Anyone can ask, "Is that art?"
and anyone can respond, "Asking that question just made it art."
Everyone knows what a portfolio is. Everyone who's reading this probably has one, and if you don't, you probably have a resume, which is almost a portfolio. It's like a shoddy bullet-point list of HTML descriptions of your work, at least, and that counts.
Making a portfolio is really tough. Websites like Weebly make it super easy to drag and drop a bunch of random buttons and doo-dads to make a website. You just pop a gallery or slideshow in there and BAM! You have a portfolio. Right? In my opinion, sure, yeah. I'm not a graphic design or web development major, so this thing isn't in my expertise. I know some CSS; I know how to push buttons that make X do Y thing. But I'm not perfect. That's why it's important to get a second, third, trillionth opinion. I'm taking a class in portfolio design to get my feet wet, and I'm lucky to have plenty of blunt classmates and friends to tell me why my website sucks. Let me pause to make that distinction - why. Sure, they can tell you it just sucks. You can agree or disagree, but with such a personal attack, you're going to be more inclined to defend yourself. You want why. You want to know how to improve your website in its design and accessibility. You want to know how to make your website look so good that someone can't help but to click through your pages and learn more about you and your work. And feedback, constructive and fruitful, is the number one key to doing that. How do you know how someone else is going to navigate your website if you haven't let anyone? I'm realizing, as I'm writing, that none of this addresses actually making a portfolio. Let's say you have a sexy website that draws the viewer's eyes to where you want, and you're able to get them hooked and interested enough that they look at your portfolio. What do they see? They damn well better see your best piece first. And your second best piece second. Third, fourth... and if you only have four good pieces? Great! That's fantastic - you're ahead of me at the moment. Having "only" a few pieces is fine. You don't need to clutter your website with every piece of art that you have. Get an ArtStation for that (seriously, get an ArtStation). And if you're like me, on the 28th of June, 2017, and scrounging up pieces? I can empathize. It's hard managing everything in between work, class, home life, love life, and more to make time to do professional portfolio pieces. It's easy to sketch for yourself, to doodle your favorite movie characters fighting or kissing or whatnot. It's difficult to sit down and give yourself the time to just make an illustration, model, sculpt, etc. It's so difficult that I'm writing out my thoughts on a blog post instead of, you know, sitting down and getting to work. But I think it's helped; it's nice to just write something out and clear your head. Maybe I'll make something worthy enough to make a fun blog post about next time. Cheers! Beau.
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