Ten Steps to Clarifying Your Illustration Portfolio

Dec 2

As I embark on the most serious foray into freelance illustration I’ve ever done, it’s come to my attention that my portfolio is a bit… scattered. It represents all my illustration interests. That might be fun for me, but it’s not clear to clients.

I’m working on clarifying my illustration portfolio so I can get the kind of work I REALLY want! And as I do that, I’m learning a lot about portfolios that I’m going to share with you here on the blog.

Here are ten tips for clarifying your illustration portfolio to get the work you want:

Tailor It to Your Audience

This is the MOST important tip!

Another way to phrase this tip is to tailor it to the audience you want to attract. This can be a tricky balance! For example, I want to publish a comic. But I’m not looking to pick up a freelance client for my comic work— one day, when my draft is done, I will pitch it to a publisher. So, my portfolio should be geared towards the freelance work I want to get: book illustrations.

There’s a lot of overlap between those two types of illustration, so I’m in luck! But I want to make sure that a middle-grade or children’s book publisher would look at my portfolio and want to commission me for a job.

Show Your Best Work Only

Pick the pieces you’re most proud of. Quality matters more than quantity.

Social media can be a great place to share a more broad array of your work. I use Instagram to share work-in-progress, behind-the-scenes, drawing challenges, and other unpolished pieces.

Sometimes, it can be tricky to draw the line between a piece you love that doesn’t represent your best work, the kinds of clients you want, and the absolute best of your production. Enlist a friend or art coach to help you decide!

Keep It Organized

Arrange your work neatly. Start with something strong, end with a bang, and keep similar styles grouped together. Make sure clients don’t need to click a bunch of category tabs to see what they want to see. Look at the overall colour scheme of your work, too. Make sure there’s some harmony between the pieces beside each other.

Show Variety in Style and Subjects

Include different types of work: characters, environments, objects, or storytelling. Show you can handle a range of challenges. But again, make sure they are relevant to the work you want to create! I should include characters, environments, and storytelling for book illustrations, but those things should also be woven together into spot illustrations, sequential illustrations, or covers. A concept art portfolio, however, would likely have separate art pieces for characters vs. environments to showcase the development process.

Highlight Your Strengths

Focus on what you’re great at-bold colours, intricate details, or creative ideas. This is another great place to enlist the help of a friend! Ask them what stands out to them. Get them to pick a couple of their favourite pieces from your portfolio. See what those pieces have in common.

Many different things can be strengths: colour, expression, gesture, composition, dynamic posing, story, value, technical skills, etc. Once you’ve identified a couple, you should work that skill into new portfolio pieces! For example, I love designing characters with intricate backstories and relationships with other characters. I should show off this massive cast of characters in story-rich images.

Tell a Story

This is true even if you don’t want to work in books or comics! Include at least a few pieces that show you can tell a story or evoke emotions. Editorial illustration is not just decoration around an article. It can set or support the tone and message. Commercial illustration should tell the story of the brand it represents. Storytelling is perhaps the most central feature that ties different types of illustration together!

Use High-Quality Images

If you work with traditional pieces, scan or photograph your work correctly. Avoid blurry, dark, or pixelated images. Touch it up digitally if necessary. Feel free to enhance it digitally, too, as long as it’s a process you can easily repeat for a client.

If you work digitally, export your images as JPGs for the web. PNGs have a more limited colour spectrum, so only use them if you need a transparent background. Reduce the resolution and image size so your web portfolio loads quickly but not so much that the image is unclear or pixellated. And keep those high-resolution images (300 dpi) for printed work!

Include Personal Projects

Share work that excites you, even if it wasn’t done for a client. Passion is contagious! If you’re jumping into the freelance market, like me, you may not have many (or any!) client works to share. Sometimes, client work may not be ready for public sharing due to publication timelines or NDAs.

That’s why it’s important to always work on personal projects, too. The great part of including personal projects in your portfolio is that it can also entice clients to ask questions and learn about the stories/ideas you create. Maybe there’s a future book, game or animation they want to work with you on!

Keep It Fresh

Update your portfolio regularly. Remember to replace older work with newer pieces as you improve. Early in your illustration career, this may mean lots of turnover in your portfolio. It feels like a lot of work, but you should always consider your portfolio your most important project. None of the other ones would be possible without it!

Make It Easy to View

If it’s online, use a clean and simple website. Yes, I use Squarespace, and so do many other creatives. With no coding experience, making things look beautiful is very easy. WordPress or Wix are other options. I recommend choosing what works best for your needs and coding skill level, not what’s cheapest. Your website is an investment in your career.

If it’s physical, use a professional, easy-to-flip-through format. Make sure the print quality is high. Print proofs to check colours before you print everything—the most common print complaint is that the work looks darker printed than on screen. Plan accordingly and consider brightening your images before printing them! If you’re putting original work in your portfolio, consider still having postcards or prints you can leave with the client. Business cards are great but easily lost.

Need some inspiration of incredible inspiration portfolios? Check out my top ten Japanese illustrators here!