Presenting

When a portfolio or just a piece of art is being presented, not only is the art being judged but so is the artist, so I would like to talk about something’s that I have learned about presenting, myself. To start off, you need to make sure that you, yourself looks presentable. If you do not look appropriate, or maybe you just look like a fool, the audience is not going to even pay attention to what your presenting, but they are going to be paying attention to how ridiculous you might look. So bottom line is to just dress to impress. Second, I would have to say is how you speak. Odds are if you are presenting something that is of importance, you are going to want to speak proper English, and you are going to want to speak it well. You should not be standing in front of an audience speaking slang. For one not a lot of people can understand or follow along with it, and for two it just doesn’t even sound good. You should not be saying the word “like” every other couple of words and you should not be pausing and saying “umm…” When you are presenting something that is yours and that is supposed to be something that the audience likes, you should be doing everything that you can to sell it. It is really hard to follow along with a speaker when the speaker doesn’t even know what he/she is saying. So try and have an idea of what you will be talking about and stick to it. Along those same lines would have to be, know everything there is to know about what you are presenting, after all it is YOUR art. So that when someone in the audience asks you a question about one of your pieces, or why you did something you did, you don’t have a stupid answer like, “I don’t know,” or “cause I thought it would look cool.” Try to sound a little intelligent about what your saying. And last but not least is Posture and eye contact. Don’t be standing there in a slouch with you hands in your pocket swaying back and forth or leaning on something. Stand up straight, with a positive attitude (like you actually are proud of your art) and sell it. Be energetic about it, it’s ok to talk with your hands, I’m not saying to spin around the room doing a helicopter, but keep the audiences attention, and look at them! Don’t look down at your hands or the floor or just be staring at your art the whole time, but look at who you are talking to, it is so much more personal that way, and it makes them feel like they have to be paying attention to you (even if they don’t want to).

Oh and one last thing…BS! It’s ok if you don’t know the answer to something or if you don’t know what to say about something, but don’t not have a good answer! Make something up that you know they want to hear or you know would be the right thing to say. Because answering a question with “I don’t know, I forgot, or because I thought it would look cool” is not ok. Make something up, its just a little white lie.