10 Tips to a Killer College Portfolio 😤

hey guys and welcome back to my channel two things before I get into the meat potatoes of this video first pray for me that the Sun stays out you know how in my videos it like sometimes looks really nice and it'll get really dark and it'll go back to be nice it's called clouds I'm very dependent on the Sun so let's often if this stays up second for those of you who are new to living on your own and getting your first apartment everything be careful when buying toilet paper that you're not accidentally buying paper towel rolls like I did my apartment now has enough paper towel rolls to give to a small army and it looks kind of ridiculous in our kitchen right now so yeah you know be really careful and actually read the fine print okay so now that I've gone to that let's get into the real topic which is what to do to make sure that your portfolio covers all the bases because there are a lot of things that professors want to see and if you can just tick all those boxes you're gonna be real golden and guess what it's still July so if you have any gaps you have enough time to get that crap together so that you can present something really amazing in the fall and get into the school your drinks so let's get into that before we do though I have to say subscribing I know you were waiting for it you do a lot of videos now twice every freaking week it's kind of astonishing so if you want to get notifications for that you're gonna have to not only subscribe but hit the goddamn bell icon please do that for me okay thank you alright so there's a lot of things that you have to be covered I have a little bit of a list Deepu here so let's get through it first things first do your drawings have backgrounds that goes for still lifes and that also goes for personal work if you have just a litany of drawings that have white backgrounds or like maybe you did a pattern or something but it doesn't really count as a background that's a red flag to a professor because it shows that you're not putting in the full work and it also shows that you know how to do a background I think you're scared of it I remember when I was at a portfolio review day I was behind this one girl and she was showing her work to the professor and I thought her work was amazing because it was like hyper-realistic gorgeous gorgeous drawings but immediately the professor was like um do you have any drawings with backgrounds and I noticed every single one of her gorgeous asked her didn't have backgrounds it was all white or she didn't unlike wallpaper or whatever to like kind of fill the gap and I was a really big red flag and she got roasted so you don't want to be in her position look at all of your drawings including your still eggs and your personal work and say to yourself like do I have backgrounds if you're doing it still like just like you don't have to do a lot of work just kind of like fuzzy in some shapes in the background that kind of implies like it's in a space it's in a room I'm not telling you to go the extra mile just make sure they have something there next thing that's important is take a look at your compositions are they all central because they shouldn't be one thing I noticed a lot when people are doing still lifes is that they tend to like set up like a fruit or something in the middle of a table and then they draw and like if this is the piece of paper the fruit is like dead center and that's kind of a problem because it looks boring you could have a really really boring still life with like fruits flowers a bone like all of like your really stereotypical objects but if you do a really killer composition it will transcend it will look so much freakin better and that's not a lot of work the video that I did about how to do still lifes easily I talked about using your viewfinder all I gotta do is just whoom your viewfinder around until you find something that looks a little edgy one trick that I found from a professor was he was always like make sure that whatever your subject matter is make sure that it's touching all edges of the paper that way even if it is technically sexual at least you don't have that god-awful like green void space that just goes around like a frigging doughnut it's not a good look and it's okay some things are central to the composition if it just happens to be like that's really crucial to whatever you're portraying but ideally try to have something follow like the rule of thirds or giving it like maybe put your object kind of in the lower half and then have a lot of space up top experiment with different compositions just so that the very least you are entertaining the professor's looking at your stuff remember these professors have not only looked at hundreds if not thousands of applications they've been looking at these applications for like decades they've seen everything so make sure you're trying to do something that's going to tain them a little bit you want to be memorable next is do you have a light source and or are you using a full range of values something that a lot of people tend to kind of skimp on is lighting they won't draw the shadows they'll just forget they won't have a clear light source so everything just kind of looks like it's this one world and that's not very exciting the easiest thing you can do to make your stuff look really good and pop is having a nice rich shadow and a strong light source it'll just glow on the page and it'll be like look at me I'm special it's a really good look to have and you want to show that you can do light and shadows and value and value of course means that you're using the full spectrum of light to dark really dark darks really light