[Showcase] Scholarship Portfolio Images

I'm applying for an art scholarship at the college I'm planning on attending in the fall and these are the pieces I'm auditioning with. From what I've been told most of the freshmen at this college aren't that good.

This is a zentangle. It's something my art teacher taught us.


Portrait of a Dinosaur-This is a digital painting of one of my friends.


Light and Dark-This is something I just made off the top my head.


Let the Games Begin-This is a digital painting of Jennifer Lawrence from The Hunger Games.


Fish Scales-I'm not really sure what this is, but it reminded me of scales so that's what I titled it.


Diamonds-This was actually inspired by and his diamond schtick.


Signatures(!)- I worked hard as hell making signatures so they should see how versatile I am.


Any critiques are fine, just don't be a douche.

I'm very glad your GD skillz are coming in handy for this sort of thing. I'll definitely try to provide as much feedback as I can before you turn in your portfolio (when's it due?). I might also try to throw you a few suggestions on some images you could work on for it, what you should avoid.
While I have a creative background, work with graphic design, I'm not majoring in that field or anything like that, so I wouldn't know what these people would be looking for in porfolios, but I'll try to provide as many tips as I can later.
Will be back but keep us posted in the meantime!

Well, I actually already turned it in. I just wanted to show people what I had turned in.

It's clear that you used a reference with the portrait of your friend and the Hunger Games digital-painting, but how did you actually go about making the art? I've always been interested in that sort of thing.

Originally Posted by Snurtlicious

Well, I actually already turned it in. I just wanted to show people what I had turned in.

Whoops, my bad. In that case I'd say it's a solid porfolio. It's definitely missing more crucial stuff, though. More technical images showing photo-manipulation like comparing an overexposed photo with a corrected one, the use of content-awareness fill or clone-brushing backgrounds of images (e.g erasing background people from a photo to emphasize the focal). Another would be like the mockup for an ad campaign. A logo, the product, examples of its advertising and written portion explaining all of it.
Again, I wouldn't know what the people reviewing these portfolios are looking for, but your images lean more on the artistic side and not on the technical. The signatures can show what you can do with ps, but they're very informal. I know I've used a few to show my work on portfolios, sort of explaining the putting together of an image with a particular mood in small scale, but it shouldn't eclipse what's more useful for the whole 'business application of art' aspect of GD.

Nonetheless it shows what you're capable of. This alongside a good GPA should impress the people reviewing the portfolio as you being interested in design, trying different stuff out on image editing programs and whatnot. Good luck, snurt!

Originally Posted by Holden

It's clear that you used a reference with the portrait of your friend and the Hunger Games digital-painting, but how did you actually go about making the art? I've always been interested in that sort of thing.

I used the Smudge Tool in Photoshop. You'll have to adjust the settings to whatever works for you, but I used a soft, round brush and just clicked and dragged.

Originally Posted by Snurtlicious

I used the Smudge Tool in Photoshop. You'll have to adjust the settings to whatever works for you, but I used a soft, round brush and just clicked and dragged.

You just smudged the original image?

Yes, I just changed the strength of it. Smudged that entire image.

Just a heads up, you may want to be careful how you label things like that in portfolios in the future.

In the professional world, I'm pretty sure purely smudging (no matter how carefully thought out) is not considered "digital painting". Claiming you painted something when you didn't can get you into trouble, as can anything else. Just, be really mindful of that in the future. What you did would probably more likely be considered a photo-manipulation, which is something you can put in your portfolio, but it is an important difference to note. Within the digital field in particular, there's a lot of opportunity for plagiarism, cheating, etc and you really don't want anyone to so much as suspect anything is fishy or weird in your portfolio, a simple mislabeling of what you actually did can raise suspicion pretty quickly. So just be careful.

BUT THAT'S JUST MY TWO CENTS.

Yeah, I'm gonna have to agree with Vynrah on this one. Though it may look like a painting, you didn't paint it. You took an existing image and smudged it around until you got a good result. Don't get me wrong, it looks good and all, but if someone in admissions looks at the portfolio and thinks "oh, I've seen this before" and finds the source picture on google images, because you called it a digital painting it could be misconstrued as calling it your own which is indeed plagiarism. I doubt it's gonna happen, but I mean even in high schools teachers and administrators are ruling harsh punishments for plagiarism. So in the future, be careful.