My travels have taken me far away this time around, and in honor of that, I disconnected. I have four videos lined up for you this week to make up for my three week absence, and gosh was it worth it. I had the best time with my friends exploring temples in Cambodia, volunteering with rescued elephants in Thailand, and finally opening a school in India. But more on all of that later. For now, I wanted to share something I’ve been thinking of for a long time, and that is how we represent ourselves as artists.

Not everyone reading this page is a traditional artist, but this thought process applies nonetheless. To understand how and why you create, and to put that out there with everything you do, takes discipline and a unique understanding of yourself. I can safely say I do not have that down yet, but I will continue to strive for it. I’ll be sharing a video soon about a change in my own thought process and how I know myself as an artist, but first, a look into the ever-important portfolio and how we put that out there.

I saw a really casual video a few weeks ago of an artist’s work, and it made me want to know more about them. Alas, it was a video put together by someone else and there was no artist credit, so I never did find that artist. It started me thinking though about how much we can control how our content is consumed, and seeing that video inspired me to make one of my own. We are largely a visual people, so to bee able to set images to music and see them scroll without having to click buttons feels like a good way to do some sharing.

Creating a Portfolio Video:

1. Find a video editing source, like iMovie, Windows Movie Maker, or Animoto.
2. Choose your images. I chose 30 of my own images to put in the slideshow, and made sure that they flowed together and represented what I feel are some of my strongest works from the past five years, favoring newer works to take up at least half of the video.
3. Pick a song. When I picked the music to go with my images, I chose something with no lyrics, so as not to put any unwanted ideas into the viewer’s head. I also chose something cinematic, haunting, and timeless…all keywords that I use to describe my own art.
4. Create a YouTube channel if you don’t have one already. (Or Vimeo, or any other video sharing site!). Talk about easy and free marketing! You never know who is going to stumble on a YouTube channel.
5. Share it in the comments. Once you have your video complete, share a link in the comments of this post so that I can sit back and enjoy some amazing art.

I created this incredibly simple video of my portfolio, set to music that I feel fits the tone of my work. What I know is that it can’t hurt to put it out there, and it took me about 40 minutes to create in total – from downloading the images to putting them in iMovie to exporting. I licensed the music from SongFreedom.com and it is “Mystery” by Zero Bedroom Apartment. So, for the cost of only $30, I put together a portfolio, shared it for free on YouTube, and it has the look and feel I desire for my work.

I invite everyone to create a little video of your work, and to share it in the comments here so that we can discover one another as we would like to be discovered! Happy creating as always everyone, and I hope your past month was as exhilarating as mine…can’t wait to share!