i used an epson r1800 for my portfolio. high price, but excellent quality.

don't show 14 paintings, way too many, maybe three tops. Just print them out on some high quality paper on a good inkjet, an epson 1280 is cheap and good

check your paper on your printer... good paper can make a heap of difference in how your prints look.

oh, and i don't think photos are bad per se. i just like having a page completely flush. the spraymounted photos seem a bit too... scrapbook-y

and they better be decent, post one up here if you don't mind, I can't tell you how many people I knew in undergrad were rejected from grad schools they wanted to go to and when they said "I just can't understand it" all you had to do was look through their portfolios at 15 crappy paintings and 15 mediocre photographs and a handful of banal arch projects to know immeadiately why.

Yeah, it might be better to photoshop one of the paintings onto a photograph of a NYC wall and call it a large-scale mural, right Kai?

Kidding of course.

I agree. Depends on how great the paintings are and what else you have. If you have tons of work, select your best, not all you've done. 14 is a lot.
I'd say post the paintings here, but you better be REALLY confident with them, as folks will tend to be rough (and that can sometimes be good). You might try www.newstoday.com , I've seen some fair crits of paintings on there and the are used to giving crits (although it's mostly graphics/webdesign).

I would get a high quality ink jet, experiment with different paper. The double sided ink jet could work nicely, maybe the full bleed kind. If you get an Epson (which I like), use only their inks and papers - it makes a HUGE difference.

haha, i like it guiggster, but don't say new york, say somewhere you're sure no ones been to

thanks... i'll be checking out printers and papers.

pic of paintings are all i have. don't even have sketches anymore. coming up with something last minute won't work.

for years, i didn't think i would be needing any visual art material or following a path related. then the idea of architecture gotten to me.

(out of curiosity, "just thought" of positng one up here, but don't even know how...i think i maybe too frighten to)

post to imageshack

and then use the tag instructions in grey just below the "Post a response" box

It might be more beneficial if you post all of them or a good number and have some people tell you which ones are strong and which ones aren't. That way its not a matter of whether people think your paintings are good enough, but rather which might help you and which might...not...help you.

since you asked...
what about this one?
thanks

since you asked...
what about this one?
thanks

since you asked...
what about this one?
thanks

oops, sorry

its fine, not great, not completely horrible, but not that interesting, it looks like something an arch student would do to look vaguely architectural, but only in a retinal sense

i guess removing the red border with a thicker black would have looked better.

yeah, what upsets me about the painting is that its composition is too lopsided, it sorta lacks balance, but I dont mind that it is architectural, that was the intent, but maybe that makes it boring to a person with an architectural background... it was done on mylar so it was really hard to get apparent strokes. maybe i'll exploit the transpareny of the mylar, rather than posting it on a white board... anyway thanks, i think i can make it work.

i'm reporting you.

gosh, i'm not sure why, is it because i said exploit and transparency in the same sentence?

now i`m reporting you.

i give up

yeah, I'd crop it and play with it in photoshop, it doesn't bother me that its lopsided on the left, thats good, but on the vertical its too central, it's look better with things coming off of 2-3 sides,

is that painting supposed to be offensive adult content? because i do not find it to be offensive at all and i am not reporting you. if you are trying to be provocative...

i personally like the lopsidedness, although i think it can use a bit more white space...you can take a picture of it and blend it the background in photoshop... Also,...do not show 14 paintings ! Show some photos, 3d work, film, etc...even if your major was painting...you have to show how you got interested in architecture...and even if architecture school is not about building, you've got to pretend...

sample such as the first one and a few more i have-i am more sure of

the other few- in-between feeling, but will probably include

the last one is a copy of some old master--i probably won't include, but i am not sure if i need to show drawings other than just paintings---actually, just ignore this one

my biggest concern now is the fear of using photos instead of paper prints. again, photos show the best (apologize for being repetitve).

I am posting these pictures to see if doing so will help me with my porfolio.

thanks.....

i cann't believe i just did all that posting, maybe it's late night and i got a bit wired in the head.

the second one from the bottom, i am not sure if i should include.

thanks for serious inputs.

i won't do this again.

(and feel free to *anti-likil bump" me)

here is another one i am not sure to include or not

(now i feel a bit addicted to posting images)

thanks...

