How to stand out as an illustrator

If you have good pencil skills, and your loved ones enjoy your sketches, you may want to turn this talent into a profession. Becoming an illustrator is an enviable position, but the competition is tough. Every year, extremely talented students leave art schools with one idea in mind: to make a living from their drawings and to be recognized for their graphic style.

In this very competitive context, you must understand that the strength of your work also lies in your ability to sell it and reach out to others. Artistic professions are not practiced in the shadows, since companies need talent to develop their brand image in advertising, cartooning, and video games.

There are so many fields in which drawing is essential. With the distance learning master's degree provided by Artline, you benefit from a solid basis to consider your entry into the job market, while validating the technical bases essential to the profession of illustrator.

Today, the illustrator's palette is no longer limited to pencils and drawing paper. Here are four principles that will allow you to start a career as an illustrator at any age and at any level.

Create a reinforced concrete portfolio

Looking for work as an illustrator means selling your talent, often to people who didn't ask for anything. The need for a proper portfolio is still a reality. Today, you can still walk around with a portfolio under your arm, the old-fashioned way, but know that a solid internet presence will have the gift of attracting customers.

It is also important to have a presence on social networks to show the extent of your talents and your mastery of different media.

Diversify the media

Speaking of media, you have everything to gain from trying to touch all styles. Even if you are planning to draw for children, you need to practice many disciplines to stand out. Do you have a talent for drawing ads, comic strips or designing storyboards for video games?

The same goes for the different ways of designing the drawing. Today, the graphic tablets are standard in the industry, and it is essential to know how to get the most out of them. In other words, be curious and use different techniques to make work ever more sophisticated and original.

Freelance or business?

Becoming an illustrator often means having several clients and projects in the same week. The workload can be very heavy, and that’s a sign that business is good! Most illustrators work freelance, but sometimes they find permanent work with a contract with a company.

Very quickly, you must choose between freelance status or employee status in a company. This state of affairs can change very quickly depending on orders and the needs of companies.

Don't be afraid of artificial intelligence

Generative artificial intelligence has left legions of artists completely stunned at the start of 2023. With generative software like midjourney, everyone is now able to generate excellent quality graphic work in just a few seconds.

For a few weeks, most of the world's illustrators believed that they had become absolutely useless. On the contrary, illustrators and graphic designers have every interest in knowing how to use artificial intelligence, which in no way diminishes their creative abilities. Knowing how to deal with “the machine” will certainly have beneficial effects on the profession in the years to come.