For anyone with a skilled hand and a passion for the arts, a career in illustration can feel alluring and mysterious at once.
It’s a prestigious, dynamic, and hard-to-understand career that rewards those who succeed with fulfilling projects and healthy bank accounts.
But, what do illustrators do? And, more importantly, how do you become one yourself?
If you want to learn how to become an illustrator, you’re in the right place!
Read on to find out which industries need illustrators, the skills and equipment you need to succeed, and the steps you need to take to pay rent with illustration work.
Let’s get started!
Table of Contents
What Does an Illustrator Do?
Illustrators are essentially two-dimensional artists-for-hire.
They work in different industries and are often given a lot of creative freedom over their projects, entrusted to bring a vision to life.
Illustrators are responsible for interpreting and visualizing the storytelling, marketing, and presentation needs of different media companies and businesses, and many work in multiple industries at once.
The most popular and familiar kind of illustrators are those who bring children’s picture books to life.
This is often considered to be the ultimate job for illustrators because of its universal appeal and endless possibility.
Most working illustrators, though, never illustrate a children’s book. Instead, they focus on other types of work that are more consistent and readily available.
What Industries Need Illustrators?
Publishing
Children’s books, magazines, newspapers—they all need illustrators. This industry has the most visibility and competition for illustrators.
If you can make a name for yourself and get a job illustrating for a national magazine or a best-selling book, you may retire as a minor celebrity in the art world.
Competition is fierce, though, and jobs can be scarce—so it isn’t for the faint of heart.
Entertainment and Media
Illustration skills lend themselves very well to many different facets of the entertainment and media world.
Movie studios and TV production companies hire illustrators as:
- Concept artists
- Character designers
- Animators
- Storyboard artists
- Illustrators in the wardrobe and art departments
These jobs are typically found on a freelance basis, but there are full-time illustration jobs in the Hollywood system that are stable and quite lucrative.
Advertising, the other side of the entertainment industry, is a business in constant need of illustrators.
Illustrators who work in advertising often cross over into graphic design, functioning as the go-to person for all things art-related.
Fashion
Fashion designers are skilled illustrators by necessity. They often employ the services of one or more illustrators to help them sketch clothing items, outfits, and plan out catalogs.
If you have a passion for style, you can leverage your illustration skills into a lively and rewarding career as a fashion illustrator.
Architecture
Architecture firms employ illustrators to draw mockups and renderings of their projects.
These are vital to the planning stage of different architectural projects, as well as the presentation of concepts and ideas to clients and city governments.
Do you have an affinity for architecture or interior design?
Use your illustration prowess to get yourself a dynamic job at a prestigious architecture firm.
How Does an Illustrator Make Money?
Most illustrators work on a part-time or freelance basis.
The vast majority of companies simply don’t need a full-time illustrator, so they look for a freelance artist for projects that require one.
This means that the pay for an illustrator can be both lucrative and inconsistent.
There are some illustrators with year-round jobs, but those who don’t have them might not have work booked each week or month of the year.
To make up for those gaps, many illustrators have a side job or are working to develop multiple income streams.
These additional revenue streams include:
- Freelance graphic design (the skills translate quite well)
- Selling art on sites like Etsy, Redbubble, and Society6
- Creating other types of fine art.
If all goes well, an illustrator can carve out a high-paying yearly salary by combining great freelance illustrating gigs with these supplemental income sources.
Drawing Tablet or iPad
In the past, illustration happened offline. Illustrators employed whatever medium they were most comfortable and skilled with. Typically, it was colored pencils or watercolor/oil paints.
Today, however, illustrations need to be finished quickly and delivered digitally. That’s why no illustrator is complete nowadays without a drawing tablet or iPad to work on.
Drawing tablets are, for lack of a better description, black squares filled with incredibly small sensors. They plug into a computer, just like a mouse or keyboard, and are used with a stylus to draw directly into illustration software.