lights not every single drawing needs to have a full spectrum of values I wouldn't really encourage it but if your professors looking at your artwork and all they see is just like gray tones or they see that you're really only using like three grays and you're not getting up here white or a pair of dark they're gonna they're not gonna be very impressed it's all gonna kind of glaze over it doesn't have that pop that's a very easy way to add some pop if you have drawings already that are finished just add a little bit of darkness and add a little bit of light and it'll really do a lot of work for you I promise next thing is you need to show a range of mediums so a lot of times we tend to stick to one or two mediums you probably have like your favorite medium that used for did personal work and then you probably have your favorite medium for like still-life slash traditional work right it might be charcoal it might be pencil it might be watercolor I don't care so our professors want to see that you can do more you want to convince them that you're a pro at least or maybe not so amateur that you haven't even touched like an acrylic paint you know so take a look at what you have so far aim to do I would say at least four different mediums do like a painting do a regular drawing get those two at least you need to have it at least if you're gonna do 4 try to have to dry mediums to wet mediums and it doesn't have to be like your standard acrylic watercolor charcoal pencil like it doesn't have to be necessarily those I remember for my portfolio had some digital work and that digital work included kind of like digital photography collage thingy is where I like fused drawings with photography in Photoshop and I kind of made it look like it was the liar or whatever the heck that counts so it doesn't have to be necessarily physical medium it could be a digital medium just to show them that you can do more than one trick you do not want to be a one-trick pony this is not the time next thing is human figure do you have examples of drawing the human form and by that I don't necessarily mean just character work I mean like literally drawings of a model now you might be thinking in yourself Fionna I don't have a model that I can draw my school doesn't do figure drawing there's no figure drawing in my channel blah blah blah first off there might actually be a figure drawing available to you do a tiny bit of research you might be surprised some art museums are like smaller galleries do human figure drawings on like weekends or something like that it's worth it to take a look around if you can't go in with the good drawing class I have great news for you you probably have friends or family members that are couch potatoes and you can draw them in a comfortable resting position of being on the couch or lying in bed doing your homework on their laptop watching TV etc if you mean a model go to them as your source and try please to get a live model it's very very obvious when someone uses a photograph because with a photograph you're going from 2d to 2d so your drawing will look very flat because it's it never had a chance to have a 3d form but they go from 3d to 2d your professors will know again they have looked at portfolios for eons now they can tell the difference so try to draw from life try to put one human figure in there and by human figure ideally it should be the whole body don't just do a portrait because that doesn't show very much you're only showing like one the body try to do like one full-length and maybe do like another drawing of like some specialized thing with maybe just some hands or feet or a head or something like that or like half of a torso you know what I mean try to show some human figuring just get whoever you can this next one is important but make sure you have enough personal work and that it's showing your personal voices and artists when you are thinking about going into college you're probably thinking only one of two things either I need to show up all of my personal work because I still I've suck or I only have two legs because that's all my school has ever made me do and I have like no personal work you need to have a good 50/50 split I remember for colleges you need to have something when 18 to 20 pieces it might be depending on like what school you're in but you need to have roughly half and a half so if you look a lot of still lights but you only have the three personal pieces that you actually like you need to beef up in that section because more than anything professors want to see that you have a voice if you have artwork that's like not stellar like you're really just not very good at drawing still lifes are drawing human figures and stuff like that but your personal work is bomb and they've never seen anything like it they will really appreciate that because they'd much rather have an artist who has a voice then someone who is a human printer quite frankly you want to show that you have a vision that you have likes and dislikes maybe you're really into drawing like fairytale kind of things maybe you're more of a comic artist maybe you love realism and you love doing portraiture I don't know what your thing is but show them that you have thing this next one engaging us to life do you have still lifes that are interesting I have a whole video about still lifes and how to make them easy and in that video I touched upon how to make your still life some more creative part of that is composition but also it's just doing interesting kind of subject matter or something interesting things on the page it might be a collection of all of your favorite objects in the house like maybe you have like a collection