How to write a portfolio process page in one afternoon

TL;DR: A process page shows an art director how a piece came together, so they do not have to ask. Put on it a rough sketch, two or three stages, a short note on your choices, and one link they can check.

Add a link to your process page that a client can check: free at drawdog.art/download.

Art directors used to skim a portfolio for taste. Now they skim it for signs of how it was made. Somewhere between the third and the sixth image, a part of their brain is asking whether any of this was made by a person, and if your site gives them nothing to settle that with, they settle it the lazy way: they move on to the illustrator whose site does. A process page is the cheapest fix there is. It is one page, it takes an afternoon, and once it exists every piece in your portfolio borrows credibility from it.

Most process pages are bad, though, and they are bad in the same way. They are written as marketing. Here is how to write one that shows your process.

What the page is for

Be clear about the reader. It is not a fan. It is a person with a budget and a deadline who needs to be able to say to their boss, "I checked, she draws it by hand," and needs that to be true. Your page exists so that sentence is easy to say. Everything on it should serve that, which means it is closer to a lab notebook than a mood board.

That reader has about ninety seconds. They will read the first paragraph, look at whatever is largest, and scroll once. So the page needs one honest claim at the top, one big piece of visible evidence, and enough texture underneath to reward the scroll without requiring it.

The claim is a plain statement of how you work. "Everything on this site is drawn by hand in Procreate and Photoshop. I use reference photos I take or license, and I do not use generative tools at any stage." Adjust to your actual practice. If you use AI for something, say what, because a process page that gets caught in an omission is worse than no page at all, and the whole point of having one is that you are the illustrator who does not get caught.

What to put on it

Start with a real piece, not your best one. Your best one already sells itself. Pick the piece with the most interesting middle: the one where the composition changed, or the client sent you back to the thumbnails, or the hands took a day. Show it in four to six states. Thumbnails. Rough. The first wrong version. The fix. Final. Under each, one sentence about what you were deciding, not what you were feeling.

Then show the recording, if your app makes one. Procreate's timelapse embeds fine, and Clip Studio and Krita can both capture their canvas. Keep the caption flat: "The recording Procreate makes as I draw." The limits of a timelapse are worth knowing, but you do not need to explain them here; the page is a first impression, not a deposition.

Then the boring section, which is the one that actually does the work. Your tools, by name, with versions if you feel like it. Your typical timeline for a spot illustration and for a full piece. Where your reference comes from. What you deliver, in what formats, and what you keep. If you keep working files and can provide them on request, say so in exactly those words. That sentence is the one an art director quotes upward.

Finally, a line about verification. If you have ever had work independently certified, link the certificate. If you record your sessions with something that produces a third-party record, say so and link one example. If you do neither, say that clients are welcome to ask for working files and a walkthrough. The offer matters even if nobody takes it up, because a person with nothing to hide makes the offer easily.

What to leave off

Adjectives about yourself. "Passionate", "meticulous", "obsessed with detail". The reader has heard them from everyone, including the people who generate their portfolio, and they carry zero information. Replace every one with a fact. Not "meticulous" but "I redraw hands until they are right, which is usually three times."

Anything about your childhood. The page is not a biography. If you have an about page, that is where the story lives.

Screenshots of your desk, unless the desk is genuinely part of the process. A photo of a Wacom tablet proves you own a Wacom tablet.

Long paragraphs on why AI art is bad. You may believe it and you may be right, but a process page that turns into an essay reads as defensive, and defensiveness is the one tone that makes a reader wonder what you are defending. State how you work, show it, stop.

A structure you can copy

Top: one paragraph, the claim, in the first person, with the tools named. Below it, the largest thing on the page, which is your chosen piece in its stages, laid out left to right or top to bottom on a phone. Then the recording, if you have one. Then the boring section, as a short list of headed facts rather than prose: tools, timeline, references, deliverables, working files. Then the verification line. Then a single call to action, which is your email address, because the reader who got this far is ready to write to you.

Put the link to the page in your main navigation, not buried in the footer, and call it "Process". Not "Behind the scenes", not "Studio". The word an art director is scanning for is the word they are going to type into their message to you.

Then keep it current. Every six months, swap the featured piece for a newer one, update the tools if they have changed, and re-read the claim at the top to make sure it is still true. A process page from 2023 that still says "no AI" on a site where the recent work looks different is the kind of thing that starts the very conversation the page was meant to prevent.

None of this is clever. It is the same thing a good contractor does when they leave a folder of receipts and photos at the end of a job. The people who hire illustrators are tired, they are being asked to check things they did not used to have to check, and the one who makes checking easy is the one who gets the call back. Make it easy.

Here is what that link looks like: drawdog.art/c/sample.