Portfolio Post – NCAD Portfolio submission and criteria for LSAD Portfolio

20 Mar, 2020

The portfolio for NCAD is very different than the portfolio for example,

Limerick School of Art.

LCAD portfolio submission consists of 15 A1 pages displaying all of your skills, from life drawing, portraits, seascapes, landscapes, still life, animation, and sketch books.

This assessment is to determine your artistic/creative suitability and will consist of a review of your portfolio and a written assignment which helps to determine your comprehension of contemporary art and design practice.

The portfolio will be scored out of 600 with a minimum score of 240 required. Only those who are successful at this stage will be considered for places. As the number of applicants who are successful after the Portfolio Assessment is normally greater than the number of places available, the system of final selection is done on the basis of points. The portfolio score will be added to the Leaving Certificate score to rank you for entry.

A successful portfolio should adhere to the following guidelines

Make it Exciting: Make your Portfolio reflect how enthusiastic you are about the prospect of studying Art & Design. Choose only your best work; work that expresses your skills, your abilities, your interests, your personality.
Careful Presentation: You don’t have to spend lots of money on expensive presentation boards, mounts and sleeves, but all work will look better if it is carefully presented. Take time to order your portfolio into a neat, tidy and well-presented representation of your work.
Be selective: Don’t put everything in. We will only look at a maximum of 15 sheets. These sheets may, however, contain more than one image, drawing or photograph of 3D work. (If your portfolio contains more than 15 sheets you may be asked to withdraw work. Please avoid the embarrassment, by adhering to the 15 sheet limit.)
Sketchbooks: Please include a maximum of three sketchbooks. These should contain analytical studies which explore and investigate aspects of your environment.
Label it. Make sure your name is on the front of your closed portfolio, and neatly label all the work inside, on the reverse side, with titles, where relevant, and approximate dates.
Your Assignment: Be sure to include your portfolio assignment. This forms part of your portfolio assessment and must be included in your portfolio.

National College of Art & Design

NCAD is completely different there portfolio is the following.

The portfolio must be submitted to NCAD, 100 Thomas Street, Dublin 8, by 4.30pm on Friday 07 February at the latest. There are 9 areas that you can submit your portfolio for in NCAD, 1st Year Common Entry, Fine Art, Illustration, Product Design, Graphic Design/Moving images, Fashion Design, Interaction Design, Textiles and Surface Design.

I am going to pick 1st year Common Entry.

Common Entry brings together a mix of creative minds. You will learn as much from your peers as from your tutors and lecturers. You will broaden your frame of reference, discover new potential and be guided as to which area of art or design fits your specific skillset.

Your First Year Common Entry portfolio should be inquisitive and deeply explorative. Using primary sources for inspiration, show us your fascination with the world around you. We want to see you combine your curiosity with observational, research and problem-solving skills to re-interpret your surroundings and develop new forms of visual expression.

You are given a list of words and it is for you to expand these words and explore.

Pick one or more of the following guide words to explore. Expansion, Territory, Remnant, Departure, Encounter, Restriction, Gradient, Hurdle, Affinity

For example; what would happen if you expanded an every day object slowly over the period of a week (i.e. your cat) ? Could you place an unusual restriction on the cat, (could it survive outside, without food, love or heat) Can you think of ways to explore the cat and interact it with your own territory in an interesting and new way? The possibilities are endless here and there is nothing holding you back from your own creativity.

Your portfolio will be assessed using the following criteria:

1. Research and observation Come up with your own ideas from the guide words above. Play around with them, mix them up, put them together and take them apart. Observe everything around you. Look at minute details and the bigger picture. Think about the materials that you like to work with and research other artists who work with those materials. This is the stage where you should put the time and effort into really looking and observing and seeing what is already out there in order to change it, or improve it. Create some mind maps using different guide words and push the boundaries of what you already know.

2. Creative ideas – outcomes of your research and observation Use your Research and Observation to generate lots of ideas – practical, wild or futuristic. Try different things, work with new media and experiment. You can draw, paint, sculpt, photograph, try mark-making, digital imagery, videography, sewing, anything you can think of. Refine your skills and come up with visual solutions. What materials would you use, how would you construct it and why would you do it that way? Is there another way? This is that stage where you think about what could be made and create some samples and tests. Discover what works and does not work. Begin to formalize your ideas.

3. Developed creative work This is where you select, develop and present at least one idea. It could take any form and use any medium. We want to see how you have taken your ideas, which could have sprung from the simplest, most basic source and turned them in to something extraordinary. Your creative vision is unique and only you can arrive at the developed stage you have reached. This will be through careful thinking and planning and a lot of hard work. Show us your talent, creativity, progress and dedication. We know you have it in you. Creative Notebook Whatever pathway you are interested in, you should have a creative notebook to back up all of your ideas, thoughts and final work. They should be full of ideas from your Observation and Research stage, right through to your final conclusions. Your notebooks do not have to be neat or follow any particular format. We would advise that you carry a notebook with you so that you can jot things down as they come to you. Your notebook can show any extra project development like planning, thoughts and notes. We are also interested in the artists/designers that inspire you, the drawings that didn’t quite fit in the portfolio or the hobbies, art, school projects or work experience that you didn’t get chance to show.

The following are my thought processes, I will use my daughters cat as a starting block

House hold cat, start off by drawing the cat and then develop it into more environments, i.e. cat in garden, cat in house, lots of different cats, cats in graphic design etc. What are the restrictions on the household cat, food, house, dependent on a good home. Now we have used, more than three of the main words, affinity (you love your cat). Throw the cat out of your house (only in your head) not it has departed, what will it encounter outside, what restrictions has it, when it goes outside, what is its territory inside and outside.

I am now going to expand the house hold cat into a cheeta, same family members.

This thought process then developed into me, my territory and its protection

This concept then developed into my eyes, as they are the most important aspect to my understanding my place. Does my vision sometime, give me the wrong information, am I controlled by what I see and read.

What is real and what is unreal, depicted by a full drawing and a line drawing. Should my environment be in a bottle to protect it, from us as a human race.