A He Xie Fen Cai is paid its dues when the projects cause your hands, eyes, and patience to go in new directions. Portfolios increase on work that displays variety, risk, and expression. Right assignments accomplish that and do not make art homework. Consider every project as a bridge over a river. Miss one, and you get wet. Set them all down, and you have good ground. Improve your strokes and textures, discover more helpful techniques.

Begin with the still life studies which seem prosaic in their appearance. Fruit bowls. Crumpled paper. Old shoes. Boring? Hardly. Pastels punish lazy seeing. Edges melt. Colors argue. Light refuses to sit still. A lecture can never impart temperature changes as quickly as a simple pear. One of the artists would even joke that her apples rolled off the page. She wasn’t wrong. These are pieces that train, restrain and they are good to read in a portfolio.

Transfer to color constrained landscapes. Pick three sticks. That’s it. Sky, earth, shade–illuved with few. This limitation makes judgment stinging. It also exposes habits. You will find out the reason, should all get murky. Make the scene sing, and it is credit to you. Viewers notice clarity. They trust it.

Fragments of portraits follow. Not full faces. Just eyes. Or hands. Or the curve of a jaw. You should leave pastels to take their own breath, and they will win over the skin-colour. Short strokes. Soft pressure. A laugh line that is displayed after a single swipe may seem like a miracle. One of my classmates once mentioned that he discovered his style in an eyebrow. Sounds silly. It wasn’t.

Use of texture will bring grit to your portfolio. Wood grain. Rust. Worn denim. The pastels are able to scratch, smear, and scumble on unexpected surfaces. The problem-solving is demonstrated with no speeches in these projects. They also do not follow the prettiness habit. A good portfolio should have some dirt.

There should be a place of abstract emotion pieces. Pick a feeling. Any feeling. Put it across in color and mark. No objects allowed. This is the place where regulations are loosened and instincts speak. Sentences should be kept brief on the page. Let shapes do the talking. Such works foreshadow voice, what curators desire.