My Illustration Story & Timeline

How long does it take to get going as a professional illustrator? Well, in my case, 25 years! The first ‘phase’ starting after graduating and then second ‘phase’ starting after a 8 year hiatus to bring up my two kids.

Honesty is really important to me and having been in the industry for over two decades I have ample experience to draw from. I think people who are starting out in illustration or contemplating it as a career deserve a realistic look at what it's like to build an art business. What I’m presenting is a candid timeframe of my career from my humble life as stay at home mum to the successful illustrator you see today. It’s taken considerable time and resources and I’m certainly not an overnight success story.

Some of you may have taken my Transition into Illustration Skillshare class or have followed me on Instagram for a number of years, so you may know parts of this story. I thought it would be valuable for you to see my journey laid out like the diagram below. This is just a quick overview of my particular journey to demonstrate the main events. I put the birth of my kids at the top, because for me they are always central to the considerations when I make big decisions. 

In retrospect I can draw this central line running down the middle, and the timeline looks incredibly neat and tidy with the major events for five years from 2013 till 2018… but the real experience was anything but linear, or smooth sailing. 

I entered college for a degree in Advertising and Design, but I switched to Illustration in the second year. After I graduated in 1996, I was an in-house artist at several London-based greeting card companies (including Hallmark) which I really enjoyed. I was also making a good income from editorial illustration for lifestyle and health and beauty magazines. The editorial niche was something I fell into by accident because I could draw people, but after a while I really started to resent the idealized forms I was expected to portray.

2006 

I gave up creative work, a year after my son was born. And then in 2010 I had another baby. That was the year Pinterest was launched—remember that, as I’m going to talk about it later. 

2012 

This year I started to upload old freelance art and icons to a Shutterstock image library and those became the seeds of my passive income. You can read more about passive income in this blog post.

2013 

My daughter became eligible for free nursery sessions, which I factored in when making the decision to step back into illustration. That autumn I took my first intensive 5-week online course called Make Art That Sells, which really set the ball rolling.

2014 

I began taking Skillshare classes to improve my skills and techniques. I created projects for hand lettering and improving my Photoshop skills.

This was followed by my first small but functional website. 

My love affair with They Draw and Cook (now called They Draw) and illustrated recipes started that year. Little did I know how unbelievably pivotal these projects would be in my career as I built up a niche illustration portfolio in my quest to become an in demand food illustrator. I used Pinterest to strategically share my art on this platform as I’d heard art directors and commissioning editors searched for illustrators extensively here.

2015 

February I bought my first moleskine sketchbook for watercolor practice. 

March I signed on with an art licensing agent. 

May I had my art at the Surtex trade show in New York. 

August breakdown of my marriage, and divorce proceedings. That was a hard time both personally and professionally.

November I wrote my first invoices under my own name for several editorial and packaging clients.   

Let's pause here, as I want to point out that it took just over two years from taking that initial online course to receiving payments for my illustration services. I’ve been told this is an incredibly fast transition to go from stay at home mum to earning an income from commissioned illustration projects. The combined total for that first year of trading from stock images and food illustration was £14,000—not really enough to live on as a single parent with two small kids.   However, the next three years saw an increase in large illustration projects that brought me up to a more decent income. 

2016 

Food branding projects:

- Marlene’s Market and Deli in Tacoma

- Toronto Market Company pop-up event

Books: 

The Healthy Hedonist Cocktail recipe book

Sugar Detox Me Cookery book

August of 2016 

My very first Skillshare class as a teacher: Create Your Own Fruity Illustrated Recipe, followed by four more classes that year.

2017

More food brand packaging for Tine Foods (Norway & Denmark)

And my jaw hit the floor when a project to work with UNICEF in Myanmar came through.

2018 

May

I exhibited at my first solo art licensing trade show in New York. 

I was up to teaching 19 Skillshare classes, including two that remain among my most popular:

Sketchbook Practice: Grow In Your Art Everyday 

Instagram Success For Artists: 2 Week Challenge To Grow Your Following 

I haven’t included everything from these years, like the endless classes I took, the books I read, the sketchbooks I filled… If I included all that, this post would be three times as long. These are the big highlights. I hope that by sharing some of the specifics of my personal journey, it may help you understand the length of time it took to establish myself as a successful artist and illustrator.

It would be nice if we had infinite time to pursue our dreams, but most of us are working within very real constraints. Mine were navigating a divorce and becoming a single parent, whilst holding down a mortgage.

Building an art business certainly requires a heck of a lot of patience when you’re starting out and you’re coming to terms with the multitude of directions you’re being pulled in. If you are prepared with patience, it gives you room to stay motivated over a long period of time.

