Fan art in a Portfolio?

[kirsten-mcg]

Hi all! I'm wondering If I can get your thoughts on this, because I can't seem to come to a clear consensus with online research. Do you think it's ok to include fan art in your portfolio? Does anyone here include it in their portfolio? I just finished Inktober using a Harry Potter theme (my IG handle is @kirsten.mcgonigal.art if you want to see). Some of the images I created look really nice when I convert them to gray scale, and would work well as examples of spot illustration in my portfolio, but I'm hesitating on some of them, especially the portraits of well known characters like Hermione and Draco because they are clearly fan art. I would love to hear your thoughts, opinions, and experience with this!

[Nyrryl Cadiz]

@kirsten-mcg if it's of good quality and matches your overall style, go for it.

[mzameckaart]

I think it can be even good to show something known, but as your own, different vision of it. If sb draws eg fairytale characters, but draws them eg close to their Disney movie depictions ("Little Mermaid", "Beauty and The Beast"etc), that to me personally makes little sense. I think it's best to draw them either in a completely different style than it was done before or even better - redesign the whole thing.
I totally intend to put some HP content in my portfolio, if it turns out well. And it's not exactly fan art, unless you draw them as they were in the movies - if your source is the book, it's illustration, not fan art.

[kirsten-mcg]

@mzameckaart I didn't know that about the difference between illustration and fan art! Thanks so much for your input.

[mzameckaart]

@kirsten-mcg I mean that's just how I understand it. If you are making images based on text I personally wouldn't understand it as fan art. Like what eg Arthur Rackham and other old illustrators did wasn't fan art Fan art - to me - is based on some visual image (like movie, cartoon, comic) of characters made by someone else.. But I wonder what others think about it

[kirsten-mcg]

@mzameckaart That actually makes a lot of since to me! I feel like 10 illustrators could make illustrations of a character based on a written description and they would all come out pretty different. But making fan art from an image like in a movie would give a much more consistent result.