I like the fourth one from the bottom. I also enjoy the first and third ones. The leonardo-esque study and the one above it might look too much like exercises or studies of masters to include but I must say they show some talent. Not sure how I feel about the figure painting, or the last one so much. the second to last one, though the proportions are a bit free or loose, does show sensitivity to gradient values and the like, so it might benefit your portfolio. Hopefully, you will get more constructive feedback than mine.

I wrote my above post before you posted that last image, so read "bottom" as the landscapy painting.

likil

why don't you take some slides (you know, manually with an slr camera, tripod, lights set up) then scan the slides and and print them out on glossy or semi-gloss photo paper. that's what i've done with paintings in the past and it really does preserve the depth.

either that or try photographing them digitally with a hig-res camera and printing them. the paper you're printing on might help, and ink-jet might look better quality than laser.

likil,

You paintings are great! Don't worry too much, because they look good even as thumbnails. Good luck!

the non-figurative work is more interesting to me than the rest, which look as guigg. says, like the work you did for a life drawing class. as such they say more about the class than about you, so not the best to include execpt as examples of draughtsmanship...

i had quite a few similar from art school but put only included a few figurative ones like this:

sorry,
like this (it is cropped badly for reasons i can no longer fathom; all i can say it is a good thing i switched to architecture):

ugh, they're all sorta really awful, the figure drawings are especially painful, I wouldn't put any of those in, sorry

Constructive, Kai...think constructive.

dude

kai, man, for a feller who got into grad school by faking the art in his portfolio and gaming the system, i would expect more than a mere ugh its shite lad, give it up.

the abstract work isn't awful. they look a bit like assignments to me but i wouldn't expect accomplished artists to try for archi school anyway. either they would be too young to be good or too well suited to architecture to be an artist...come on, look at calatrava. he really truly and fundamentally sucks as an artist.

anyway its what likil has got on hand. my advice is if you are gonna put in some artwork maybe stay away from the figurative stuff and be sparing with the rest.

From the advice most of the grad students who printed paintings and artworks such as sculpture\installation work the general desire was to show the idea of the work\especially considering that printing will never give the desired effect(subjective to the "artist").
Be creative on your porfolio and experiment with different methods of printing and photoshop the paintings for extra detail.
When I turned in my paintings for undegrad I had a friend take slides and then transferred the slides at high resolution into the computer.
Then I used double-weight digi paper with a non-reflective surface and high saturation to push the colors.
does this make sense?

fuck. don't wait until the last minute to take the GRE's

Jump, Seriously, if the best constructive thing you could say in your last post was "the abstract work isn't awful" it doesn't make sense to give these generic "constructive" comments like "well, I like these a little better than the those" If they're all bad, then they shouldn't go in to the portfolio, its that simple and I think its more helpful to say that than to skirt around it and leave him wondering why he wasn't accepted somewhere

likil; some are weaker, but a few are great (the grayish one that reminds me of some Mayan relief sculpture is quite nice, imo), you should capitalize on your stronger 3 or 4 I would say. Don't listen to Kai; I just spent 3 days cruising NYCs art museums and your stuff has some great aesthetic appeal.

i hate to say it, but i have to agree with kai. they aren't the best paintings but since we are applying to arch school, that isn't a huge problem.

my suggestion would be to play with their composition within your portfolio. for example, i like (counting from the top) #6 and #8. #6 you can show a close up of part of it, maybe a horizontal strip of it and highlight some detail perhaps. take a digital photo and see what you can come up with in photoshop. but i would exclude the face from that one because i think #8 is a great self portrait. find common threads within your paintings and bring them out.

or you can focus just on the faces within each painting and show them as a series. regardless of the media, my understanding is that the reviewers are interested in your exploration of a subject, such as your self-portraits. i would avoid just showing the full paintings on each page because i don't think they are strong enough to stand on their own.

find the stregths in each one or a common thread and focus on that.

it's very brave of you to display your work like that but it would be better for the reviewers to say "i don't get it" than "i don't like it". besides, that seems to be how kai got into yale. i would love to see that portfolio, btw.

hummmmm what would Leonardo do? Copy ...or show the real thing?