NOBROW PORTFOLIO VIEWING.

 Last week we spent a few days down in London, primarily to see the PickMeUp exhibition at Somerset House but it was also a great opportunity to showcase our work to southern based companies. Four of us teamed up together as we thought people might be more wiling to see a group rather then individual students. It seemed to play in our favor quite well in the end.

Shoreditch housed publishers, NoBrow, very kindly agreed to see us which we were really excited about. NoBrow are best known for their incredible self printed publications that feature an array of illustrators both old and newly established. Their work seems to be getting increasingly popular and has exploded over the last few months in particular. With us all being big fans of their work, we were quite nervous but eager about meeting Sam Arther & Alex Spiro.

When looking through my work, I explained to Sam how my work had taken quite a drastic change in appearance over the last few months, resulting in a short portfolio. From this, he spoke about how sometimes it's better to have a select few images that really sell yourself for who you are, rather then be overwhelmed by work that can be somewhat dated or not true to yourself. I found this reassuring and completely understood what he was saying. My portfolio a year ago was much more crammed with a variety of different outcomes that could have been quite confusing for a client to look at. The importance of consistency in our work was something he stressed to all of us and is starting to become apparent with me. The person looking at your work wants to know exactly what they're getting if they commission you, so sometimes its a good thing to make your portfolio specific for the viewer. I hadn't particularly thought of this before but it makes sense not to show work to someone who's not necessarily going to like it or feel the need to hire you based on it.

All in all, Sam was great to talk to and gave some good advice concerning our future as artists. The feedback on my work was all pretty good and preferred some work over others. Thankfully my more recent pieces. The bit that stayed with me most was when Sam talked about, even though we're finishing uni and have been through x-amount of years of education, we're still coming out at the bottom and need to work our way up. Its not going to be handed to us on a plate but if we really want it, we'll be determined enough to get there. Overall it was a worthwhile and valuable visit.