Revised: Ask the Art Professor: What should you include in an art portfolio for art school or college?
If you’re applying to art school or college this coming year, now is the time to get your portfolio in high gear. Many high school students underestimate how much time is involved in preparing a portfolio; for most students it takes several months, even up to a year to create a body of work that is rigorous enough for the application process. On top of that, several art schools also require that students create a few artworks specifically for their application on top of the portfolio, so get started as soon as you can. This post discusses in detail what is required for a competitive art portfolio, and has some new content I’ve added since I published it two years ago.
“In general, what kind of things should one include in their portfolio when applying to undergraduate colleges/universities?”
Every school is going to have their own unique set of requirements, so be sure that you check that first. I recommend re-reading the guidelines multiple times as you’re working on your portfolio to be certain at every stage that you are following their precise requirements. The tips I offer below are basic essentials that should apply to most schools.
1) Create original work from direct observation.
This is hands down the number one, absolutely essential thing to do that pretty much all high school students fail to do. This problem is so prominent, that it’s a rare for me to review a high school student’s portfolio and see an artwork drawn from life. Just doing this one directive will put you light years ahead of other students.
It is easy to see why students have only learned to draw from photographs: photographs are much more convenient, and you don’t have to work as hard to get half decent results. However, drawing is not about turning yourself into a human xerox machine. The college freshman I teach who haven’t drawn from life before have a very tough time making the transition because their drawing habits are so bad.
Students complain that “there’s nothing to draw” if they draw from life, which I find impossible to believe. Self-Portraits drawn from a mirror are a good option if you want to draw faces, you can set up a still life of objects easily, and interior spaces and landscapes are everywhere.
Be the exception and do not copy your work from photographs or other sources. This means no fan art, no anime, no manga, no celebrity portraits, nothing from another artist’s work. In addition to making poor portfolio pieces, drawing from photographs causes students to develop terrible drawing habits that will be difficult to get rid of later. Read this article about the importance of drawing from direct observation.
2) Have a variety of subject matter.
This demonstrates your willingness and interest to work with different subject matter. Figures, self-portraits, still lifes, landscapes, interiors, are all excellent subjects to address in your portfolio. Admissions officers don’t want to see a portfolio of twenty self-portraits. A portfolio with only one topic comes across as narrow minded and limited. Most art schools will not expect you to already have expertise in the field you are planning on majoring in during college. For example, if you want to major in Graphic Design, your portfolio should not be 20 graphic design pieces. Instead, you want to demonstrate that you have a wide, well rounded skill set.
3) Every piece must be a finished work and be neatly presented.
Unless the school specifically requests to see images from a sketchbook, assume that they want to see finished works. Be sure that everything in your portfolio is a work that has been 100% fully realized. This means no white backgrounds, no dirty fingerprints, no random sketchbook drawings, no ripped edges, no half finished figures, etc. The quintessential problem I see in artwork by high school students is not bringing a piece of a full finish. The majority of students stop working on their projects prematurely, which leads to works that are unresolved. Read this article for more on how to bring your artwork to completion, and this article for techniques to determine when an artwork is finished.
4) Demonstrate versatility in a range of different media.
This exhibits that you have taken the initiative to learn and hone skills in contrasting media. It shows that you have more than one skill set, and can move fluidly from one media into the next. Include drawings, paintings, sculptures, mixed media, digital media, printmaking, or anything else that you’ve had experience with. Make sure that you have both black and white works, as well as works that display a full range of color.
5) Strong drawings are critical.
Accomplished drawings are above all else, the heart of a successful portfolio when applying at the undergraduate level. You might have 15 digital paintings, but none of that will matter if you have poor drawings. In terms of drawing media, the vast majority of high school students are creating tight, conservative, photo realistic pencil drawings drawn from photographs. If you avoid this, you will immediately distinguish yourself from the crowd.
