So!! My painting TA told me last week that he believes if I put together an illustration portfolio, I'm sure to get jobs. Those were his words. And so, I wanna make a portfolio! Problem: the images he saw when he said that? I no longer have hi-res files for them because of computer issues and being an idiot, and also they weren't nearly enough for a full portfolio, and also they're old and - though I haven't made many illustration-style pieces during the period - I have improved leaps and bounds for the past year or so. However, since the past year has involved a lot of experimentation with materials and techniques to me, all my Good Art currently is all over the place and that doesn't sit well with portfolio-ing. So, like a good perfectionist nutcase, I want to make a portfolio from scratch! I would also like to not be bogged down by too much perfectionism. So, accountability! I'll make 12 to 15 pieces, depending. I don't have a set deadline, but I wanna work on it at least a little bit every day. And as such, I want to be able to update people on my progress. Idea bank (I won't necessarily do all f these, and won't necessarily do them like I'm describing them): watercolor from a pencil drawing I made for drawing class of 2 girls by the beach something with lesbians and baking - somewhat aerial shot, lots of pastries, some furniture of a cute bakery, challenge myself with an intricate and cluttered background possibly something with the Romeo and nonbinary!AMAB!Juliet from the play I went to see twice this week. 3 illustrations of the same fairytale or short story... but... WHICH short story... hnnng... Beauty and the Beast, of fucking course A few illustrations with ellaborate costumes from my fashion tag - in fact, try to reference my fashion tag on tumblr for ALL the pieces, as much as possible SOMETHING without people, just animals (wolves? cats?). Set at night, tall trees, witchy atmosphere, lots of negative space, some luna moths probably. Something where the focus is on objects which tell a story, and the figure is at the very background of the piece illustrating the poem "Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird" (esp. "a man and a woman are one...") something with a family composed of gay guys and children, I really want my portfolio to be VERY GAY and this could also be more challenging, several people Rose-person; very atmospheric, more about mood and decoration than telling a story A piece with this kind of composition, about tea and tea-drinking (ft. all types of cups and mugs) Tarot cards inspired by one of my dreams: the magician (holding a white box with red ribbon) and the high priestess (inside a tent of multicolored fabrics, with twinkly lights) something with dancers and dancing, very centered on figure and lightning and not on storytelling or backgrounds
I will post one tonight! I wanted to do lots of work yesterday but was hit with a massive headache and neglected portfolio work, haha.
WIP #1 ! Cute fat girl having tea. She's gonna have tea plant blossoms in her hair and the background circles will be filled with different kinds of teacups. The middle of the circle was gonna be filled with a tea plant but I have decided that that would be too much clutter. Maybe have the plant as a motif in the top and bottom, outside the circle? There will definitely be SOMETHING there, so... I messed up the nape of her neck: tried to add some baby hairs, they looked ridiculous. I have covered it up with white gel pen and will cover it up further with paint. My good watercolors are in my locker at art school so I won't get to paint this until after I retrieve them tomorrow night. However, I'm... thinking about trying to paint most of it with tea rather than watercolor paint? At least the most sepia-y bits of the background and some of the skintones. I have enough different kinds of tea to yield purples, reds, oranges, yellows and browns. I loved seein you guys' replies here! <3
Detail of the camelias! Each flower has the diameter of two of my fingers so they're really small and delicate! I am instantly 200 times happier with this piece
Well, this is what the day's efforts resulted in! The background outside the circle will be done in just watercolors (and tea staining) so the only thing I still need to ink for this piece are the 2 topmost circles. Coloring is faster but I'm not sure if I'll get a chance to color this before Wednesday, when I have some time off. This doesn't mean I won't work on other pieces before that, sketching and inking!
Accountability upd8: didn't work in the thing at all today becaise I graded 50 pages and my eyes are hurting a bit for some reason? They feel kinda dry. However, yesterday I recovered a WIP I had stored in my art room locker (along with my good watercolors) and which I had painted while feeling so crappy that I couldn't even judge its quality at all - and turns out it looks pretty great! So it's gonna count as a portfolio piece :D Tomorrow I'll have some hours to work on the tea illustration, and from then on my plans are: - finish the WIP I mentioned - start working a picture of black angels (inspired by Ertha Kitt's quote about only seeing pictures of white angels, and also by beautiful people on my fashion tag on tumblr) Oh I had a cool idea just now! For composition fun, an aerial shot of 3 people hanging, 2 out playing videogames and one readong a book, featuring Companiable silence and a friendly atmosphere. I can even reference an old drawing of mine of the DnD crew. Also re fairytale illustration, I'm thinking rather than Beauty and the Beast to maybe do a more obscure fairytale so I cam feel a bit less overwhelmed by its legacy of preexisting illustrations. I considered stuff from the Arabian Nights but all the tales I like are so super long, it would be hard to convey them in 3 images or so. So now I'm thinking one of Angela Carter's tales because they're so visually rich and inspiring... Again, I won't necessarily do every piece I come up with here, I'm just tossing reference ideas around and seeing what sticks.
