[Eclipse]

When my portfolio got stolen, she said something along the lines, why don't you quick make a new one while all this recent work is still on your mind?.

She knew it involved five years of work in some casues and everything was done over a few monthes time. At the time I hadn't made any new pieces for at least a month, I was doing nothing but editing work since I was preparing the portfolio for scanning. Yeah....I can quick whip something like up anyday. I'm a talented artist (I think?) but not THAT talented that I can redo five years worth of designs.

Anyways, I let it go for now until sbe calls me again tonight and gives me the ole apathy treatment again and gets upset because I've been cancelling things right and left. YES bad things are going to happen and I'm going to cancel things I planned to do before this life altering disaster stuck.

It ended with why do you think I'm working so hard (working my ass off to rebuild) long pause, I dunno.

I'm so pissed off, I'm going to (again) avoid her for a while until she understands what a serious endeaver it is to attempt to enter the pro art world and that a good quality portfolio is not something you quick whip up.

How do I get this from someone who was a former artist too!.

I would be far more patient with someone who never did any art because then how would they not understand that I cannot quickly whip up more quality pieces. Oh well...What a dumbass!!!!!

I wish she would understand that this is the worst thing that has happened to me since I was forced to leave college in FL a semester before offical graduation due to my safety being in danger and I've had a lot of bad things happen since then too.

 

[froggythefrog]

You said something interesting: she's a former artist. I am wondering if this has anything to do with her reaction.

I am sorry about your portfolio by the way.

That sounds devastating. Good on you for not tossing up your hands and yelling, "I give up." You will recover.

 

[karenlovessnow]

I, too, am sorry about the loss of your portfolio. I agree with froggy regarding her less than supportive reaction. I don't know how 'good' of a friendship you two have, but maybe instead of avoiding her, you could simply tell her how her that her attitude is insensitive and unrealistic. I'm not saying pick a fight, but if you are good friends you should be able to let her know that she's being a 'dumbass', but without coming right out and saying so!

 

[Ludi]

Thing is, though, you WILL be required to "whip up" quality pieces when you're hired to do a job.

So she isn't totally out of bounds to suggest you need to produce quality work quickly, because that is what you'll have to do when you go pro.

 

[Eclipse]

Anyone who design or does anything would know that it doesn't work like that. The amount of time spend is directly related to the quality of the work. Working quickly will only result in lowering that quality level.

I guess if the work is good enough to begin with this won't matter so much.

My whole portfolio is crap compared to the portfolio I spend a month just on editing because I'm trying to speed up the process as much as possible.

 

[CountessKerouac]

Do you think she may have been the one to steal it? If not, do you have any idea who DID steal it? Maybe there is a way to get it back.

 

[GhostUser]

Quote:

Originally Posted by CountessKerouac

Do you think she may have been the one to steal it? If not, do you have any idea who DID steal it? Maybe there is a way to get it back.

What a good idea! Now along with calling her a "dumbass" and getting angry because the two of them don't have the same vision of certain things (what a crime!) she's going to suspect her.

Hey, maybe she's been lying to you and is actually not your friend and she wants you to commit suicide? Maybe she's an alien and wants to do experiments on you in order to invade the planet. Hey that's why she can't understand you and art! Aliens just don't have portfolios, do they?

And to think I thought we French people suspected others too much and grew divided for stupid matters.

 

[jeneticallymodified]

Quote:

Anyone who design or does anything would know that it doesn't work like that. The amount of time spend is directly related to the quality of the work.

i studied design, and as far as i know, the quality of the work is directly related to the skill of the designer, and not neccesarily to the time they spent on it- in fact, i've found that you can spend way too long on a piece and overwork the hell out of it very easily, and that you can create a very high quality piece in a short period of time, if you have efficiency, technique and can work intutiatively.

while there is no fighting the laws of time and space, if you're a skilled and practiced artist, you can consistantly produce good quality pieces to a tight timeframe, and it is expected of you to do so if you're working in a media field - even in school we'd get briefs with strict, short deadlines attached.

if you're working for a company doing magazine illustrations, for example, there won't be much in the way of 'ah, just give it to us when it's done, as long as it looks nice, we can wait', and much more of 'we need this, this and this, for tuesday at 9am, get on it!'.

while it sucks that your portfolio got stolen (i empathise, mine got 'lost' by my school, to never reappear... grrr) perhaps you could put this into practice and try and use it as a learning experience- a friend of mine who is building a portfolio at short notice has done this- she's gone online and found briefs (or got us to make them up for her), and worked to schedual on them as if they were her own briefs (as if she was in a job), in order to throw out high quality work at a standard measurable pace.

if nothing else, if you include these briefs, plans, examples of project development, etc in your portfolio with the finished pieces, and your sketchbooks, etc, it'll show any prospective employers that you can work to targets, and develop ideas, consistantly, with no external motivation. i'd think that this is move valuable in an employee than someone who can draw something very nicely, but who'll cost a lot of man-hours in the process of doing it, and who needs a constant muse.

oooh, and while its in my head, i've learnt this from having lost my stuff too... get high quality scans of everything (and save them to cd, and print them) as you go- then should the worst happen again, at least you've got duplicates, and they'll serve as some kind of proof that the work was yours, if someone else tries to write it off as their own!

eta: using briefs and deadlines and timeframes to produce work is also really good as it stops you from burning out by fixating on the details of one piece, and from exhausting yourself by working for 3 weeks on it, or from stagnating and putting things off and feeling overwhelmed, and ending up with a headache and no work to show for it!

if you know that you've got 6 days to produce something specific, you can work out the steps you'll need to do to produce it, estimate a timeframe, work out a working day, and then know when your on track, and that its time to stop for the evening (and then you'd be able to schedual in going out, socialising, and eating, etc- which is very important to ensure you don't loose your marbles or keel over into your paints from exhaustion, lol). if a piece is not done when you hit that deadline, then move on, and come back to it in your spare time, this way you'll train yourself in time management too.

good luck!

 

[Ludi]

Eclipse, I'm an artist by profession, so, I'm not just shooting my mouth off about this stuff. Sometimes, often in fact, you will be required to work quickly, and to be able to produce quality work quickly.

Jen gives good advice above about setting yourself time-limited project goals.

 

[Eclipse]

Yes you do. I have been trying to set the deadline to be done by Dec 1.

Oh and my portfolio was taken two days before I had an entire day set aside for the scanning process. I don't exactly have nice fancy pro equipment to play with.

I keep finding that artwork gets better each time it's edited (the more, the better it looks). This seems logical to me, it takes a certain amount of time to produce something and if you want it done better, you put more time and effort into it. Maybe I've been going about this all wrong.

Obviously I am from what you two say. Maybe I just have to edit less and leave drawings how they originally come out more.

I studied some design/art too on a limited basis since I did not have the luxury of actually going to school for that. So I'll take your word for it.

I get into a sculpture class by merit* before and it saddens me deeply to lose the skills while I make repeated attempts to make a living/ get an income. Sculpture is far more income dependent then drawing, especially when you move beyond the designing pieces in clay and having them cast part. Once when I had a promising job linned for the summer, I got all the info from the companies to get some projects done in the fall.

Then I "fired" before getting hired, repeat process untill I was burned out in fall from constnatly getting and losing jobs before they started, reduced to crying my eyes out and I never looked at the sculpture suppliers again.

* Then later I failed to make the cut for a show (I did then also build a small portfolio, except in this case, it was a sculpture portfolio) , which shows I 'm talented enough in my home state, but not talented enough to compete nationwide. Either that I was disqualified because my stuff got lost in the mail and arrived too late. I always wished I knew for sure so I'd know where I stood.