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Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Creating an Award Winning Portfolio - Part 3: Finding Your Niche

A strong portfolio doesn’t try to illustrate everything in every style. An artist who has found a niche illustrates specific topics as an expert, like historical illustration or illustrations for the baby/board book market. Or an illustrator fills a niche using a medium like printmaking, watercolor, digital collage, etc.
Pop Quiz:

What are you favorite things to draw/paint?

What is your dream assignment?

Are you an expert in a topic or have a passion for something outside of art?


Digger Deeper:

If someone was talking about your portfolio today how would they finish this sentence, “Oh yeah, they do great _________________.”

How do you want them to finish that sentence?

Does your portfolio reflect the type of assignments you’d like to receive?

Portfolios to Check Out:
Here are a few great examples of portfolios that know their niche!
Jannie Ho
Roz Fulcher
Brandon Doorman
David Frankland

3 comments:

  1. What are you favorite things to draw/paint?

    --- Characters. Could be anything. Anything that strikes me. Like this morning I was just lying in bed and I had this sudden urge to draw an "angry chicken". That happens a lot so I have tons of drawings and graphic documents filled with these things.


    What is your dream assignment?

    --- To have some big wig call me up and say, 'We love your work, are you available to redesign the Coca-Cola logo?'


    Are you an expert in a topic or have a passion for something outside of art?

    --- I'm an expert at reading people. I can read a person like a book in the first five seconds I meet them. Can be scary at times. Quite possibly why I live alone.


    If someone was talking about your portfolio today how would they finish this sentence, “Oh yeah, they do great _________________.”

    How do you want them to finish that sentence?

    --- “Oh yeah, they do great everything.”


    Does your portfolio reflect the type of assignments you’d like to receive?

    --- Sort of. Of course you can't pick and choose whose going to happen upon your contact form.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi Doug - thanks for sharing.

    You might consider creating two portfolios on your site - one for your branding/logo work and one for your illustration.

    Good luck with your goals as an illustrator.

    ReplyDelete