YOUR PORTFOLIO

Tips for Creating and Presenting Your Portfolio

Your portfolio should showcase your best work, demonstrate your creative process, and reflect your artistic identity. Here are key points to keep in mind:

• Include your best and most recent work.

• Incorporate works in progress, sketchbooks, and personal projects to show your ideas and motivation.

• Avoid including incomplete or unrelated older pieces (over two years old).

• Ensure all work originates from personal ideas, observations, or a combination of both.

• Do not include work copied from photos, magazines, or other artists' work.

• Bring original work when possible, but keep the presentation simple—no need for matting or framing.

• Be ready to explain how you develop your ideas and where you want to take them.

• Edit and arrange your portfolio to present a cohesive, strong body of work with a clear beginning and end.

• If presenting digitally, bring a functioning laptop or tablet, as one will not be provided.

• Use slides to group related pieces or show multiple images on a single slide for better cohesion.

• Consider how ideas, themes, and formal relationships connect your pieces to create a unified presentation.

Additional Resources

For digital portfolio examples, check out the following sites:

• Behance

• Cargo Collective

• Other People's Pixels

LinkedIn Learning has resources to guide you in this process, including:

• How to curate your work in a portfolio from Building an Online Portfolio

• Revealing process in your portfolio from Building an Online Portfolio

Note: LinkedIn Learning is available to all current ACE students. To access it, you will first need to activate your ARTIC account. 

For guidance on how to document your work, visit the links below:

• How to photograph your art, saatchionline.com (YouTube Video) 

• How to photograph your art, Sketchbook Skool (YouTube Video)

• Photographing Artwork in the Studio, SAIC (Panopto Video)

Note: Panopto is available to all current ACE students. To access it, you will first need to activate your ARTIC account.