of keychains and you can just like line them up and show them in your still life or maybe you really really like the color pink and you just have us to like the pink objects I don't know what your thing is what you need to do some interesting still lives another thing that I when I was in line for the pool every day there was this girl in front of me and she got roasted because all of her still lifes were like bouquets of flowers which you might think to yourself like flowers are gorgeous of course that's a good idea but again these professors have seen everything and they are sick to death of certain objects including flowers and bowls of fruit so you need to show them something different pick just the weirdest object in your house look around find some kind of knick-knack that makes no frigging sense every family has one find a whole bunch of random objects and create a mobile or something kind of like those things that like if you're a baby you stare up and they're kind of like Hank do something strange and interesting something to get them excited because again you need to impress them and you need to make an impression on them you don't want them to forget you in five seconds not good next thing there are different textures so when you're setting up you're still like it's kind of easy to grab a lot of things that are gonna plastic for example or maybe you grab a whole lot of like glass or something like that make sure you have a range of textures across your still lifes have fuzzy objects have shiny objects have sticky objects have glass or reflective things have would have rubber try to get as many different materials as possible because that way you can show them that you can render different materials and if you can't render different materials and how is the time to kind of try to figure that stuff out because they need to be able to see that you have the skills to show someone that this object has a very different texture from another object if a fuzzy little little Bambi looks like the exact same as I don't know a glass cup you're in trouble so they need to see that you can do different textures it's very important and it's a small thing just make sure that you're picking out different stuff when you're setting up your still life the last thing on my list is color it's very easy when you're doing still life to just kind of gravitate towards graphite or charcoal because those are like the standard kind of things I don't know that's probably not the right word but like people tend to do that kind of stuff and maybe you're just not a big fan of color period but to show them that you can do color because the last thing you want to do is have your professors be like do they understand color theory like at all are they that afraid of color that they just don't want to use it please please look at the stuff that you have and make sure that there's a lot of pieces that have full color because you begin I sound like a broken record here but you need to show them what you can do bottom line with your portfolio you need to show a huge range of talent and skills you might not be the best at all of those things that's not the point the point is that you're not at least afraid of it that you don't even want to do it you got to show them at least a little bit of something because if you don't show them something they're gonna be like well I guess this person is too just can't do it at all the other thing of course is personal work I said this before but you need to show who you are as a person if you are crap at still ways you can save yourself by doing a really amazing personal work again you still have time this summer to crank out some pieces if you are missing some gaps so put in it like this is like the final sprint it's like the end of July this last month or whatever how much time you have try to put in some more time to fill in the gaps I was just talking about in this video so here's your homework assignment besides doing work go to the comments section and we for those of you who have gotten into college leave some comments down below of some really interesting things that you did to make your portfolio stand out did you have a really weird composition did you I don't know melt a whole bunch of toy action figures and draw that like what did you do to be different and be a standout and leave some advice if you heard it from your professors at portfolio review days let's make the comments section just a gigantic melting pot of really amazing advice so that all of us could get into the school of our dreams with a full ride scholarship I wish I wish and if you need some more help I have a vintage be on a video of portfolio review days if you happen to be going to one this summer or in the fall this would be a very good video to help you out if you're scared about what what the heck could portfolio review day is so watch that video watch mr. lights video watch all my videos by subscribing to this channel and I'll see you in the next video I a lot on Instagram and Tumblr if you want to see more of my artwork I also have an Etsy and I post twice every week on Wednesdays and Sundays so good luck and I'll see you in the next video guys bye

Channel: Biana Bova

Views: 80,017

Rating: 4.9386191 out of 5

Keywords: college, art school, art major, art college, university, 10 tips, ten tips, advice, portfolio, art portfolio, artist, illustration, art, drawing, sketching, still life, human figure, biana, bianabova, biana bova, art advice, art tips, portfolio review, portfolio review day, college application, college portfolio, killer college portfolio

Id: U-QIgQGHx6o

Length: 14min 48sec (888 seconds)

Published: Wed Jul 25 2018