Building Your Portfolio Parent & Student Review March - 24th, 6:00 - 8:00PM
This Event is for 10th and 11th Grade Students
Here Are The Projects We Will Be Expecting To See....
In-Class Assignments
Homework Assignments
Your portfolio represents you to a college as a potential student and young artist. Preparing your portfolio should be an exciting and thoughtful process that you engage in both in art classes in school and on your own at home. Most students will have completed 10 finished pieces for every one that is actually included in the final portfolio.
Selecting what to include should not be a nerve-racking experience. Most art programs will want to see works that fall into three distinct categories: observational art, personal art or a home exam. Some colleges will require a combination of two or three categories, and others will want to see only one category.
Young artists are usually their own worst critics and should follow the advice of their admissions counselors at the colleges they are applying to regarding what to include in their portfolio. Students tend to edit pieces based on their own personal aesthetics and not on what the colleges are looking for in an artwork. Admission counselors are trained to know what their admissions committee is looking for in a prospective student and can help edit a portfolio to meet the committees needs.
Category One: Observational Art
Observational art is drawing or painting in a traditional method using a still life, figure model, portrait or landscape as the subject and rendering the subject as accurately as possible. The image should not be taken from a photograph or the artists' imagination, but from real life. Size of the artwork should be approximately 18" x 24" or larger in scale and fill the entire surface of the paper or canvas. Most work in this category is done in pencil, charcoal, or other drawing mediums, but it can also include painting and collage.
Category Two: Personal Art
Personal art is the work done outside of a classroom situation and reflects the artists' unique interests in use of materials, subject matter and concept. Work can be completed in any media including (but not limited to) drawing, painting, photography, mixed media, digital/computer art, film/video, ceramics, sculpture, animation and performance art.
Category Three: Home Exam
The home exam consists of specific work that has been required by a particular college or department. (Example: Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in the past has asked that all portfolios include a drawing of a "bicycle".)
Note on photographic works:
Photographic pieces should be works that are shot and printed by you the artist (do not use photographs printed at photo labs.) When it comes to photography, schools are just as interested in why you chose the subject matter as in how well it was printed. You should always attach a brief description (typed) on the back of each photograph explaining why you made that particular print or series of prints.