🍿 Everything I know about making an illustration portfolio. (For picturebooks)

This is an opinion piece for paid subscribers. (now free)

What’s a portfolio?

When I say portfolio, I mean a combination of Twitter, Instagram, and a Website that is YourName.com, if you can’t get ‘YourName.com’ change your name, that’s what I did. I did a public post about the three components of a portfolio.

What do I mean when I say portfolio?

What follows is a 🗃 Long Post, for paid subscribers I’ll do one of these every month. The goal is to dive deep into a topic that could have great value if you’re trying to do what I just did, i.e go from being an aspiring illustrator to becoming booked up for a couple of years with picturebook work.

Of course I can’t guarantee outcomes, but I can tell you what has worked for me. Maybe it can work for you too, or inspire you with ideas for your own path.

Disclaimer, I am sharing my opinions and experiences, not fact. Take what you will from them. I’m going to structure this like an interview, so you can jump around and it’s just easier for me to write in this way. So let’s get into it?

Did you always have a portfolio?

NO, for more than a decade I prided myself on not needing one. I saw every job as an exploratory work of art. I didn’t want to make something I had already made before. I saw a portfolio as limiting. “I can work in any style!” - I believed, like a fool. And like a fool I could not sustain my creative practice and was forced to take a job to support my artist habit. I got so deep in the job, that towards the end I forgot I was an artist. I forgot I ever had dreams of becoming an illustrator. The one insight that saved me was this.

Napkinsight for more visit: https://www.instagram.com/napkinsights/

In order to do your dream job, you first need to get hired. And to get hired you need to be on someone’s to-do list. To get on someone’s to do list they need to be super clear about what you have to offer. Your portfolio, is how you communicate that clarity.

Do you have different styles in your portfolio?

To answer that we need to define what we mean by style. By style, I mean a way of working. My visual style developed out of my artist statement. Which was written as an elevator pitch to Editors and Creative Directors.

“I make witty and energetic illustration with a comic sensibility”

So every time I make a work, that is the criteria I’m aiming for. There’s always a little bit of a joke, characters and inanimate objects look like they are about to jump off the page, and I borrow from my deep love of comics in the work that I do.

So while my work might look visually different from project to project there is a style. In effect, the artist statement is my style, my anchor.

Style is important.

The more recognizable it is, the more valuable an asset the art becomes.

A repeatable style also makes work easier for the artist, you know the steps to make something, you know how long a thing takes to get done.

⭐️ Commit to a style.

How do people find your portfolio?

2 ways.

1. Either my agent or I reach out to them directly.

2. Hashtags

Sometimes I feel both need to happen before you get an approach, if someone knows your work and gets approached that’s a good thing. For two years I put work on Instagram almost daily. I noticed it was getting saved, but it took 2 years before I got my first offer. The deal was signed in a week. 1000 hours of putting work out, good bad, and ugly work. I would take the bad and ugly down after a few days and leave only the most representative work up on my instagram.

⭐️ Reach out and use hashtags

Is your portfolio industry-specific?

Yes. It didn’t start out that way, but the more specific I made it the more work I got.

Every industry speaks in its own dialect of “illustrationese”.

Showing you speak the dialect in the work and the communication around the work lends credibility. So when it comes to the words you put on your website, follow this rule of thumb, “Omit needless words”.

I aim at work in kids books, particularly nonfiction.

I aim for cultural revalance diversity and inclusivity.

At the same time I aim for classic charm.

If I aimed any broarder then this, I would be aimless.

⭐️ Pick an aim.

How do you deal with rejections?

I learned what needed to go into a portfolio from online classes and from sending work out and getting rejections telling me what was missing. I used the rejections to guide my next work at some point people stopped telling me what was missing, instead, I would hear the same thing; “Keep doing what you’re doing”.

Then the book deals started coming in!

⭐️ Use rejections to guide you.

Which pieces worked and why?

In general, a portfolio piece needs to work on multiple levels at once. Clients are looking to checkboxes, what follows are my portfolio pieces followed by some checkboxes and commentary.

This work got the attention of the teachers of my professional-level art class. Picked it in a class review and later shared it on social media which got me a ton of attention. It was a breakthrough piece and multiple agents contacted me as a result. One thing to note is while this was a class assignment, it was written by industry professionals. And the assignment itself forced me to check many of the boxes.

