything as you went on within the process as well?

And then lastly, sorry, not lastly, but what medium do you use? That's another one you can think about is as far as going on what mediums you use, why do you use those mediums?

How did you pick the style that you were kind of going into? Umm, as I mentioned, October and those 30 day challenges, those can help you develop your style and kind of get you into a groove of why you wanted to work in that style in particular also in October. And those challenges can also inspire you to look at other artists, kind of bring that into your own work. So you can also think about that. I'm talking about your artistic process as well.

Did you have a goal in mind when talking about these pieces, exploring color, learning the figure, mastering medium, etcetera, etcetera? There's always something behind why you're doing something and that helps you talk about them even more if you have a specific mindset when creating your portfolio or creating the pieces. So it's something else you can also think about when when tackling each piece in your portfolio individually and as a whole.

As you think about this overall kind of putting pieces in, figuring out what pieces to go on, if pieces have a meaning, you got to think about the whole creative story. How is the experience of creating these pieces led you to apply to the school? That's something you can also talk about when you're talking about the work, how it's influenced you to want to go to art school and want to pursue art as a whole and just overall your future path as an artist.

Then lastly, uh, like I said before, practice talking about your work before review. You can do this during the portfolio development process and after. If you do a critique, I suggest doing it one to two, one to three times before you even get get in front of someone officially, so to speak. Before you even do that, you can talk to your pets. I've talked to my dog many a time about my artwork and my wife as well. Just practice, practice, practice. Do you 15.

20 minute slots. Honestly, start talking to yourself. You may sound crazy at first, but it's a lot easier when you're just talking to yourself and looking at yourself in the mirror. But practice talking to yourself wholeheartedly.

But after that, these are just some examples I'm laying out here going through some of these. This is an example of observational pieces we do include specifically with us at pcad. We do include sketches in the portfolio, but we usually like to have them back up a finished piece. So we wouldn't want you to submit, you know, just all sketchbook drawings. We want to see completed pieces as well, but if you have something that you know compounds into a final piece, that would be great.

Umm. And then you can be in any, any number of scales as well as long as it's digital. During some portfolio reviews you might have paintings that are, you know, 10 by 20 feet on. Those are hard to transport obviously. Yeah. That's also something you can think about in your portfolio review. If you're having an in online or on or in person, excuse me, think about how the size effects how you transport it and how the size going to affect how you explain the work as well.

And then these are just some more kind of like sketches mixed dealing with mixed media, also paintings. But then also as I mentioned that variety portion earlier, you can also have sculpture like these pieces listed on the screen here, but then also photographs.

As seen here, this couple of the next pieces are more processed pieces showing that you know this. This student here on the screen here was using more digital media and animation and game art techniques showing how they use textures and then apply it to their final piece. But then you also have installation pieces like these two where that you can't have them in person. So that's also another thing to think about if you have a mural you did or community event you did or an installation you had in a show.

I'm documenting those forms of artwork as well so you can include those in your portfolio and having a viable explanation as to why you had it installed in the space or what was the point of the installation. Just explaining that whole point of why you did this installation and why it was important to you. But that's furthermore, you know, compounding on the fact that, like document being able to talk about your work.

The next couple of pieces, as I said, different medias, different types of designs. You'll see that you have students working in more traditional design, but also working in paintings, but also kind of bringing their kind of own style to it. That's not as traditional, just doing a straight face. We also have students that you know, strictly do graphic design, so you can include pieces like that, campaigns. You did all those things in your portfolio as well as long as it fits together.

And then also kind of combining illustration and graphic design as well as you can see by the pieces here. One thing I will say is that if you do have a, you know, a giant, a really focused idea of what you want to go into your portfolio, I just, I can't stress this enough, but always you know, have your focus of what you really want to do and then have those other four pieces of what you what you aren't comfortable with thing. That's the first piece of advice I give any student and then have those two observational pieces.

This can vary, I'm depending on the institution, but for us we always want you to show variety overall and that's within your concentration and the four pieces I mentioned that could kind of be split between those other different disciplines. But overall that's that's the whole kind of getting started. I know it's a lot of information for everyone, but if you do have questions you can reach us at any of the social medias here or at pcad.edu.

And if anyone has any questions in the chat or any questions overall for a few to ask me now, but thank you.

