CAll for Tips for art School Portfolio Tips
Art school places are competitive.
The likelihood is that anyone who won a place at art or design school got some good advice to get there.
And the closer you are, the easier it is to chance upon a tip that can change the whole course of your life.
Here at True Voice English, we are creating a PDF to help international art school applicants create standout portfolios.
We are inviting you to ‘put back in.’
Help as you were helped.
We are selecting 20 tips and stories about portfolio building to help candidates be successful.
Your tips could be 2 words long: or tell a whole story.
They can be as general or specific as you want (helping 1 person well is great result).
We will quote you, and (if you like) tag you/link to your artist website as we build publicity for this resource.
Some Question Prompts
Why do you think your portfolio was successful?
(Is it what you thought was good at the time? Is it something you only see with hindsight?)
What made your portfolio stand out?
(What did you do that others didn’t?)
What great portfolio advice did you receive?
What bad advice did you get?
X years later, what do you now think was strong about your portfolio?
The Need to Give Back
I believe the need to give back is a defining one for artists and designers.
We move as if we are part of a community. We share knowledge freely to help others on the path.
I’ve worked in corporate environments, language school environments, and I’ve never felt the same generous solidarity that being an artist brought me (although sometimes the independent language teacher community comes close).
I also understand from a few artists who have ‘made it big,’ that this reciprocity diminishes, and the cosy world of mutual support gets lost on a successful scale.
It is not anything I would ever want to lose.
Including Art School Candidate Interview Coaching and our Art School Offer-Holders English Conversation Club
→ Go to Art School Applicants English Services
Ruth’s Story
The Further Education college I attended was fantastic. Really rigorous in drawing and painting techniques from life.
At the time, I had a boyfriend into post-punk music and fantasy art. Both were new to me, and in love, I tried to stretch my brain to liking both.
I didn’t like them, but I wanted to.
For a birthday, I painstakingly painted a futuresque scene of moonlight and unicorns. (There was probably a pentagram in it too).
Because I’d spent a lot of time on it, and it looked well-painted — reasonable for its genre — I put it into my portfolio to show my breadth of skills.
A visiting artist was giving her second opinion on all our portfolios: “Don’t include this,” she urged.
“But it took ages,” I protested.
“Trust me, this is the opposite of what an art school is searching for.”
I trusted her, and I do believe that if my portfolio had been in the ‘maybe’ pile, that single painting would have got me rejected.
I’d spent hours (days) on a wrong direction without realising.
What’s Wrong With Unicorns?
Nothing at all.
I could have had unicorns everywhere and still got in: if they were part of my authentic artistic exploration.
Art schools aren’t selecting the “best” or “most polished” paintings.
They’re selecting:
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evidence of people who start trends, not follow them
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evidence of people who can explore and analyse success
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evidence of people who can look, question, and develop
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evidence of people with emerging ideas
However polished my unicorn painting may have been, the idea behind it was derivative: a red flag for a panel searching for strong, unique, confident voices.
An important qualification to this story is that I now REALLY love post-punk music.
In order to find your tastes, you do have to experiment and try things that cause some discomfort or challenge.
The takeaway from this story is not to avoid painting unicorns, but to GET ADVICE from an expert about what to include in your portfolio to represent your potential as an artist.
Someone who can see what you can’t.
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