Even lower-priced drawing tablets are capable of stunning detail, and they’re used as standard equipment across many different industries including animation and photography.
There are also standalone drawing tablets which can be used without a computer or additional device.
In recent years, the iPad Pro has positioned itself as a viable alternative to drawing pads for professional and aspiring illustrators alike.
Using an affordable app called Procreate, many professionals have completely ditched their old PC and drawing tablet setup.
Getting an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil is certainly an investment, but well worth it for the convenience and versatility they offer.
Related:⠀⠀•⠀Photoshop vs Illustrator: Which Program Should You Use, and When?
⠀⠀•⠀Affinity Designer vs Illustrator: Which Software Should You Choose?
Sketchbook and Pencils
No matter how much you love your digital illustrating equipment, you still need a sketchbook and pencils on hand.
They’re useful for sketching ideas when you’re away from the computer, observing things in nature and around your city, and for breaking through “illustrator’s block”.
High-Quality Scanner
Despite the convenience and efficiency of illustrating digitally, many artists prefer to work with physical materials and then create a high-quality digital scan of the finished work.
If you’re one of those people, don’t make the mistake of thinking the built-in scanner on your old printer is good enough.
Look for a photography/art scanner that will give you scanned files that accurately match the quality of your work.
Related: Best Printers for Art Prints
What Skills Do Successful Illustrators Need To Have?
Perspective
Perspective, in this context, does not mean you have a nice grip on reality and can see other people’s points of view—although that does help.
“Perspective” in the visual arts refers to the way you use shapes, shadows, and sizes of objects to accurately illustrate characters in the environment of the piece.
This means that things in the foreground actually look like they’re in the foreground and things far away look like they’re off in the distance.
It involves more than just “I’ll make this big and that small”. You need to be able to use color, shadow, and accurate proportion to create work that is easy to understand and pleasing to look at.
Creativity
As an illustrator, it’s up to you to accurately visualize what the writer, project manager, or designer wants to communicate.
Oftentimes, a client will give you a rough idea of what they’re looking for and the message they are trying to send.
You have to take whatever you glean from that conversation and use it to create illustrations that bring their ideas to life.
Creativity is hard to manufacture; it’s more of an inherent talent than many of us want to admit.
The good news is, most people have at least some form of creativity. While there are some true geniuses out there, the average person still has a creative muscle—even if they’ve never flexed it before.
Creativity is naturally greater in some people, but everyone can grow in this area.
If you want to increase your ability to tap into the creative part of your brain, here are some things you can do:
- Spend free time working puzzles or brain teasers to train your brain in problem-solving and out-of-the-box thinking
- Participate in things like Instagram art challenges that force you to creatively respond to an illustration prompt. (more on these later)
- Solicit illustration ideas from friends or strangers and practice your skills bringing those ideas to life.
Mastery of Color Theory
Color theory might be the one thing that sets amateurs and professionals apart, other than income.
What is color theory? It’s a collection of theories and concepts of how colors relate to each other, and what colors communicate to people across different cultural contexts.
Learning color theory has no clear beginning or end point. Everyone has an ingrained understanding of the colors around them and their own ideas about what they could mean. There are infinite tracks a study of color theory could take you down.
The most important thing you should remember about color theory is that you need to spend time thinking about color.
You don’t have to be read up on every essay ever written on the topic or even be able to give coherent answers about what you know. You simply need to spend enough time thinking about colors, what they mean, and how to use them that your work begins to shine because of it.
If you want to learn more about color theory, here are some places you can start:
- How to Use Color, from Youtube.
- Interaction of Color, a book by Josef Albers, a teacher at the famed and revolutionary Bauhaus School in 1920s Germany.
- The works of Paul Klee, (1879-1940), another Bauhaus teacher who is considered to be one of the all-time greatest masters of color theory.
Communication and Self-Marketing
All the artistic flair and passion in the world won’t buy you so much as a sandwich without at least some ability to work with clients and market yourself.
