What should I include in my portfolio?

•

Iteration/development/design work e.g. breakdowns of your sketches and design process - colour iterations, shape iterations, showing your creative process. For photography this might look like evidence of how you set up staging and/or your editing process. For animation and film this might look like your early thumbnails and storyboards that contributed towards your video work. You might also call this "project based" work. You will likely have done a lot of this if you have done an Art & Design or Fine Art A Level. You'll want to lay this out in a way that makes sense chronologically and follows the process of your development from start to finish. It needs to be clear how each progressive element contributed to the "final piece" or "outcome".

•

Work that demonstrates technical skill e.g. drawings from life, still life, figure drawing, technical drawing, photographs that demonstrate good understanding of composition and lighting. This is to show your technical understanding and fundamental skills. You ideally want to showcase your ability to understand perspective, lighting, tone and shadow, contrast and accuracy. This is why people will often draw common objects in a still life scene, as it's something everyone will have an understanding of whether it "looks right". It's important that you draw in-person and not from photographs at least some of the time as photographs will warp perspective and make scenes appear more flat. You may be able to attend local classes for this, but drawing random objects from around your house or drawing your street/people on the train works just as well if that's not something you have access to.

•

Imaginative processes work that demonstrates combining ideas in a creative and imaginative way. This will be your most creative work. This might have a message or meaning, might be design work, or so on - it should showcase the way your creative process works. Work that showcases a visual narrative, "tells a story", those are the sort of things that might come under this category. It might be the most "unique" work you do, that feels very representative of you. This shows that you are interested in new ideas and you will bring new things to the table. It's important that this work takes inspiration from, but is not a recreation of existing work. This also pairs well with iterative and design work and you may find those parts of your portfolio overlap.

•

Annotations explaining your decision making process throughout your design work. Why did you choose option A over option C? What was it about that sketch that made you think it was more effective/expressive/suitable.

•

Examples of work from multiple mediums. What those mediums might be may be relevant to your course - if you're applying to a fashion course, they're probably interested in your textiles work as well as your drawing and painting. Some courses might be interested in how you work in 3D space and might want to see relevant examples of that.

•

Artwork that is unrelated to your previous qualification that you completed outside of an academic setting - art that you did of your own volition without the boundaries of a specified theme or to complete an assigned task. They want to see that you enjoy doing art in your free time, that it's something you're passionate about!

•

In general, you probably don't want to include heavily stylised drawings (like anime, or distinctive cartoon-inspired) in your portfolio, and you generally want to avoid fan-art (art depicting existing media). This is particularly important if you're studying something more technical like Architecture or Product Design. The notable exceptions to this being if you're studying Animation, Comic and Concept and Illustration, you definitely can include stylised work, but you still want to show plenty of examples of realistic work and technical capability. If you're studying something else - Graphic Design, Game Art etc. - you might get away with one or two pieces but you want to be very sparing with any strongly stylised work. (I'm speaking as someone who spent a lot of time drawing anime characters... I'm on your side I promise - it's just that now is not the time!)

•

Nudity like life model drawings, drawings of or examples of sculpture, etc. are all perfectly OK and expected to include, often encouraged. If you're using a hosting site like Artstation they may put a warning filter on these by default but don't worry about this. It's fairly self explanatory (hopefully) that you shouldn't include anything that could be read as outright explicit, though.

•

Examples of working/thinking in 3D space - taking an idea from 2D to 3D - this doesn't need to be in the form of designing buildings (and sometimes it's better if it isn't). It's more about showing a way of translating ideas using spatial thinking.

•

Demonstrate the research, development and inspirations that went into some of your project-based outcomes with clear, well-presented annotations.

•

Demonstrate an awareness of global, historical and contemporary architecture and architects.

•

Observational drawing is particularly important, particularly on-site/in-person, showing evidence of an awareness of perspective, shape, good degree of accuracy.

•

This book by UAL Central Saint Martins includes lots of projects to try

•

3D/evidence of spatial thinking work, could include models, sculpture, textiles work, props, digital 3D work i.e. CAD

•

Sketches - particularly showing "spaces" i.e. an interior or a town square - preferable to a drawing of an outside of a building.

•

Some places may ask for or suggest photography, particularly with a focus on composition, structure and spaces

•

Examples of animation, primarily looking for technical skill - look at following common animation exercises for building fundamental animation skills i.e. bag of flour, ball rolling off a table, lipsyncing - if you have no idea what any of that means, do some googling! This is likely going to be better than trying to do something that is too high scope and executing it less well.

•

Examples of animation skills - this might include character turnarounds, storyboards, "beat boards", thumbnails. Alongside strong fundamental skills.

•

A stronger emphasis on multimedia - it will likely be highly encouraged by your specific portfolio advice to include examples of working with various traditional media forms. There will generally be an expectation that you have strengths and weaknesses so even if the work in mediums you favour less is not as strong that's still typically not a good enough reason to not include it. You should aim at the bare minimum to have examples of both drawing and painting, but paintings in varying paint mediums, and examples of other multimedia work like clay, ink or printing would likely also be interesting additions.

•

A good awareness, interest and understanding of the art world, contemporary artists, including references and annotations making clear how other artists have contributed to your creative process (likely also mentioned in your personal statement).

•

Depending on the university you're applying to, they may expect you to already have a cohesive style of work, or that might be the very thing they look to develop.

•

storytelling examples, i.e. comics pages or illustrated storybook pages

•

design work focusing on characters and locations, maybe including things like turnarounds typical of animation for maintaining consistency in design

•

examples showcasing your personality and character, as illustration has a tendency to be particularly personal