Thanks Osman, that was great information. So we do have a few questions that have come in. The first one is about observational drawings.

With observational well, you said that we need observational artworks. Does that always have to be drawings, or can it be also paintings or sculptures or other medias?

It could be other medias. Traditionally it it has been just more traditional drawings like drawing some pens, pencils, things like that. But we've realized that you can do observational drawings or direct observational pieces in different media, so you can do it.

If you like, you don't have to. Just use charcoal and or pencils to draw those pieces. It's it's open as long as it's from directly observed.

Perfect. Thank you so much. The next question that we have is if I am looking to go into a specific major say graphic design or photography.

When I am putting together My Portfolio, do I stick to those means or can I show a wide variety of different other pieces that may be like a painting or a sculpture?

You can and this we're kind of the split comes in so.

You can still concentrate on those two things like graphic design and photography, but also you can still have that variety of media as well within the second-half of your portfolio. This is it. It gets kind of tricky if you're kind of undecided on what major you want to do, but if let's say you have graph design and photography like you like you mentioned, have those first four pieces focus on those two aspects or just break it down into even one. Just do straight photography with some typography over it.

That could be a little bit more challenging. But if you're really interested in both of those, have that first set really focus on, hey, I did this project, I made a cover for myself, I think that kind of does graphic design but also fills the photography element. And then have those four other pieces that kind of encapsulate the other variety of media. So like having your paintings, your observational drawings and other pieces that are kind of outside that concentration. And generally we'll, we'll help you over that over the course of that. So if you do apply.

We are willing to willing to meet with you and help you out. So if we're kind of having trouble, like I don't know if I should put more photography or more graphic design, we're more than willing to meet with you via zoom or in person and talk about them that process and kind of developing it so.

Perfect.

Let me see here.

So we do have another question that is, if I am having a hard time with choosing the pieces that I want to include and or not sure if the piece is good to go into My Portfolio, who would you suggest me to ask or who would be a good voice to ask when looking at those?

The tough question, but a good question. So you could ask your parents, but your parents will probably say it's amazing because they're your parents. So you got to think about, like I would say honestly try and find a mentor or someone you really respect as an artist that could be around your age or you know someone you've met via art classes or are chosen, things like that and have them give their opinion about it. Also. You can ask us, well like we we've done it too.

But I would honestly start with someone that's familiar with your work, more or less like like a best friend or someone that's very honest with you about your work.

And you mean they're honestly, the best thing you can do is ask someone who's very like upfront because they'll tell you it's like, oh, this doesn't quite go together. I'm not quite sure this piece goes there. You might want to take it out. I think just finding someone honest and close to you would be the best best start. If anything, default to your parents and have them really be like, hey, I need you to be honest with me. Tell me if this looks good, I'm going. Even if they don't know, it still helps. You kind of get get an edge about.

What fits, what doesn't?

And you know what? The Astros one person either. Like I said, I mentioned other people, too. You can ask friends, you can ask other artists. You can ask your parents that. I wouldn't stop asking people just to make sure and have an honest opinion on your work and have many eyes on it too, so you're sure about what you want to put in.

Umm.

I guess the final question that we have right now is, is there any last or is there a single advice that you would always want to tell anybody who is looking to start their portfolio?

Yes, don't be afraid because we all get afraid when we get in front of someone we don't know and put our artwork out there in the public space.

I would honestly say take advantage of social media because social media is a powerful thing. You know you can get good and bad of course, but the first step was putting your artwork out there and really seeing what people think and asking for advice. I know it's hard, I know it's scary, but don't be afraid to take constructive criticism and take that back to the drawing board and keep growing as an artist and developing your portfolio as a whole so.

What's the worst that could happen if someone says it's bad but you're you're confident in your work, you know, you just take that and keep on going. So.

Awesome. Well, thank you Osman for all your great, wonderful wise wisdom.

But also all the information that you gave them. I know that the students will definitely appreciate it and thank you anybody who came and viewed us live, but also thank you for anyone who's watching this in the future, if you do have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us at admissions at pcad.edu. I will put that in the chat area as well. But if you do have any questions, we are always here to help and make sure that you check out any events that we might be having similar to this.

In person that we do have a lot of opportunities to show your portfolio to us, but thank you everybody and I hope you have a wonderful evening.

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