Because the responsibility for finding paying work is entirely on you, you’ll have to develop some ways of getting your name—and work—in front of the right eyes.
Once you land the work through (non-invasive) self-promotion, you need to be skilled at taking direction and responding to communications just like you would in an office job.
Once you become an artistic legend whose work is featured in major art galleries across the globe, you can get away with being difficult. Until then, though, you’ve got to be an absolute pleasure to work with.
Want more ways to improve your artistic skills? Check out the 10 Digital Art Tips (and 5 Mistakes to Avoid) Every Artist Needs to Know
How To Get a Job (and Make a Living) as an Illustrator
Breaking into the industry is almost as hard as maintaining a career in illustration.
Thankfully, most of the power lies in your own hands. It isn’t like music or acting where you need to rely more on luck than your own skill. If you work hard enough and have some business savvy, you can guarantee a pretty steady income through illustration.
Here’s how:
Study and Practice
Whether it’s art school, a trade or vocational program, or intense self-study, pro-level illustration skills aren’t something anyone is born with. It takes a lot of study and practice to develop your talents and techniques, and you should make this your #1 focus, especially early on.
Some people take art classes or go to a full-time art school. Others find a mentor and work as an apprentice or assistant for someone who will invest in them one-on-one.
Others wield the full power of the internet to become completely self-taught illustrators.
The education path you pursue isn’t as important as simply choosing one—it matters that you do learn, not how you learn.
Combine endless hours of study with endless hours of practice. Fill up as many sketchbooks and flash drives as you can with illustrations.
Don’t worry too much about being a perfectionist unless you’re getting paid—this stage is where mistakes are helpful, not harmful.
Build a Portfolio
If we could stress the importance of a portfolio, it would be this: good luck getting paid without one.
Whether it’s a dedicated Instagram, a website, or both (preferably both), you need your work to be seen. If employers can’t see your style, voice, and potential, they’ll never take a chance on you.
Instagram is a remarkably powerful way to build an audience around your portfolio. Artists hang out on the platform and are generally very supportive of each other.
Employers know this—they hang out on Instagram and scout talent there. It takes time to build a following, but having a clean and professional Instagram is essential to success.
Earlier in the article, I mentioned Instagram drawing challenges. These are a great way to get practice, increase your following, and learn how to interpret a prompt (an essential skill for illustrators).
You can find these challenges by following influential artists who host and lead them, and some of the most popular challenges are listed here.
The key to Instagram portfolio success is hashtags. Employers and influential people scour these hashtags looking for great talent, and they can help grow your reputation as a bonafide artist.
Instagram isn’t the magical solution, but it is a platform that some illustrators have used to land paid gigs with Urban Outfitters, Target, and other major companies.
Sell Your Work on the Side
Because you’ll be working on a freelance basis for most of your career, it is necessary to develop multiple income streams.
There are lots of sites that let you upload and sell your artwork as posters, t-shirts, and more. The most popular of these are Society6 and RedBubble.
You keep between 10 and 30 percent of the sale price of any item bought with your work printed on it.
This isn’t a gold mine by any means, but you can build up a steady stream of a few hundred dollars per month that will complement your earnings from illustration gigs.
Etsy is another great option for illustrators to make some money off of their work and gain a reputation in the art world, though it is more labor-intensive than Society6 or Redbubble.
Pitch on Freelancing Sites
So far, we’ve talked about everything but landing true illustration gigs. So, how do you get one?
For most people (especially at the beginning of your career), this happens by pitching your services to prospective clients on freelancing sites.
Upwork, Fiverr, and Freelancer.com are some of the largest platforms for employers to find freelance writers, artists, and web developers.
When you join a site, you’ll be able to search through gig listings for illustrators. Once you find one that seems suited to your skills, you send a pitch detailing your unique strengths as well as your rates.
If the employer likes you, you’re in business!
