Student Portfolio for college/art school admission by Emily Jiang
I’ve been doing video critiques on student portfolios for college/art school admission for a few months now, and just recently began doing video critiques for professional artists. Many people have commented what a great learning experience it was for them to listen to these critiques. For this reason, I’m now offering the option to have your video critique featured here on my blog, on my Facebook page, and on my Youtube channel. You can choose to have your critique featured anonymously, with your name, or to keep it private.
I’ve also had people inquire about purchasing artworks seen in the video critiques. I am happy to connect artists with anyone who is interested in their artwork. More information on my video critique program is here.
Student Portfolio for college/art school admission by Dessery Dai
For many students who begin art school, group critiques are an unfamiliar format of discussion that takes some adjustment. It’s quite common that the vast majority of students people make an initial assumption that the only interesting part of a group critique is when their own artwork is being discussed. On the contrary, pretty much all of my students talk about how beneficial it is to hear how someone else’s artwork is received and discussed. What’s especially interesting is to witness the range of reactions and feedback other artworks facilitate, this really can dramatically broaden your awareness as an artist.
One of the reasons hearing other people’s critiques is so effective is that when it’s not your artwork being discussed, you can listen to the critique much more objectively. I know for most artists, (myself included) at times we are so close to the artwork and stuck in our own heads, that it can be tough to distance yourself and absorb critical feedback.
ART PROF is a free, online educational platform for visual arts for people of all ages and means. artprof.org features video courses, art critiques, an encyclopedia of art supplies, and more.
PORTFOLIO VIDEO CRITIQUES
Prof Lieu offers video critiques on portfolios for students applying to art school and working artists. More info.
ART DARES
Every month, we assign a topic for you to respond to with an artwork. We give out prizes in several categories! More info.
ASK THE ART PROF was a written column in the Huffington Post from about art related topics. Visit our Pro Development page.
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Clara Lieu 
I can’t believe I watched the whole thing. It started off good, and then I started getting annoyed at the deluge of criticism, which could be devastating (the balance of nurturing versus pruning), but then I thought your advice was mostly so good, that in this case “tough love” is justified on both counts. You really cared about the student’s work, and you gave all your secrets. The recommendations were excellent, I thought, and if she followed them would produce better work. At this point I realized what an excellent teacher you must be, because if that student were yours for a term or two, her improvement would be remarkable. But you don’t sugar coat shit, and I found myself reflecting on HS work I did, and how you might have responded. I doubt my skin’s thick enough even now to survive one of your crits unscathed. But that kind of bitter medicine, if it is true (and there’s a big risk in art there), is the one that makes a difference. Anyway, that’s just my opinion.
If you make your video critiques available online, which I think you are saying your are doing, it’s an incredible learning tool for students and artists.
There is a sticky little detail in which it’s so hard to know what an artist’s inner direction is, and so easy to drive them in an established direction. Yves Tanguy seems capable of only one type of painting, and one would never anticipate THAT would be the end result of someone’s artistic search. Would it be possible to tutor Yves Tanguy without unwittingly directing him away from that peculiar destination? The same could be said for Van Gogh. He turned his sometimes crude and awkward drawing into thick impasto paint. His early butchering of perspective was not so much corrected as channeled and integrated into another whole that didn’t require proper perspective, finesse over details and anatomy, or proper lighting and shading. Since it’s something very difficult to anticipate, if not impossible, I guess the best one can do is give the artist the basic fundamentals they can use as a springboard to whichever direction, and then refine from there.
Also thought the recommendations of Lucien Freud and Edward Gorey were really good.