What is a Freelance Illustrator (What do you even do?)
I often get the question “what exactly is a freelance illustrator?”
It’s a tough one to answer since I’m still figuring this whole freelancing thing out. What I can say is that I’ve learned very quickly that the more skills an artist can learn, the better off they’ll be.
My first freelance illustration client was an internship at Edwards Educational Services. I was on a team of other interns creating illustrations for their publication, City Kidz World Magazine. Each week we were assigned a story written by a child reader of the magazine. The goal was to read the story and create an accompanying illustration. It was my first time creating a piece of artwork for a publication and I remember sitting in front of my iPad, too nervous to start drawing. Looking back, those pieces look nothing like my work now but I am so thankful for the learning experience and the opportunity to create imagery for heartfelt children’s stories. The number one thing I learned from that job was the thing that made me the most excited was getting to tell a story or interpret a story with visuals.
Soon after that internship, I began another internship at Soma Games. This position was initially a concept illustrator. But I soon found that the opening that was really needed was a marketing graphic designer. I was asked to jump into that role instead and ended up learning most of the skills I needed on the job. That internship taught me the value of brand identity, good digital ad design, and the very beginning of my interest in UI. But illustration still remained my number one love. And it was hard to imagine combining all of those skills with my fine art degree into something meaningful. I felt that I had to choose design or drawing.
From that internship-turned-contractor position, I moved on to my alma mater to fill an urgent UI designer role. I was apprehensive about the application as I didn’t have much experience in UI and had just recently begun to feel confident in my design skills. Still, the hiring manager encouraged me to apply, saying that what they wanted most was an artistic eye and the ability to learn everything else. So I took the leap and got the job.
Now, after two years at that position where I learned all about UI and the role illustration plays in it, transitioned to the marketing department, and even got to draw a mural, I realize that for every job I’ve ever had in the design space, no matter what the title, at the heart of it I was an illustrator. Illustrators act as shape shifters in a lot of ways, carrying a growing kit of skills that allows the artist inside of them to adapt to any medium. I have painted with HTML and CSS, designed with the click of a mouse and the stroke of a pencil. But always, I come back home to the silly characters and wide open spaces of my art practice.
So what exactly is my job? I can create a logo or design a digital ad campaign. I can code an email, animate a gif, or edit a website. I can paint on a wall or on a sheet of paper or a screen. But those are just the skills I’ve gained through hard work, years of practice, mentorship, and amazing employers. Above all else, my job is to tell a story with imagery. And I absolutely love it.