An Artist Draws a Path to College

As noon approaches, Kelly Kirsch stands in line, waiting for the doors to open. She carries a black case full of drawings—months of work that experts will judge in minutes.

It’s National Portfolio Day, held annually in major cities, when representatives from dozens of art colleges come to critique prospective students’ creations. Some institutions will accept a standout portfolio—the crucial part of the overall application—on the spot. Either way, the evaluations give aspiring artists a good sense of whether they have what a college is looking for. That can influence where they end up, or if they go on to study painting or sculpture or graphic design at all.

For weeks Ms. Kirsch, 17, has tried not to think too much about how criticism might sting. “They tell you the cold, hard truth about yourself,” she says. Dwelling on that only raised her anxiety. Did she really have the skills to major in animation? Was she good enough to impress someone at her first choice, the School of Visual Arts, in New York City?

This Sunday in November promises to deliver answers. Inside the Pennsylvania Convention Center, the event’s about to begin. More than a college fair, it packs the drama of the admissions process into brief one-on-one encounters. Forget grades and test scores: These appraisals get at something much closer to the bone. For an artist, to unveil your work is to lay yourself bare.

Scores of fidgeting high-school students line the hallways, waiting to meet the reviewers whose words will ring like verdicts in their ears. Some of the teenagers fire off text messages. Others stare into space. A young man, hands trembling, struggles to fill out a registration form.

As the minutes inch by, Ms. Kirsch chats with her parents and best friend, who’s come for moral support. Slight and bespectacled, the artist wears a sweater, skirt, and thick-soled boots, good for hours of standing. The pumpkin roll she ate for breakfast will have to carry her well past lunchtime. Her nervousness, she says, has given way to excitement. She’s eager to show off her small black sketchbook, its pages marked with colored tabs.

When noon finally comes, the doors to Hall D swing open. Coats rustle as everyone gathers up belongings. Families lug portfolio cases and cardboard tubes, black-and-white sketches and big, colorful canvases. One student pushes his paintings on a contraption he built out of lumber and shopping-cart wheels.

Inside the vast exhibit hall, admissions officers and instructors representing about 60 colleges stand behind long tables bearing their names. Pratt Institute. Virginia Commonwealth University. California Institute of the Arts. Within minutes, the Rhode Island School of Design attracts a swarm.

Ms. Kirsch barely notices. She heads straight for the School of Visual Arts table. She arrives before anyone else.

For most of us, confidence comes in dribs and drabs. Ms. Kirsch learned as much while preparing for National Portfolio Day.

Growing up in Coopersburg, Pa., she filled sketchbooks with drawings of friends and comics starring characters she dreamed up. She often imagined life as a professional artist. During her sophomore year of high school, she decided doodling wasn’t enough. She resolved to get serious, study her surroundings, master the human form. When she found drawings she liked, she would copy them line by line to absorb what other artists had done.

Ms. Kirsch’s blooming talent impressed her mother, who teaches middle school, and her father, who sells chemicals and adhesives. They admired her quiet determination. When she asked to attend a camp for young artists at Temple University last summer, they happily wrote a $750 check.

Ms. Kirsch spent two weeks at a Portfolio Boot Camp run by Temple’s Tyler School of Art, which emphasizes the observational drawing skills that colleges seek. Surrounded by other students, she learned how to layer colors, transition from dark to light. Don’t draw hard lines around objects, the instructor said: Those lines aren’t really there. The students all completed still lifes and portraits of nudes.

For her first pastel piece, Ms. Kirsch drew herself, mouth slightly open, ghostly blues behind her glasses. “People say I look startled and scared all the time,” she said one August afternoon at Tyler. What could she tell them? “That’s my face, man.”

Still, she was anxious that day, pacing around a studio full of teenagers, their knees and foreheads smudged with charcoal and Conté crayon. She fretted about how her work compared with that of her peers. Beyond camaraderie, the camp offers “the misery,” one Temple official put it, “of seeing how good others are.”

When Grace Ahn, senior admissions counselor at Tyler, came by to talk to the group, Ms. Kirsch pulled her aside. “I guess I just need reassurance. This girl’s my age,” she said, pointing to another student’s drawing, “and she’s all ready to go.”

Ms. Ahn smiled and shook her head. “Don’t compare. You have solid work,” she said, staring at two of Ms. Kirsch’s portraits on a wall. “Both of these show depth of drawing. These are two really strong pieces.”

