Mixing Stylised and Realistic Style Portfolio?

JeRayhatt

Hey everyone, I have a question for the experienced artists here. I'm a junior artist who recently broke into the industry but haven't landed a proper paid role yet. My portfolio isn't cohesive because I don't have a lot of artwork with the same style yet. Meanwhile, I'm also trying to secure another job or some freelance gigs.

As a beginner, most of the gigs available to me are for stylized art, and I’m currently working on one since they’re easier to come by. However, my portfolio mainly consists of realistic artworks (13 pieces). I’m hesitant to mix stylized and realistic art on my ArtStation profile, as it could affect the cohesiveness.

While working on gigs, I'm also creating new pieces to build my portfolio. It's mostly been gig-to-gig work. Should I create a separate ArtStation profile for my stylized work, or is it better to merge everything? I'm concerned that the stylized pieces might overshadow my realistic work.

You can check out my portfolio here: https://www.artstation.com/aarensheamus17

Thank you in advance! I know this is a tricky question.

poopipe

it's not tricky at all

if the work is good and well presented the portfolio is good

you're not building a brand - you're showing people work in the hope that they like it enough to want to pay you to do more work for them

Ashervisalis

Yeah I got both styles on my portfolio, its worked well for me so far. It just shows you can work in an array of styles.

JeRayhatt

poopipe said:

it's not tricky at all

if the work is good and well presented the portfolio is good

you're not building a brand - you're showing people work in the hope that they like it enough to want to pay you to do more work for them

Thank you for your response! I was afraid if I mixed both of the style it wouldn't be 'cohesive'. And for beginner artists there's some kind of unspoken norm about how many can we show? In order to still look 'professional'. Tyler Edilin, the senior artist in the industry (on youtube as well), he mentioned 80% -20% rule, which is 80% of consistent style-- or else the clients won't know if I can produce a consistent style yet or something that I made had only been found yesterday, for instance. 20% can be something that we don't usually do. 

JeRayhatt

Ashervisalis said:

Yeah I got both styles on my portfolio, its worked well for me so far. It just shows you can work in an array of styles.

Thank you for answering! did you separate them by albums and choose only 'show albums' on portfolio display option on ArtStation?

Ashervisalis

Nah I just show everything I have. It would take someone really pedantic to turn you away if they saw multiple art styles.