How to allocate the painting portfolio and practice time?

[amorsea19022]

Hello everyone, I have a question and I want to ask you for advice. I’m preparing a portfolio now, and I expect to draw 4 artworks. I want to finish by February 15, after that, there will many new job opportunity in my country. I will apply for concept artist with my new portfolio.

But, I’m also watching Art School’s course at the same time, I don’t know how to allocate time for the two project. So I want to ask everyone, how do you allocate time for making personal artworks and practice? How to allocate time to be efficient?

[malcom]

This is kind of hard to answer. From today to the 15th of February can either be a lot of time or very little depending on skill level. There's a few ways you can approach this.
1. If you have 8 hours(or more) in a day to draw, split it 50/50 Half for studies of the fundamentals and the other half for concepting new art.
2. Do studies that benefit your work at the same time. For example, your making a character but your anatomy is weak, take 20mins to study an anatomy part and then apply it to your concept. Same with anything else you struggle with. If you character has metal parts but you suck at rendering metal, then do a quick study of it. This way you are still practicing fundamentals along with making a new piece. By doing it this way it'll be a 70/30 split. 70% creative and 30% studies or something like that. Percent can vary. Basically this way your only doing studies when you need to. (One of my favorite ways to go about things.)
3. You can dedicate days to studying and others to doing concepts. Like one whole day is focusing on a fundamental that you feel weak in. The next day you apply what you learn, but, still focus on the design aspect for the day.
4. Go all in with your current skills, use reference but skip the dedicated study time to just applying the reference to your art. Do this if your comfortable with abilities at the moment and feel you can still make awesome characters. After the due date you can worry about switching things up and doing more studies.

I've done things in all these ways. So you can choose what you think is best for you.
Hope this helps. If you have any other questions just ask here.

[amorsea19022]

Hello, @malcom, thank you very much for your advices. The approaches you provided gave me a more specific plan in my mind. I’m very grateful for your reply to my questions.

I’m unemployed, and left an animation company two weeks ago. Before l left, co-worker gave me some suggestions on how to prepare a portfolio to apply related jobs. Therefore, I already have a list to be made in my mind. They are: a landscape concept art, a set of interior scene setting drafts. Mainly prepare for environment and prop design in concept art.

I have been preparing for two week, but my work efficiency is very low. I originally allocated 50/50 time to learn the foundation knowledge and prepare my project, but I always want to draw when I am in learn, and want to learn when I am in draw.

After reading your suggestions, I think point 4 is more suitable for my current state. I hope I can prepare my portfolio as soon as possible through the drawing techniques I learned from the previous job. Because 2/10~2/15 is the traditional New Year in my country, there will be a lot of job openings in the next month. Efficiency is very important to me. This is why I want to ask you for help. If my work efficiency is low, I will miss the peak period of job openings.

[malcom]

Well if your doing environments and props number 4 option is still good. I'm glad I was able to help you. I hope you can make it on time.
Since you are kinda rushing its best you use every trick in the book to just get work done. I hope you can have fun doing it as well.