how early should someone in high school start making portifilos?

Hey Shannah,

You should show it as early as you can. :) This showcases your ability as a professional moving forward as you enter college and then your career. Ideally, you should show 10 of your best work (to give a glimpse of your work), and rotate them over time as you improve on your skills. In high school, I showcased letterhead designs, business card designs, flyer designs and CD designs. As I entered college, I did more complex work, websites and projects. Once you enter your career, I showed more thoughtful projects, how I get to a solution, what research I did, sketches, and prototypes and finally the final product. You will learn as you go. Good luck!

Dream big, Vivian

Hi Shannah,

Glad to see that you're already thinking about your portfolio. As an artist you should strive to improve upon your craft. While not every piece will necessarily be better than the one before try to take some lessons and learning from each piece; figure out what works well and what doesn't and try to apply it to the next piece.

Everything that you do is a potential portfolio piece. You just need to keep an honest and critical eye when evaluating your own work. I would recommend picking the ten pieces that you feel are of the highest quality: design, color, composition, aesthetic, perspective, anatomy, etc. whatever applies to them. Then, each time you create something new, evaluate it based on those and see if you've found a new "best piece."

Of course not everything that you do has to be a portfolio piece. You can and should play around with technique and subject, have fun with sketching and just doing roughs. But when you do create a "finished" piece keep in mind how it compares with your other works.

Also, if you're talking about portfolios for applying to school, they will want to see process work: sketches, thumbnails, color studies. So even those sketches or roughs can be part of your portfolio.

I hope that this helps. Good luck.

Hi
You should be building a portfolio while your in school immediately, it is a great way to show growth in style and techniques. You will choose the best for college applications and many have required things they want to see like value, line , shape and design. Drawings of shoes are a great example. Only pick one or two of your best pieces per semester to put in the portfolio.

Hi Shannah:

Good question. Think of your time line....you will be actually applying to schools and showing and or sending out your portfolios during the Fall of your senior year (4th year) in high school. So, your sophomore and junior years (years 2 and 3 of high school) are the prime times for building up your portfolio. It's usually a good idea to show work that is fairly recent, but if you have some really good pieces from your freshman (1st year) or earlier, then save those.

I would get a portfolio, one of those large plastic or heavy cardboard ones, and start putting your best work in there. Keep it safe. Also start documenting your best work, so you'll have digital photos for your electronic portfolio. Eventually, you will weed out your portfolio, but be sure to have a variety of work to show in terms of subject matter and art materials. You could also start looking at different schools and their portfolio requirements--their requirements are not all the same. I would also start talking to your at teachers, tell them you are building a portfolio, and ask them about your work as you do it, and see what they say or suggest in terms of your portfolio.

Best wishes!