Discover the work of an Illustrator : Between creativity, imagination and freedom, but not only
The number of aspiring artists is always growing larger and larger, and for good reasons.
Illustrators have the capacity to give life to concepts and ideas through their artworks with a lot of freedom. The concept of this job makes a lot of people dream about it, but it is also well known to have its batch of constraints and difficulties.
Skills, knowledge and constraints
The biggest and most important skills an artist must have are creativity and technique.
The creativity is needed to conceive something new that people will appreciate, and the technique allows it to take shape.
Aside from these main requirements, the artist also needs to have a lot of flexibility, versatility, patience, ambition, and the will to always get better.
The Illustrators are also independent, but at the same time are working with people who give them constraints and deadlines, meaning they must be autonomous, but also slightly stifle their creativity to respect the client’s will.
Another one of the disadvantage of artists, is that most of them are freelance. Which means no stable jobs, and a responsibility to approach the clients themselves, to know how to sell themselves, and how to communicate. However, some options allows artists to work within a company and among other artists, but it is quite rare.
Possible Jobs as Illustrators
A lot of Illustrators will approach publishing houses to sell they art, but other options are possible besides that
- Illustrating advertisements
- Doing caricatures for the press
- Animating
- Doing illustrations for video games
- Selling original and personal works
- Illustrating Children’s books/Comics/Manga
- Illustrating Novel’s Covers
- And many more
The future of Illustrators
A lot of people wish to stand out as artists, which makes it more difficult to do it for everyone. New successful artists will generally have a very strong technique, ambition, the will to always improve, and a bit a luck.
Taking drawing classes is not necessary, but is helpful to make a big difference with other artists. A lot of illustrators can make it by being self-taught, but following a training is often the key to improving faster.
The salary of Illustrators is extremely varied, depending on their notoriety.
In the end, the path to becoming an artist is long and harsh, but ambition and motivation will make everything worthwhile in the end.
Not a lot of people can brag about being a full-time artist, but anyone could.