Ms. Kirsch described a flaw in one of them—the leg of one of the nudes was not quite right. “Kelly!” a classmate chimed in from behind an easel. “You need to stop self-critiquing! You do this all day.” Another student added: “Show her your sketchbook!”

From her backpack Ms. Kirsch plucked the small black notebook and opened it. Ms. Ahn squatted down and examined several pages. “You’re in great shape,” she said after a few minutes. “Don’t worry. Keep on it.”

Returning home from camp, Ms. Kirsch worked hard. She downloaded animation software, teaching herself how to set drawings in motion. When her senior year began, she completed three more pieces in art class, accruing the 15 or so she would need for her portfolio. She stayed after school to paint the Alps on the set of this fall’s production of The Sound of Music.

Among her recent work is a four-page comic book about a quiet boy with mysterious powers who must save an old woman’s shop full of dying plants. Plant Boy, as Ms. Kirsch calls it, was inspired by Steven Universe, a Cartoon Network series about a band of intergalactic warriors whose magical powers flow from gemstones embedded within them.

The critically acclaimed show was created by the artist and writer Rebecca Sugar, who in 2013 became the first woman to land a solo show on the network. “My hero,” Ms. Kirsch says of Ms. Sugar, whose alma mater is none other than SVA, the School of Visual Arts.

A long-awaited moment sometimes dissolves all too quickly. Since visiting SVA in New York a few weeks earlier, Ms. Kirsch has anticipated this chance to share her work.

Now, the first one at the table, she feels rushed. An admissions counselor goes through her drawings, makes a few remarks. As the line grows behind her, Ms. Kirsch senses that the reviewer is in a hurry. In about 10 minutes, the eager student gets feedback on half of the pieces she brought. And that’s it.

Still inside Ms. Kirsch’s backpack is her sketchbook. She’s proud of what’s in there, her study of facial expressions and body language, which animators must master. She had planned to show her favorite pages. But she walks away from the table without even having taken the sketchbook out.

Disappointed, Ms. Kirsch says the conversation wasn’t great or terrible, just too short: “It wasn’t as constructive as I had wanted.”

But she moves on, lining up for the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. A young woman nearby holds up a vivid portrait. “She’s really good,” Ms. Kirsch says. “You can always see my brushstrokes.”

After a 20-minute wait, it’s her turn. Virginia Casey, an admissions representative at the school, surveys Ms. Kirsch’s pastel self-portrait. “It’s beautifully done,” Ms. Casey says. “You’re doing a really good job establishing depth behind your glasses. Think of ways you could play up the texture on the page.”

This time Ms. Kirsch opens her sketchbook. She holds out her iPhone, showing animations of Plant Boy blinking his eyes and shaking his head. Ms. Casey offers praise and specific suggestions. “I’m impressed with the level of risk you’re taking,” she says. “It doesn’t have to be technically perfect, and I’d encourage you to put some color in there.” She pauses. “Keep working on Plant Boy!”

Ms. Kirsch beams as she zips up her portfolio. She briefs her mother, waiting nearby, and decides to line up for the Rhode Island School of Design.

All around her, a spectacle unfolds. A father plops down in a beach chair—no seating, so he brought his own—and bites into an apple. A student in line perches on his tree-trunk sculpture. A golden-shoed young man strolls past Ms. Kirsch, trailed by a young woman with two-tone hair and a doll’s-head pendant.

Ms. Kirsch spots Theodora Martino, a talented friend from Temple’s summer camp. The young women hug, comparing their luck so far.

Ms. Martino, wearing a portrait of Frida Kahlo around her neck and rings on eight fingers, heads to the Maryland Institute College of Art. She shows her portfolio, a digital photograph of a sculpture featuring deer vertebrae she found in the woods, and one of her rings, copper and silver, which she made.

The reviewer calls Ms. Martino “a Renaissance woman” who would be a great fit at MICA. But one piece should probably come out of her portfolio, the woman says: a screen print of “Fat Cat,” a top-hatted feline with a fish in one paw, knife in the other. Minutes before, another reviewer had raved about it. “The thing about art,” Ms. Martino says, “is if it connects with something you like, you’ll like it.”

Taste is one thing, skill is another. In each portfolio, Gerard Brown looks for evidence of the latter. Those outside the art world might think assessing a drawing is subjective, he says, “but it isn’t.”

Mr. Brown, an assistant professor at Temple’s Tyler School of Art, is reviewing portfolios today, trying to speak constructively yet frankly. Dashing dreams is no good, but neither is overinflating them. Sometimes students cry, in disappointment or relief, when their work is critiqued. Some parents stand by, even taking notes.

