Are you thinking: “I don’t have enough artwork to put a portfolio together yet.”?

I get it. You want to make sure you have a lot of artwork to send to an art director before you reach out. And you want it all to be perfect.

Now I’m going to tell you why this is not the case.

When you send your artwork to an art director, all you need is one piece that catches their eye.

Most of the licensing deals I’ve done have been for one pattern at a time. So it was just one pattern out of my whole portfolio that stopped them in their tracks.

What if you have that one piece of art already made, and there’s a potential client out there that would love it, but they have no idea it exists because you’re waiting until you have a lot more to send along with it? What opportunities could you be missing out on?

If you have artwork that you love, you’re ready to put it into a portfolio. Even if it's only, let's say, 8 illustrations/patterns/photographs.

And actually, putting a portfolio together helped me to curate my art and decide what I wanted to show off and what I didn’t, and what type of artwork I wanted to make more of going forward. And I can easily add more to it as I create more art.

Which, by the way, is a great reason to reach back out to an art director. Let’s say you pitch to an art director, follow up a few weeks later, and still don’t hear back. The next time you contact them, being able to say, “I have added new artwork to my portfolio and wanted to send it your way” is a great excuse to be sending another follow up email.

So don't make the mistake of waiting until you have a ton of pieces to put your work into a beautiful presentation. The opportunities are out there now.

Want to pitch your artwork to your dream clients but feel overwhelmed?

Learn about the 5 surprising things that you can let go of to start pitching right away.