Your Portfolio "Book"

Michele Rushworth · 12-21-2002, 12:23 PM

What does your portfolio book look like? What kind of "book" do you use, and what's in it, other than images of your paintings?

Mike McCarty had an interesting idea, posted in another thread, that got me thinking about this question. He mentioned that he would be printing out a copy of the recent Business Week article about portraiture and putting that in his portfolio. Great idea!

What else do people have in there?

Here's what I use:

I have a black upscale faux leather photo album that is about 12" x 12" and has pages I can take out if I unscrew a couple of bolts. I have a nice gold plaque for the front which is engraved with my name. (It cost just a few dollars to have this made at a local trophy shop.)

Inside the book, on the first page, I have a photo of me (the same goofy-looking one that's next to this post, though in my book you can see that I'm standing next to one of my portraits) and contact info.

The next section has 10 or 12 portraits that I always keep current with my best work. I put an 8x10 of each painting on the right page, and a montage of various reference photos I used on the left page.

There are competing schools of thought about whether reference photos should ever be in a portfolio. I put them in so my clients can get a good idea of what to expect from me in terms of likeness. Above the reference photos I put in a little typed blurb about the subject and what I hoped to convey in the painting.

After the portraits I have a tab that says "About the Artist". Then there is a page of quotes (nice things people have said about my work). That is followed by several pages of press clippings and the like.

Then there is a page with info on my procedure, a brief bio of me and finally, on the last page, my current pricing.

What does your "book" look like?

Cynthia Daniel · 12-21-2002, 02:06 PM

There's a related earlier topic on creating a PR book: http://forum.portraitartist.com/show...=&threadid=653

I suppose if one doesn't have a tremendous amount of PR material, it could be judiciously interspersed with a portfolio of sample portraits.

Elizabeth Schott · 12-26-2002, 11:12 PM

Michele,

Mine sounds a lot like yours with the exception of a few pages. Since I work in pastels, I have a sheet with 1.5' x 1.5" samples of paper and paper colors. I also keep sample contracts but do not list any pricing.

I use a binder instead of a portfolio.

Julianne Lowman · 12-27-2002, 01:49 AM

As a pastel portrait artist, I also have two actual pastel portraits enclosed in a page protector. This allows me to show the prospective client why a pastel needs to be framed away from the glass surface. I simply pull the protector away slightly and they see the ghost image on the plastic. They also see a small real life sample of my work.