My accepted art portfolio for university

Jessie shares how she structured her portfolio, the artwork she chose to include, and the reasons behind her selections. You'll also hear valuable tips from Falmouth tutors who conduct university interviews, offering expert advice to help you stand out.

"Putting together a portfolio to apply for an arts degree is a fun and exciting part of the process but it can also feel really daunting and a lot of pressure. But hopefully I can give you some advice and examples of my own art portfolio that will help you along with your own application process."

"I'm Jessie. A third-year Fine Art student here at Falmouth University. I'm graduating in only a few months, so it's been a long time since I made this portfolio. It was crazy looking through it again and seeing how far I've come in the last three years but let's take a look through my university portfolio and see what I put in mine."

"And stay tuned for the end of the video because I asked some of my tutors, who give the interviews, if they had any advice and they gave me some great info to pass along."

"I'm an international student so I had my interview online instead of in person, so I just did my portfolio digitally on Google Slides because that was the easiest for me to use."

"Whether you are doing your interview in person or online, look at Falmouth’s Portfolio Advice page to get the specific requirements you need for your portfolio."

"Okay, let's just get into my portfolio now. So, the first slide of my portfolio is of three images. So, the first one is my reference photo and then there's two drawings that came from it. I wanted to start this off by giving my interviewer an immediate look into my process with art, not just the final product. And to show that I was interested in the creative aspect of taking my own reference photos as well, and that I could take what I was working with in multiple directions."

"My next slide was of this painting I had done. I had done a layer of plaster before I painted it, so it had this interesting texture to it, to show that I was experimenting not just with styles but also with the materials that I was using. These two images I showed on two different slides but I'm just putting them here together so you can see them next to each other. The first one is a progress picture I had taken while I was making the painting, and the second one was the finished piece. Much like my very first slide, I wanted to show my process of how I made it because I think it's important to give the interviewer an insight into, not just what you can create, but the creative processes you go through to create. And it also gives you something to talk about as well as how you work through things and how you think and how you approach creating, whether it's painting or something else."

"At this point in my portfolio, I started to show things that were a little bit more realistic, which is probably the style that I'm most interested in and passionate about. So, it was important to show in that respect because I am interested in it but also to show my techniques and abilities, both creative and very technical."

"Next, I showed this sketchbook page. I think that it can feel natural to want to show only finished, really polished pieces but it's great to include things like sketchbook pages as well, because you're giving an understanding of who you are as an artist, not just your finished pieces. I also think it's great because I love drawing and I love to sketch in my free time, so I think it's good to show, not only the kind of work that you create when you're at school, but also what you like to do just in your own free time for fun."

"I do a lot of figurative art, so I also included this landscape I did to show that I can do settings and everything that comes with that."

"This is another realism portrait that I did. Yeah, I was just trying to show my technique and my ability with drawing. But I also knew that I would be able to talk about this one if they asked me about it because I won a competition with it and I learned a lot from that whole experience. So, again just always making sure that I had something to talk about with every piece that I included."

"This is another page from one of my sketchbooks, but this isn't a sketch. It's an actual planning page I did for a long series of works I was doing in high school. Looking back, I wish that I had presented this in a better format to make it clearer what my thought process was and how much effort I was putting into planning these works. If I was doing it again, I would present it differently, but this was a real page for my sketchbook so at the time, it did what it needed to do."

"The rest of the pieces in my art portfolio are from this series of work that I laid out in that planning page. I did this very intentionally because I wanted the interviewer looking through the portfolio to be going on a journey with it that made sense. So I made sure to include all those pieces after the planning page so that it made sense and it was more cohesive."

"The first one I included was this one that's texturally interesting because I used this 3D fabric and then I was also messing around with using glue and charcoal and everything, so that when you were looking at it, it kind of had these different appearances based on how the light was shining on it. Just always trying to include things that were different from the thing I showed before. This is another progress and finished photo showing my process with using print making, very rudimentary print making. That's something I didn’t have a lot of experience with at the time, so I wanted to show that I was trying it out."

"And to end off my portfolio, I put a few different slides showing the process of making this one big piece. So I started showing the little ceramic head I created and then how I had created it into a 3D standing figurine which I put inside of a cardboard box, and then I had my painting, which I cut a hole into and put in front of the cardboard box, took a picture of, printed that out, drew over it in charcoal."

"So, it was a long process but that's why I wanted to end on it because I felt like this final piece that I had created from it was probably one of my strongest that I had made at the time. And it was an interesting and experimental process for me, and every step of the way I was trying something I had never done before. So, I felt excited to talk about it with them if I got the opportunity to and I wanted to end on a high with something that I was really proud of."