Portfolio

Physical Portfolio

I was feeling excited and anxious in equal measures at the prospect of putting my portfolio together.

Excited to actually collating my best achievements into one thing for all to see.

Anxious because I wondered if there would be enough work quality enough to put in, or too much and how would I choose, and what if there is not a distinctive and unique style in my illustrations, what if none likes it etc. etc. You get the idea, and I expect I was not alone with these thoughts.

The great thing about his module is that it is practical. In as far as all you actually have to do is compile and format illustrations you have already completed. Fortunately I am vaguely anally retentive in my digital and physical filing systems, so laying my hands on my works wasn't fairly easy. Digging out work from the first year being the most challenging because it lives in the folders underneath the other two years work, and there is rather a lot! I did actually reorganise my studio considerably when I realised that access to these folders just wasn't functioning as it ought to, but its done now and so much easier. I set up folders on my computer desktop, "Portfolio FINALE" and another within this, "FOR WEB RGB".

Planning the flow and order of my illustrations

My end of year project from the first year and everything else thereafter was already in a digital format, so there was a bit of scanning in to start off with. Its great to have it all digitally now, I might scan in the other pieces at some point, as its an ideal way to back everything up, and later on I can chuck out the less exciting work and still have copies.

I did find that a couple of files were too small, and did a little dance of panic, but on further investigation found that backups of my old dongle folders (always worth keeping these, even if the work is duplicated, so glad I did!!) had earlier versions.

I then systematically opened, checked, reformatted, tweaked, resized and saved every file. Remembering to save RGB for web and CMYK for printing. After printing out a whole set I took them to show my tutor George, who advised me on what to keep/throw out and an order to display them in.

I bought some half decent paper; wanted acid free archive type printer paper, but it was not available at three different shops, and I think I will have to buy it online. That said, the prints will suffice for the purpose of presentation on 9th March.

Fun, games, and a few expletives whilst printing for real, but I wouldn't expect any less drama when printing, it always takes 4 times longer than expected and something always goes wrong. But knowing this in advance, I had allowed an entire day and was feeling pretty chilled out about it, even plonking a chair beside the printer when I had neglected to select the bypass tray and had to watch the entire contents of my portfolio print out (at my expense) on the wrong paper! Yawn.

Planning the flow and order of my illustrations

In the end it took 3/4 of the day with a quick dash to school at lunchtime to rescue a poorly child being sent home for the day. Except I had to bring her to college to finish the printing, she wasn't especially impressed, she did get lots of hugs though and has forgiven me since.

Dan Crawford, fellow illustration student, and highly repeated, by me, was enlisted to assist me with the order and flow of my illustrations. It always helps to have at least one other pair of eyes looking; particularly when you have spent several weeks staring at the same images. I knew what I wanted to achieve and it was a challenge because I have a range of styles. Each style is consistent and they are all fundamentally the same. My preference is to work with pencil, charcoal and chalk or pen and ink. I then colour these by gum arabic printing and digitally editing. The outcomes appear to me so varied. However Dan said he could see a very strong and consistent identity.

I decided to opt for an A4 sized traditional portfolio with the heavy plastic ring bound inserts. A significant change from my A1 for my foundation interview and A2 for the interview for this degree. Remembering years of carting about heavy and cumbersome folders, it was a liberating decision.

Also, considering that the majority of printed and published illustrations will be reproduced this size and smaller, it was an interesting experiment to see which illustrations still look good and which didn't.