Portfolio

In selecting my art work for my portfolio it's important to choose work that I enjoyed creating and work that has a theme throughout. I collected all of my favourite pieces and analysed which pieces would work well together in a portfolio.
I decided to use double page spreads from one of my children's books and some more recent children's book characters. I am also including animal illustrations and a few more detailed pieces of work. All of these pieces I really enjoyed doing and I think show my style throughout. I have scanned the artwork into the computer, 300dpi. I have used Photoshop to neaten up and crop some of the images as there are a few smudge marks on the backgrounds of some of the originals. I will then position each image on its own blank page so that they have an equal border all the way around the image.
Below is the order in which I will present my work. In the physical portfolio, some images will be landscape and some portrait. I have ensured that in each section (children's, animals and miscellaneous) the landscape images are first and all face the same way and then the portrait images are after. This ensures as less hassle as possible with having to turn the portfolio to see the image. I am also using an A4 portfolio as this makes the portfolio easy to carry and handle and doesn't require much space. I don't have any large pieces of artwork so the images wont be compromised being printed A4 size.

 

I'm very pleased with my portfolio. I believe it shows my skills and preferred ways of working. I also think that the layout of my portfolio presents my artwork in the best way possible, starting with my children's illustration as this is where I want to focus my illustration career, then animal illustration and finishing with a few pieces that follow the same style but don't have a particular theme. Hopefully, once I have completed my Final Major Project; being a children's book, I will have some more pieces of artwork to add to my portfolio.

I will be attending The London Book Fair 2016 on 13th April. There will be an Illustration Symposium with Art Directors who will be available to look through my portfolio and give me some feedback on what they like or don't like about my work, and hopefully will give me some pointers on things to possibly improve on or keep the same because they really like it!
In the past some students have also managed to get some work from showing their portfolios at this event so hopefully I may also be successful like past students.
I will also be using my portfolio to show potential clients the sort of work I do and also illustration agencies to help me get my career started as an illustrator.