Almost finished! Only the little miniature still-lives in the circles are left. They'll be made entirely in sepia tones, but I want to do that tomorrow in order to Take a Break. I kinda love how the colors turned out, it's looking to me a lot like a vintage ad.
Update yesterday I finished 2 things. Today however I kinda wanna take a break and do 0 things! HOW DO.
Followin this! I'm really liking this accountability thread concept, once i'm back from vacation I'mma make one just do a tiny bit of thing! Do like 5 mins of thing, eventually just doing at least a bit of thing will be habit!
Thanks for the excellent advice! I did 2 sketches it turns out, and a little bit of a 3rd. In the end, rather than illustrating Beauty and the Beast per se, I am illustrating kind of a mix of it and of one of Angela Carter's playful takes on it - "The Courthship of Mr. Lyon".
Just dropping in to make clear that I did work on portfolio things every day of not posting, except on Saturday, when I had class in the morning and friend things in the evening and ended up spending the afternoon napping. But what I've done with these few days is work on sketches, making and refining them, and like... my sketches for watercolor pieces are pretty illegible to anyone but me. I can see the progress but my experience with client work is that they'll look at a sketch and go "um sure I guess, I mean, I don't really get it??" and that's why no pics so far. Expect actual pictures tomorrow ;D
Well! The day after I posted "expect pics tomorrow" I got hit with a very bad skin infection upside the head, leaving me in pain with my face all bloated and gross and unable to do much of anything! ALSO, an important - and timed! - side quest came up in the portfolio main quest: I have a little over 3 weeks to do my final project for my drawing class. I'm doing watercolors with surface embroidery on top, portraying... kind of a juxtaposition of peoples outer and inner worlds. I got 5 out of a planned 7 or 8 sketches for this done, and then this project takes priority. Luckily, this doesn't at all put a damper on portfolioquesting - all the drawings I'm going to make will probably show up in my portfolio as well. TONIGHT, I swear, pics will happen.
Alright time for a badly lit sketchdump!!! Keep in mind these are all shitty cellphone photos and I swear the work looks better in person. General Portfolio-ing! This painting is going in my portfolio too: New Life from Old Blood One of the Beauty and the Beast illustrations in progress: Beauty to the Beast's rescue. Her cape needs a more dramatic upward motion, but her hair is just perfect Beauty and the Beast sketch: having left the Beast's castle and returned home to newfound prosperity, a lonely Beauty looks at herself in the mirror and realizes how much she missss the presence of the Beast Another sketch: Black Angels. The heraldry above them says "Angeli Neri", lit. Black Angels in latin. They're holding hands, and left!angel is scattering petals at their bare feet while right!angel holds up the sun. For the Drawing Class Final Project I had to really fuck with the contrast in this one just to make it visible at all because linework for watercolors tends to be VERY light. Three friends of ambiguous gender identity sit around a dinner table at night, drinking coffee and talking. Their positions are relaxed and they're all wearing pajamas. On top of this watercolor I'm going to embroider budding flowers and leaves - like the freshness of a new friendship. I also doubt you can see it in this photo but I'm proud of the perspective involved in working with the room. Another which will involve watercolor and embroidery: a girl absentmindedly scribbles on a notebook during school; embroidered on top will be swimming koi fish with french-knot bubbles. A couple holds hands shyly (the person on the right's expression needs work, it looks too sorrowful and not so awkward/shy, guy on the right is ok). Embroidered on top, multiple instances of both their hands on each other - everywhere they want to touch, caress, hold, but won't right now because the relationship is so new. I wamt the background for this one to be nightfall in a busy city street. I'm gonna have to redraw this one, however, because I managed to accidentally draw it... on the BACK of another of these sketches!!! Don't ask me how I managed to be such a doofus. I have another sketch ready but that one is just TOO light and no way the pencilwork will show up in pictures with my crappy cellphone camera. And another one is halfway done, I just need to refine it. Then I have at least 2 more sketches to make for the drawing class project before I start on colors. I'm excited!! And that's it for today's sketchdump!!
ALRIGHT, I sure haven't kept this up to date! However, I've worked on illustrations every day since I last posted and have kept all of you in my mind as I did so. I have finished all the 6 illustrations for the Drawing Class Final Project. They look... AMAZING, you guys, seriously the best work I've done in my life. I finished the last one on Tuesday, I also got a quality camera to photograph my artwork with, so soon there'll be no more badly lit photodumps!! Now, for portfolio-ing, I gotta finish my Beauty and the Beast piece and the Black Angels, and I'm gonna start on some more graphic, sketchier work in other drawing media such as color pencils and chalk pastel, done from my #fashion tag on tumblr - something I've been wanting to do for weeks now. Regular updates will be a thing again I promise
So, despite the fact that I stopped posting forever several months ago, portfolio is now a thing! You can see several of the pieces that are here in sketch form show up on it as finished images. It's still a work in progress - I have a lot of WIPs I wanna add to it - so I'd really love constructive criticism and feedback!