Instead of limiting yourself to just drawing with pencil, experiment with other drawing materials such as charcoal, conte crayon, chalk pastels,Caran d’Ache crayons, etc. These drawing materials will distinguish you from the crowd, and get you to draw in a bolder, looser, more aggressive manner.
Read this article for how to practice drawing, and this article for how to motivate yourself to practice drawing. A high quality college level textbook written by two of my colleagues at RISD is “Drawing: Structure & Vision.” This book covers essential information and provides assignments and student drawing examples that can be a solid guide for you.
6) Have excellent digital photographs of your artwork.
One of my colleagues once said to me “As artists, we live and die by our photographs.” In a portfolio situation, this could not be more true. A poor photograph of your artwork is hugely distracting and can really make or break an admission officer’s initial reaction to the work. Ideally, it’s best to hire a professional photographer to shoot your photographs, but if you can’t afford that, you can purchase a kit with 2 stand lights with umbrellas to get proper lighting. These kits aren’t super cheap, but regular incandescent and florescent lighting is not sufficient to produce good photographs.
A quality photograph of your artwork will have 1) even lighting, 2) be neatly cropped in Photoshop, 3) be appropriately color balanced, 4) be in focus, 5) taken on a high quality digital camera.
Avoid these problems: 1) uneven lighting where cast shadows visible, 2) glare on oil paintings, 3) have distracting background behind the artwork, 4) have inaccurate color, 5) be out of focus, 6) taken on a smart phone.
Get help from an art teacher
Show your portfolio to an art teacher whose opinion you trust, and who has experience helping students get into an undergraduate program. They can aid you in weeding out the weaker works, and provide invaluable advice about what direction to head in. Don’t rely only on yourself to make decisions about what works go into your portfolio. Students can get easily stuck in their heads when looking at their own artwork, and frequently they aren’t able to make sound decisions. Another eye will provide a fresh perspective and objectivity to the evaluation process.
If you don’t have an art teacher who can help you with your portfolio, take a weekend or night class at a local art school, museum, or art center. Unfortunately, course offerings for high school students in the visual arts is frequently scarce, so you might actually do better taking an adult continuing education course aimed at a specific medium you’re looking to improve in, such as drawing. For most high school students, trying to do prepare a portfolio entirely on their own is daunting, and having the structure of a class can be enormously useful to stay on track.
National Portfolio Day
Finally, the real test of the strength of your portfolio is attending a local National Portfolio Day event, where representatives from art schools and colleges with solid art programs across the country are available to critique your portfolio in person. If you’re really serious about being accepted into a high caliber undergraduate art program, this is the event to go to. I recommend going in the fall of your junior year, just to get a feel for things, and then again in the fall of your senior year.
Be ready for very long lines and huge, overwhelming crowds. (especially at the big name schools like RISD) The first year that I went as a junior in high school, despite having waited 2 hours in line, I didn’t even get a review from RISD because the line was so obscenely long that at a certain point they just turned people away. The second year I went, having learned my lesson the year before, I went to wait in line for the doors to open two hours in advance-I was the first person in when the doors opened, and raced immediately to the RISD table.
At this event, brace yourself for harsh words. It’s not uncommon for students to be told at National Portfolio Day that they essentially have to start over from scratch because their portfolio is headed in the wrong direction. Reviewers will be candid and direct about the quality and type of work that their school is looking for, so don’t be discouraged if you get a tough critique. Rather, be glad that you got the feedback you needed to get yourself headed in the right direction. Be prepared for a wide range of different opinions, and critiquing styles. Some reviewers are concrete and helpful, while others can be less so. Even if you can’t get a review from your top schools because it’s so crowded, a review from any school is valuable. After I had hit my top schools, I stuck around and got reviews from several other schools and that additional feedback greatly enriched my experience there.
Related articles:
“Preparing an art portfolio for college admission”
“What are common mistakes in college portfolio submissions?”
“What is the purpose of a degree in fine art?”
“7 tips for surviving art school.”
“Should I drop out of art school?”
