Accepted RISD Portfolio 2019 - Walkthrough

hi my name is Michelle and back in March I was accepted to the Rhode Island School of Design otherwise known as RISD and it's rather well known for its fine art and design programs although unfortunately I will not be going I still wanted to share my portfolio and all the things I learned especially for any aspiring artists out there please keep in mind that I am NOT an admissions officer and what I have to say is based on my observations only also not everything I did will work for you learn from my shortcomings and take only what you like understand what makes you different and embrace it the art portion of your application consists of two parts the first is your portfolio and this is composed of twelve to twenty pieces of art that express your full range of ideas interests and experiences the second is the assignment and these are pieces you make based on a prompt or RISD gives you lastly I'm just going to touch base on why I decided not to go in the end moving on to my first piece sweet dreams pretty much sums up how I felt during the application process it's rather simple but my main goal was to capture emotion this past year I've been trying to make sure that everything I draw has a story to it I think it's taking a step further than just focusing on aesthetics and as far as I know the RISD cares about how well you draw but also how well you're able to convey a message so if you ask any art school for advice they're going to tell you to avoid copying from the photo that's why this piece was copied from several photos but in all seriousness I do agree with them when you are directly copying from someone else's work you are using their perspective to interpret the world so what you create really isn't yours however I think using photographic references is still okay as long as you do one of the following either you transform the photograph or you take your own here's what I did I knew that I wanted to make something personal and relevant to my own culture so I went to the local night market event for inspiration and took lots of photographs then I combined the photos I did like and try to exaggerate the features and the people and form them I do feel like what I have drawn is somewhat stereotypical of Asian culture but as someone distant from my own heritage this is what I saw and this is what I chose to express I hope that when you look at this you can feel the heat the sweat the smoke as I did that night physically being there allowed me to use more senses than sight and I think my piece benefited greatly from that RISD did give me feedback about this piece in particular they told me that the white space in the background was problematic and I agree it does dampen the excitement and the emotion in the center and it's hard to completely get lost in the color I didn't change anything however because I thought adding wrong would ruin the composition moving on I was really proud of this piece when I first finished but looking back I think it looks really crusty message of this piece is much less personal than the previous I just wanted to note the cyclical nature of violence and more generally of our lives the Ravens associated with death Forman egg shape a symbol for life but this was more show of technical ability than anything else like with the previous piece RISD also critiqued my use of white space here now I don't think white space is necessarily bad as long as you use it in a way that adds the composition the white space and mine is just there it doesn't do anything if I had more time I would also continue to work on the transition between finer details and smoke and also on the more detailed part so that it wouldn't look as crusty for this piece I wanted to use a completely different style from what I'm used to so I look to art history specifically to Edvard mook and Van Gogh for inspiration this was very much experimental and it was based on an old photograph of my mother which I then transformed I did this piece quite a while ago and it's only purpose if I'm being completely honest is to show off my technical yes I want to show that I am creative but also I want to show that I have the skill to support my creativity even though it's a simple plaster cast I made sure the statue was posed in a way so that it's still captured a story generally it's a good idea to have some live drawings in your portfolio first of all it shows your understanding of anatomy and also your willingness to learn I should also mention this RISD generally expects more detailed works so including short gesture drawings isn't really recommended I certainly haven't seen anyone include them in their portfolio the heist was rushed in two weeks when I realized that I had no still lives or landscapes because these kinds of paintings are so common in portfolios I asked myself how am I going to make myself stand out with my still life so naturally I focus on the story behind the items I used I have no idea how unique this painting actually is when you submit your pieces to slide room they will also give you a bit of space to write about your work and to spice things up this was part of the description I wrote for this piece standing innocently over the broken porcelain is mr. Piggy benign bystander or fraudulent swine my next piece has actually been with us the entire time if lost please return home is a school assignment nearly half my works are and what I really like about school assignments is that they come with a lot of restrictions I definitely feel like I make a lot more creative decisions when there are rules to follow [Music] battery bar seemed way too similar to my first piece but on portfolio day when I got my work reviewed representatives from multiple schools said that it was fine and that I should include it they specifically liked the anonymity of the figure the last piece I included was departure and basically I just wanted to show my range in terms of media style and concepts in terms of border I recommend a combination of two ways to structure your portfolio from best to worst and also by category or story for me it just made sense to have all my life drawings in one section 3d working another etc and within those loose categories I put my best work at the front always always always start your portfolio strong Rizzy told me that sweet dreams was one of my strongest and it was especially fitting because story wise it portrays the beginning that being said also and your portfolio strong I'm not sure if this was comparatively very strong to the rest but it's name was departure and I could not resist [Applause] let's talk about the assignment for 2018 to 2019 Rizzy released three prompts Forge error and verify these change every year so if you're applying this year you'll find out what the new prompts are sometime near the end of summer or beginning of fall what you need to do is choose one of the prompts and make two creative responses I chose error and as it turns out most people did please note that here your conceptual ideas matter more than how pretty the final product looks my first response evolution explores the idea that mistakes are essential to progress the hands of the clock depict a bird flying into the distance and although the clock does not tell time the flying bird is certainly a step forwards from the motionless flightless birds at the bottom including commercial graphic design work like posters in your portfolio isn't recommended no matter which major you plan to pursue at RISD in your later years they just want to see your art but the thing is I've been doing graphic design for clubs at school for so long I really wanted to show RISD those abilities I didn't think my portfolio would be a complete reflection of me otherwise that's how the idea for this piece came to be I wanted to design a set of stack boxes and arrange them in a way so that they would appear to be glitching over all the piece aims to provide a critique on consumers culture I wanted to distort the perfect copy/paste quality of mass-produced products to suggest to the destructive effects of consumers before I end off the art section I have one last piece of advice attend national portfolio day if he can the reps there we'll be able to at the very most reassure you or at the very least point you in the right direction risky wasn't actually able to come to my region so what I did and said was submit my work to a Ken you're allowed to submit five pieces for review to almost any North American art school let me say this RISD gives really good feedback they put words to all the things I couldn't quite pinpoint in the end I chose not to go and to be honest it was a pretty straightforward decision I have always wanted to go into animation and miraculously I was accepted into my top choice animation program at Cal arts also tuition is high and RISD doesn't offer entry scholarships to international students although I'm still extremely privileged to be able to afford this kind of education the money just wasn't worth it this being said there's so many good things about RISD it's shared campus with brown the nature lab exchange programs the fact that you can spend your first year exploring before you settle on a major at the end of the day RISD is just a school you can sure help keep go places but it isn't the only way to success and getting in shouldn't mean everything it's been more than a year since I started building my portfolio and all I can say is that this process is hellish but also incredibly rewarding regardless of results I've improved so much by forcing myself to carve out time in my daily life to draw and by spending every moment awake during the winter break drawing at the speed of light because I spent a bit too much time being a potato over the summer has taught me that I'll do anything for it because I love it if you have any questions please do ask me in the comments below while I've seen and best of luck [Music] you [Music]

Channel: lemoncholy

Views: 464,858

Rating: 4.9784665 out of 5

Keywords: RISD, Accepted RISD Portfolio, Portfolio, Art, Art School

Id: vYTBWMcAy8I

Length: 9min 47sec (587 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 22 2019