Two key expectations for each review are that you 1) can use the vocabulary of art and design to talk with confidence and clarity about the designs or artwork in your portfolio and 2) can follow guidelines to present a professional quality portfolio of your work. Watch the following brief videos for a demonstration of how to discuss the formal qualities of a design or a work of art using relevant vocabulary.
- Demonstration of generally how to discuss a drawing or a design
- Demonstration of how to talk specifically about a Keystone Project from ART 105
Shortly below, you find links to samples of high quality Foundation Review portfolios. What makes these high quality portfolios are essential features, listed below, that you should match when developing your own portfolio:
- High quality work from each of your courses, especially Keystone Projects (even if you don’t have consistently strong works, the way you present your works makes a huge difference in how our works are received by the faculty or art professionals)
- High quality photos of 1) works from each of your courses, especially Keystone Projects, and of 2) Process Works (preparatory sketches, thumbnails, and studies you created to arrive at the final version)
- All photos of your works should be taken with good lighting and set against a neutral background. Even then, the photos should be edited for proper contrast and color and have precise cropping.
- Good photos of your works will NEVER exhibit cast shadows, wrinkled or damaged art, torn edges, uneven lighting, or other objects beyond the work of art
- Artworks should be displayed as large as possible within the slide frame, leaving sufficient room for proper labeling (see sample portfolios)
- Providing more than one view of any three-dimensional artworks is not just permissible, it is helpful
- Slides of Process Works should always appear immediately before the slide of the finished product; it is useless to include Process Works in the portfolio if you aren’t including the final product
Here are two successful portfolios submitted in past years. The names have been changed.