Pitching on freelance sites can be intimidating and exhausting. It can take up to 100 pitches to land a single gig, but as a young illustrator, there aren’t many other ways to land a job.
Once you start to get paid work, though, more gigs come faster and easier.
Word-of-Mouth: The Best Way To Get Illustration Gigs
After you’ve “paid your dues” on freelancing platforms, you will have built up enough of a reputation that word-of-mouth can become your primary channel for landing clients.
This stage allows you to set your own prices and even say “no” to projects far more than you say “yes”.
It takes a while—sometimes a few years—to get to this stage, but it’s well worth it to power through the tough times early on. This is where being an illustrator starts to feel free, rewarding, and lucrative.
It’s also the stage where finding full-time in-house illustration jobs is much, much easier.
Because it takes so long to get to a place where you’re getting consistent, higher-paying work, it is important to recognize the need for multiple revenue streams.
Whether that’s selling prints, doing commissioned artwork, or just the stereotypical barista day job, you need to be flexible and find ways to fill in the gaps in your pay.
Cool Books, TV Shows, and Documentaries About Illustrating
Want to take a deeper dive into the world of professional illustration? This brief list of books and videos will give you some tracks to run on:
- What Do Illustrators Do?, Children’s Book by Eileen Christelow
- Abstract: The Art of Design (S1, Ep1): Netflix docuseries, episode focusing on an illustrator for the New Yorker.
- Making It, 2015 documentary about the balance between artistic pursuit and paying rent that illustrators must walk.
- Becoming a Successful Illustrator, a book about the business and money side of illustration.
- Illustration Annual 2020: A yearly collection of some of the greatest and most creative pieces of children’s illustration from across the world.
Illustration Career: Frequently Asked Questions
How Much Does an Illustrator Make?
Depending on what industry you work in as an illustrator, you can make very little or nearly double the national average.
The average illustrator makes about $60,000 each year in the United States. On the low end, it’s about 30,000.
The highest-paid illustrators (those working at large entertainment and media companies) make just over $100K.
That’s a pretty large difference between the low and high end of illustrator salaries.
The difference comes down to experience and industry. If you’re helping an architectural firm with their project proposals and drawings, you can make about $70k, whereas a low-level illustrator for kid’s textbooks makes far less.
Since many illustrators get paid by the project, not by the hour or year, their salary is dependent upon the amount of work they line up, too.
A children’s book, with 20 different illustrations, pays between 3 and 12 thousand dollars. Fashion illustrators, too, make a few thousand dollars for a large project.
If you can stay booked throughout the year, you can carve out a nice salary for yourself.
Do You Need a Degree To Be an Illustrator?
While you don’t land any jobs in illustration by having an art school degree on your resume, it can be hard to learn the skills you need without some type of training.
Still, many illustrators have never had any formal art education.
While you will certainly learn a lot with an art degree, they are not necessary for you to get a job as an illustrator. They’re just a good idea if the option is available to you.
What Is the Difference Between Illustration and Graphic Design?
There is quite a bit of overlap in these two artistic disciplines, though they aren’t exactly the same.
Illustration involves creating entire scenes, such as a group of talking animals gathered around a campfire.
Graphic design is more abstract and stripped down—think a few simple colored lines that look like a campfire.
Many illustrators dabble in graphic design and vice versa because many of the skills and materials are the same.
The main difference is that graphic design is mainly intended for commercial use, whereas most illustration falls under the “fine art” category.
Conclusion
Are you ready to become an illustrator? Do you feel like you’ve got what it takes?
This career, and the hard work required to become successful, can feel very intimidating.
The most important things to do, though, are to keep learning, practicing, and sharing. As long as you never stop doing those things, paid work in illustration is never too far off.
Are you excited to begin? Have any more questions for us?
Drop your thoughts in the comments section below, and don’t forget to share this article on Pinterest and Facebook if you found it helpful!