 ✅ Subject is both trendy and an industry staple

 ✅ Characters are full of energy

 ✅ Characters are full of emotion

 ✅ Layout leads the eye (a particular strength of mine)

 ✅ Confidence and competence in rendering materials and objects

 ✅ Commercial style

 ✅ Interesting textures

 ✅ Ethnic character

I did this piece because my portfolio was lacking scenes. What I would say about scenes, especially for my work, characters and icons are way more important than scenes. But a couple of scenes in a portfolio will go a long way to hide the fact that in general, I have not done a lot of scenes. Characters and Icons sell the work, scenes are the table stakes. It was summer and people were dreaming of travel while in lockdown, I capitalized on that global desire. This was part of an assignment for the Theydraw creative community.

 ✅ Shows I can draw a detailed scene of an actual place

 ✅ Layers of diversity and inclusivity without calling attention to itself

 ✅ Characters connecting

 ✅ Layout leads the eye (a particular strength of mine)

 ✅ Confidence and competence in rendering materials and objects

 ✅ Commercial style

 ✅ Interesting textures

 ✅ A secondary storyline (cat and dog)

 ✅ Foreground, middle ground and background

 ✅ Good kid character proportions

This character sheet is based off a text from a peer of mine from class. It generated a lot of interest including my first fictional picturebook. One unique feature of my work is how it’s grounded in reality. I drew many pages of crocodiles to learn their anatomy before using that knowledge to design this cartoony characterful fellow that is grounded in actual crocodile anatomy. in this example, I’m leaning very heavily into my uniqueness, and you should lean into yours. I’m signaling the kind of book I would love to do, which is EXACTLY the type of book I got. When done right, I feel a portfolio piece is a prototype for an actual project.

 ✅ Characters with contradictions

 ✅ Lovable, relatable character (he’s trying)

 ✅ Unique blend of realism and cartoonyness

 ✅ Unique collagy style in the spirit of Eric Carle

This scene was done again as table stakes to show some interior, as well as for the hashtags. It got retweeted by a bestselling author who I’m illustrating for around the same time my Cleopatra piece was shared. I had been trying hard to get noticed. And on that day, I was noticed.

My now agent reached out, and we’re making history!

 ✅ Unique style and textures

 ✅ Instagram lovable, relatable scene

By now you will have noticed that a portfolio is a living breathing organism. In talking with various agents it became clear that there was an emerging market where I could fit in, and that is the intersection between nonfiction and character. It made sense for me to stop drawing Hobbits and capitalize on this opportunity.

So I drew a monkey, and wrote some facts about it.

I also drew a sweet Rhino

And this is the final piece of work that makes up the core of my portfolio.

 ✅ Characters connecting

 ✅ Confidence and competence in rendering materials and objects

 ✅ Commercial style

 ✅ Interesting textures

 ✅ Good kid character proportions

These 7 pieces make up the bulk of my portfolio and are what get referenced by clients the most.

70% of the projects I’m signed on to are non-fiction characters, 10% are fictional animals and the other 10% a fairy tale retelling and 10% are kids running around outdoors. Each project I’m working on has a seed in the form of a portfolio piece. The portfolio piece is a start of a project.

What role do all the other things you post on Instagram play?

The other 200 pieces on Instagram play more of a supporting role. They let me experiment with what resonates, they let me stay on the top of mind. They get attention. But these 7 pieces seal the deal.

Are you working to add anything to your portfolio?

Later this year I will participate in folktale week but more to prepare for a project, that is the closest I am to adding a key piece to the portfolio. Instead I have 6 books to work through which will be my main focus. I will be doing icons and maybe characters for the newsletter, that I will re-use of instagram. And maybe I’ll do some drawing challenges.

What would make me work on something specific for the portfolio is if I have an idea of a type of book that I would like to work on, then I’ll do a portfolio piece for that.

Or if my agent needs something specific.

If you had to start your portfolio over how would you do it?

1. Start a Twitter account and follow 500 people in publishing and 500 illustrators I admire

2. Start an Instagram account and do 4 Draw this in your style challenges every month.

3. Take the Make art that sells illustrating childrens book course and do all the assignments, repeating them for the 4 provided texts. This will take 35 weeks, and I’d start a small critique group to do it with.

4. Start a substack newsletter to write about my journey daily.

5. Pick a niche and develop towards that

6. Put my 10 best pieces on Adamming.com (and replace them as I make better pieces)

7. Connect my Twitter, Instagram, and website with a bio link.

8. Note that I have done 3 years of art school, so if you haven’t, I recommend doing something equivalent first.

Ask Questions.

If there’s something I missed or could elaborate on drop me a question and I’ll add it to this post! Thank you for subscribing for being a part of my journey and letting me be a part of yours!