If you're an aspiring illustrator and need to create a portfolio or you're tired of the one you've got and need to entirely revamp it, here's a tried-and-true strategy for building a portfolio fairly quickly within a year's time. This method also works for building a body of work for an upcoming gallery show:
1. Make a list of 100 wonderful image ideas. This list should be a fairly direct reflection of your aesthetics and influences and what you want to look at. Love landscapes and natural places? Make a list of all the real and imagined places you'd like to "see" in paint. Love mythology and spirituality? Make a list of all the interesting deities and or arcana that you think would be cool to visualize. Love pirates and mermaids? ... You get it.
In doing this exercise, your content, if you didn't already know what it was, will begin to emerge through the subject matter. This is your theme, and more often than not it is a mashup of several things. For example, you may enjoy painting sweeping landscapes *and* women on horseback. This means that you are either interested in the Southwestern genre of painting or, changing a few of the details, perhaps the historical or fantasy genre. How realistically you paint, how much historical accuracy you engage in, can determine the philosophical direction in which you go.
2. Cherry-pick the best ideas and begin making sketches / drawings. Do this until you have at least 50 drawings. Some ideas will turn out to be duds and other, more innocuous ideas, may turn out to be spectacular. Keep drawing. Don't worry about anatomical accuracy yet. Don't use reference. At this stage you are only designing the idea and getting it directly out of your head and onto paper. You can go back later and grex over all the specifics and details. Work on standard 8 x 10 paper or similar-- not too big-- a sketchbook size. (If you're working on old-fashioned paper, be sure you love the feel of it. Suggestion: smooth vellum is awesome.) It may take you six months to work this out.
Yes, this will be the most difficult part of this process for most, but it gets easier once you begin to identify the creative elements that "move you" to make art in the first place. 50 drawings is really not such a crazy idea. You will need this many drawings in this mode of thinking - and perhaps more-- to get comfortable with who you are as an artist and what makes you tick. (If you're not a "linear" thinker and prefer value patches, then by all means, make small b&w studies in a different medium; the method will still work.)
3. Then, you will cherry-pick the top 10- 15 drawings to execute in color. Depending on the degree of finish that you gave the drawings, you may have to tighten them up. At this stage, bolt down any specifics for the painting, like value structure, anatomy, perspective, etc., so that your "blueprint" will be as effective as you need it. Refer often to artists whose color / facture work inspires and educates you.
That's it. Plan a year for this process, 6 months if you're fast. It works.
Have fun creating!
1. Make a list of 100 wonderful image ideas. This list should be a fairly direct reflection of your aesthetics and influences and what you want to look at. Love landscapes and natural places? Make a list of all the real and imagined places you'd like to "see" in paint. Love mythology and spirituality? Make a list of all the interesting deities and or arcana that you think would be cool to visualize. Love pirates and mermaids? ... You get it.
In doing this exercise, your content, if you didn't already know what it was, will begin to emerge through the subject matter. This is your theme, and more often than not it is a mashup of several things. For example, you may enjoy painting sweeping landscapes *and* women on horseback. This means that you are either interested in the Southwestern genre of painting or, changing a few of the details, perhaps the historical or fantasy genre. How realistically you paint, how much historical accuracy you engage in, can determine the philosophical direction in which you go.
2. Cherry-pick the best ideas and begin making sketches / drawings. Do this until you have at least 50 drawings. Some ideas will turn out to be duds and other, more innocuous ideas, may turn out to be spectacular. Keep drawing. Don't worry about anatomical accuracy yet. Don't use reference. At this stage you are only designing the idea and getting it directly out of your head and onto paper. You can go back later and grex over all the specifics and details. Work on standard 8 x 10 paper or similar-- not too big-- a sketchbook size. (If you're working on old-fashioned paper, be sure you love the feel of it. Suggestion: smooth vellum is awesome.) It may take you six months to work this out.
Yes, this will be the most difficult part of this process for most, but it gets easier once you begin to identify the creative elements that "move you" to make art in the first place. 50 drawings is really not such a crazy idea. You will need this many drawings in this mode of thinking - and perhaps more-- to get comfortable with who you are as an artist and what makes you tick. (If you're not a "linear" thinker and prefer value patches, then by all means, make small b&w studies in a different medium; the method will still work.)
3. Then, you will cherry-pick the top 10- 15 drawings to execute in color. Depending on the degree of finish that you gave the drawings, you may have to tighten them up. At this stage, bolt down any specifics for the painting, like value structure, anatomy, perspective, etc., so that your "blueprint" will be as effective as you need it. Refer often to artists whose color / facture work inspires and educates you.
That's it. Plan a year for this process, 6 months if you're fast. It works.
Have fun creating!
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