TRUE STORY: What is this compulsion artists and colorists have to showcase their worst work in their portfolios?
When I’ve reviewed samples across the decades, I’ve included notes on what to revise to make the pages usable. The hope, of course, is they’d make the revisions to create a publishable page and also show how good they are at following editorial direction. Instead, the artist or colorist usually vanished or created different pages rather than fix the pages reviewed.
Of course, the artist then put the UNCORRECTED pages in their portfolio, thereby showcasing their mistakes for editors to see.
Case in point: One of my artists (Tina Francisco) drew a delightful page that the colorist obliterated with dark, murky tones. The sample was rejected by the client because it was so heavy and muddy, yet the colorist used it in his portfolio without first revising it. Of course, with a colorist putting this forward as an example of his best work, I couldn’t offer him anything.