Typically, Mr. Brown explains, observational drawings reveal an artist’s understanding of form and space, line and tone, the fundamentals required in college. He rates each portfolio—for Temple, not the students—on a scale of 1 (“very poor”) to 6 (“outstanding”).

He also notes how well students articulate their commitment to art. Do they seem passionate, curious about the world? “We see kids who are good with their hands, but there are no ideas behind it,” he says. “Someone with wrists and brains? That’s when we get really excited.”

A couple of hours in, Mr. Brown chats with a young man in a plaid shirt who wants to study graphic design. “This one’s really strong, good use of contrast,” Mr. Brown says, leaning over a cross-contour pencil drawing. “Then you start to lose it a little bit around here.”

The young man nods and pulls out another piece. “This is how it should be done!” Mr. Brown responds. He encourages the student to draw to scale, suggests that he check out the illustrator Charley Harper. “You’re in great shape,” the professor says. The young man smiles as if he’s just won a medal.

Not all reviewers are so engaging. Some are vague or spew nothing but superlatives. “I did not just wait in line for 40 minutes to be called a ‘contender’ and receive impersonal advice,” a student tweets partway through the event.

Ms. Kirsch had come to the event braced for criticism. In RISD’s long line, she hopes to hear how she might improve her work. For nearly two hours, she has been thinking about what happened at the School of Visual Arts table, replaying the abrupt exchange, wondering if she blew her chance.

What would happen if she went back? Was she allowed to line up again, with a different admissions counselor? If the first one spotted her, what would she do?

Mr. Kirsch isn’t sure, but she keeps thinking, I want more time, just a few more minutes to show what she can do. She steps out of the RISD line and walks back over to her dream school.

Talent is not enough. An artist must also learn to speak up, to promote her work—even if she happens to be shy.

Ms. Kirsch’s parents have told her she hides behind her glasses. She describes them as part of her identity. This fall her art teacher asked students to express in a drawing a word that characterizes them; Ms. Kirsch chose “demure.” Using a graphite pencil, she drew a striking self-portrait in which her glasses appear to fly farther and farther away from her face.

After the portfolio camp, Ms. Kirsch’s mother noticed a change. Her daughter seemed less reserved, more poised. So Connie Kirsch isn’t too surprised when Kelly decides to go back for another shot at SVA.

Having left the convention center for a few minutes, the elder Ms. Kirsch soon returns to find out what’s happening. She texts her daughter: “How’s it going?”

The reply: “REALLY WELL.”

The two find each other at the far end of the exhibit hall, where the aspiring artist is sitting on the concrete floor chatting with her best friend, Shannon Crossan, the one she used to color and draw Pokemon characters with. Ms. Crossan, now studying animation at the nearby Moore College of Art and Design, has just witnessed the second review at SVA.

Connie Kirsch raises her eyebrows inquisitively. “Well?”

“Ten times better,” Kelly says.

Breathlessly, she relays some of the reviewer’s comments, how he raved about Plant Boy. Her friend interrupts her midsentence: “He said you would definitely be admitted!”

Ms. Kirsch’s mother suddenly realizes how encouraging the review was, and her eyes widen. “That’s sort of big, Kelly!”

“Oh yeah,” she replies, talking mile a minute. “He said, ‘Without a question, you would get in.’ He was impressed with the sketchbook, and then I didn’t hear much else.”

Her mother claps. “Oh, that’s awesome, Kelly!”

She doesn’t have the grades, she explains, to qualify for a scholarship. Tuition alone at SVA is more than $33,000 a year. But the school has just affirmed her potential. “At least I’m not iffy about this,” she says.

“If you were iffy,” her mother says, “we wouldn’t be here. But you belong here.” She deadpans: “I only need one kidney, right?”

They all laugh. The high-school senior says goodbye to her friend, rides home in her parents’ Hyundai, and finishes her Spanish homework. Happy, relieved, she finally goes to sleep.

Weeks later, Ms. Kirsch applies to the School of Visual Arts. The admissions counselor who conducted her second review sends her a postcard with a doodle of himself, glasses flying off his face, a nod to her self-portrait. “Your work is incredible!!” he writes. She takes this as a good sign.

As she waits for a decision, still weeks away, Ms. Kirsch continues to work on Plant Boy. She often sketches her ideas during an easy class, then at home at her desk. The comic’s hero eats a slew of carrots, somehow enabling himself to revive the dying plants in the old woman’s store. It’s still a bit fuzzy, she says, how a quiet kid develops immense powers overnight.