How to Make an Art Portfolio

YOUR BEST ART IN ONE PLACE

Most successful artists have a place where all of their best creations are showcased. If you’d like to be able to easily refer other to look at your work, it’s important to know how to make an art portfolio before you begin.

MAKE IT ONLINE AND HARDCOPY

Depending on which audience you’re showing your work to, you’ll need to make an art portfolio that fits the way they prefer to consume content.

Not every gallery or cute downtown shop is run by a 20-something entrepreneur. Many businesses, galleries, and art-loving establishments are run by an older generation that values hardcopy visuals. The effort put into printing and laminating prints, and buying a binder that’s just the right size — these things are appreciated and can go a long way for you.

Keep a copy or two of your portfolio at home or in your car where it will be safe and accessible if you need to show it to someone.

Obviously an online portfolio is more accessible. We carry our phones everywhere and it only takes a second to pull up our website and scroll through, showing years of artwork in a single swipe. You can send the link to anyone, anywhere, at any time. But because they’re so easy to compile online, some view them as less convincing, less sophisticated, and so it won’t appeal to everyone considering your work.

For the sake of casual conversations, I keep my favorites album in my phone exclusively art photos. So when I meet a stranger at a friend’s house and they ask, “What do you do?” I can easily pull up the artwork without access to wifi and without scrolling for 5 minutes.

Different situations call for different portfolios.

LOOK UP SPECIFIC REQUIREMENTS

While we’re talking about the recipients of your art portfolio, let’s discuss requirements. If you’re entering a competition, applying for a fellowship, or trying to get into art school, there may be explicitly stated rules for you to follow. Look for these and if you can’t find them, contact the school or organization and ask.

It’s important to be clear on any rules that might exist because not following the requirements can automatically get you rejected.

Here are some examples of what’s commonly asked for:

• A certain number of artworks
• Pieces that will reveal your skill in specific areas such as background illustration or character design
• Prompts to draw and include before you submit
• Short essays or writings that explain your work

SHOW YOUR PROCESS

The creating of your art can be just as interesting as the finished result. Some artists are even famed solely on their creative process, like Jackson Pollock or Yves Klein. So don’t forget to highlight what steps you take to make your masterpieces.

Add photos or videos of each stage in the creative process: sketch, paint, detail, gloss finish. The weirder your stages, the more effort you should put into this section of your art portfolio.

And even if you think your process is boring, still include unfinished artworks. If someone else is going to teach you, work with you, or display your illustrations, they’ll want to be informed on how you operate. Being too simple or too complex with your projects can be a deciding factor on if they like what they see.

HIGHLIGHT THE BEST, THE RECENT

Don’t dig your artwork from six years ago out of the grave and try to give it new life in your portfolio. No one cares if it won best of show in your high school competition when it’s that old. People want to see things you’ve created recently because an artist’s style and capability evolves constantly and what’s relevant is what you can do today and going forward. I don’t think I could even duplicate my work from six years ago (not that I’d want to) because my style, medium, and interests are all different now. So keep it recent.

Also include only your best work. If it’s sub-par, leave it out. Humans by nature want things to be fast and easy, so don’t make the reviewer rifle through 30 pieces of art, all of varying quality. Aim to impress, and quickly.

YOUR ARTIST RESUME

Your illustrations may be incredible, but you can’t let them stand alone. A resume will reveal the exhibits you’ve been involved in, any brands you’ve worked with, or special projects and events. You can say here how long you’ve been freelancing and where or if you went to art school. Be sure to include awards you’ve gotten and articles or other press you’ve been featured in.

If you’re not sure how to make an artist resume, you can take a look at mine in a Google doc here, which is linked to my portfolio.

Give all this info a neat and clear home in your portfolio so you can show off not just your talent, but your brains and experience, too.

SHORT BIO, ARTIST STATEMENT

Write a short blurb about how you’d describe yourself as an artist to serve as a bio. Include info like where you’re from, what city your studio is based in, and what kind of work you do. This should be no longer than a paragraph. Save your life story for that book deal or magazine feature.

Your artist statement should focus on your work and what you hope to convey through it. You can really be creative with this one, which is what makes it so much more daunting. Some things you can mention are:

• What inspires your art
• Subject matter you use
• Medium / basic process
• Emotions you hope it invokes
• Goal you want your art to achieve

If you have trouble restricting your statement to a short paragraph, let yourself write a long, expressive statement. Then cut a few non-essential sentences out. Switch a few words to make it more concise. Really edit it and chop it down.

Keep the long version and the short version to use in different contexts. Put the short one in your portfolio and save the long one for more in-depth opportunities, like solo gallery displays or even museum gigs.

When creating my bio and statement, I visited the portfolio websites of illustrators I admired and examined what they wrote and how they phrased it. Even when your visual art is super opposite, the way you express verbally can be similar and really clear up that writer’s block.

You can read mine here.

Keep your bio and statement at the front of your mind because the meshing of these two becomes your “elevator speech,” or what you say when people ask, “Well what do you do?”

LIST YOUR PRICES

Especially if you’re presenting your art portfolio to a gallery you hope will sell your art and make a commission from your sales, you want to inform them of your prices. You can list these below each illustration, along with its title and medium, or you can create a page dedicated specifically for that purpose.

You may feel awkward advertising your prices, but it’s important information to know. Don’t make the curator ask — then it will really feel awkward.

CONTACT INFO

Here you should add anywhere someone can connect with you and your art.

Social media pages like Instagram, Facebook and Twitter are all welcome here. So are sites like Behance, DeviantArt or Etsy.

Don’t forget your email address and phone number.

You can add your address if you feel comfortable, but I suggest adding at least the city or general region (i.e. southeast Michigan) so that any recruiter or collaborators know if you’re close by them. If you’re local, they’ll be more willing to work with you.

And make clear which contact method is most preferable, or if you have “business hours” when you’ll be most available.

ORGANIZE IT

The goal of this is to make it as easy as possible to navigate.

For a hardcopy art portfolio, keep a sturdy binder with laminated pages (those plastic sleeves work great). Don’t put things like prices and your bio on the same page. A college program will be very interested in your bio but not care about how much your art costs. Don’t make them stare at your prices when they’re trying to relate to you and your story on a larger level — it kills the mood. You can put all your information categories and prints on separate pages for easy skimming and skipping.

Also make sure to be mindful about the order of each category. Do you want someone to see your prints first? Do you want them to read the artist statement first, so they can better understand the illustrations when they get to them? You decide, but make sure it flows.

For an online portfolio, think about user experience when designing your site. Treat your home page like the first page of your binder. What will a visitor see first? Personally, I keep my prints all on the home page and leave the bio, contact info, and others on the menu on separate pages. Whatever you want people to gravitate to, give it more prominence on the site and make it easy to access.

PEER REVIEW

Ask someone you trust to take an objective look at your art portfolio. A professor, mentor, the friend who always dishes out the harsh truth is who you should ask. Make sure to tell them you want to hear the critique more than the compliment, because it’s more useful to making your portfolio better.

After you get their feedback, consider all their tips and implement the ones that make sense.

KEEP IT UPDATED

You can’t just make it once and forget about it forever. Any time you create something you are really proud of, add it in. Think about limiting your pieces though, and taking out one every time you add another — that way you don’t end up with 30 pieces in an overpacked binder or a website that it crowded and sluggish.

Keep it fresh and new and make sure all the elements still reflect who you are and what you stand for on a regular basis.