| Illustrator Tips |
For most artists, skill is the product of hard work. Some ability is important, but you must have the dedication to refine your talent. Few are born with amazing abilities.
It sounds cliché, but perseverance is paramount. You should develop your skills as an artist first. Always look for opportunities to improve.
You should also nurture any relationships with publishers, newspaper editors, magazine writers—people that work in areas where illustration is used. Don’t be overly ambitious about it, but understand that these are the people that can recommend you when the need arises.
As a new artist, you should start small. Get your foot in the door by contacting a local newspaper or weekly magazine. Ask them if you can do an illustration for an article. Maybe they have a story coming up that you can do something nice for.
Don’t plan to make any money off it. Just tell them you’d like to be an illustrator and you need some pieces in print for your portfolio. Let them know that you’d like their input and if they don’t like it they are under no obligation to run it. This includes them in the process, and takes the pressure off.
More than likely they are going to want to see some work first. Don’t show them too many things. Show them three things that are amazing. You’ll get more jobs from one amazing piece of work than you’ll ever get from a hundred half-finished doodles.
If they give you a shot, be easy to work with, friendly, even cheerful. Even if your work is dark and brooding, you don’t have to be. I’ve worked for magazines, newspapers, and ad agencies. The people that continually get work are both talented artists and easy to work with. Prima donnas rarely get work, and if they do, they rarely get a second job. Look up the word “pretentious”. Don’t be it.
If you bring something back, and they don’t like it, be prepared to take their comments with a smile. No one wants to work with someone that gets their feelings crushed by constructive criticism. Everyone gets rejection. More at first, but it never goes away. Ultimately the person paying for the work wants to have a say. If you’re a team player, criticism is part of collaboration. It’s just part of the business.
If you spend a lot of time on something for a local paper and they decide not to run it, don’t sulk about it. Ask them if there’s an artist they like. Maybe you can imitate them. Study that artist. Examine every detail of their work. You want to develop your own style, but at first it’s more important to focus on your technical skill. Focus on getting better before you take another shot.
Draw often. Consider every level of detail in objects, people, anything you might draw. Our minds naturally want to strip away levels of complexity. It’s natural to reduce the world. Fight it. As an artist and illustrator you should revel in detail. Even a tin can has folds and creases you’ve never explored. Learn to draw them from memory.
Don’t give up, but increase your skill considerably before you exhaust all your local avenues of opportunity. Once your technical skill has reached a threshold, people will respond to your work.
Don’t waste your energy on fancy leather portfolios. Focus on your work. Your artwork should be the presentation. If your work is good, people will respond. No one is going to turn away a great artist because his/her work wasn’t in a leather portfolio tote.
If you’re a pleasure to work with, and have great work to show, people will hire you. Just be positive, and stay with it. Anything worth having is worth working for.