Although social media has been an asset in building my brand awareness over the years. I do feel it sometimes warps our perceptions on many levels. Some folks may underestimate the duration of time it takes to build a commercial portfolio that attracts paying clients. As you can see it took many years for me to see real and tangible results, like attracting a considerable following on Instagram or creating more than twenty-five Skillshare classes.

Becoming an illustrator will most likely take up a massive chunk of your time and energy as you travel from where you are now, to a point when you are comfortably supporting yourself with income from your art. Rather than feeling deflated by the prospect of having to work diligently for several more years, I hope you view my story as inspiration for what's possible with a vision, determination and strong values to guide you.

If you’re interested in making the leap into illustration, or you’d like to know more about my art journey, consider a 1-month free trial to watch all my Skillshare classes including my Transition into Illustration class. Use the button below to sign up (new members only).

How I Made Money in the Last Year

From day one of embarking on this career, I wanted to live comfortably using the income from my art and illustration. Your definition of comfortable and my definition may be different, but I think many of us aspire to have a sustainable and successful art career. I’ve been earning a six-figure income for several years, consistently increasing my earnings each year since I set up my art business seven years ago. 

I wanted to write a blog post about my income as it’s important to me as a teacher to be very candid and realistic with what I share. I know that many people are interested in this type of information, especially those starting out on this career path, but it's often very difficult to find as it’s seldom discussed openly. So I thought I’d make a little financial snapshot of the last year so people could see what it's like for one established artist. 

The last tax year (April to April in the UK) has been the most successful yet in terms of net revenue. However, my expenditure has also increased because as my business grows, I more often hire professionals for their expertise in order to save myself time and headache.

This year there were four main areas I received income from in my art business. The break down looks like this:

Brand Collabs 1%

Licensing Images 7%

Art Retreat 8%

Illustration 31%

Online Teaching 53%

Brand Collabs

I almost didn’t include these, as the income really didn't really amount to very much. This includes two collaborations—creating Reels on Instagram with a well known art brand, and a YouTube video tutorial special feature for a different brand. Both were pleasant experiences.

Licensing Images

This has been a nice source of income as it has been totally passive. Passive income is where you do a lot of work up front to create a digital product, a course, or content that you earn money from over and over again. I talk more about it in my post Why Passive Income is Preferable for Artists.  I grouped the income from stock images, art licensing (from gift products and greetings cards), and my Spoonflower shop, as these are all images I’ve already created and which have been in my portfolio for several years (as opposed to commissioned work—see ‘Illustration’ below). Every fortnight, month, or quarter, depending on the platform or licensing partner, I receive nice deposits in my PayPal or bank account for which I’m genuinely grateful. The income from these areas has decreased slightly this year, which is understandable as I’m not actively adding images or pursuing art licensing at this time.

Art Retreat(s)

This is a new source of income, although before the pandemic I had hosted a number of less involved, three-hour in-person workshops. I hosted my first art retreat with Victoria Johnson in Italy with Uptrek. As a creator and teacher of online classes, the week-long art retreat in Le Marche, Italy, was wonderfully immersive on many levels.  And after the two years of non-existent travel during the worst of the pandemic, it was an especially refreshing and very special way of making connections and being present.

Having a co-host meant we split the fee that was offered to retreat leaders. This tradeoff was worth it as it meant we could share the responsibility of teaching and interacting with the guests over the seven days. Since then Victoria and I have co-hosted another art retreat in Morocco again with Uptrek.

Illustration

To clarify, the projects I worked on in this category were commissioned specially by the client for a specific purpose. The briefs I worked on ranged from a book about dumplings, brand packaging for Tesco and website icons for a clothing brand. Working directly with art directors, senior designers or account handlers is often intense, as the pace is fast and deadlines are narrow. There's a lot of back-and-forth, starting with sketches before moving onto color roughs, and then refining where there needs to be more contrast, etc, plus tweaks here and there. Generally I include two rounds of feedback or amendments in my contract, which is often enough before artworks are signed off. The majority of my illustration briefs were food branding based, and I do love seeing my work on products in the supermarket further down the line.

Income from commissioned Illustration has hovered around a third of my earnings for several years, although it used to be more in the earlier part of my career.

Online Teaching

I’ve been teaching on the Skillshare platform since the summer of 2016, when I launched my first Skillshare class called ‘Design Your Favorite Fruity Recipe’, a tutorial on creating an illustrated recipe from line sketches. Since then I have become a Top Teacher on the platform, having created 27 classes with over 140,000 students.

In the last tax year I released two Skillshare classes. The first was Transition into Illustration: Breaking Into The Industry, where I revealed my entire illustration story, sharing my personal insights and experiences to give a realistic understanding of what to expect. 

The other class was Create Contrast With Watercolor and Procreate. Where students could improve their working knowledge of contrast in their art, by applying basic principles.

There is usually an uptick in new students when I release new classes, and ‘Transition into Illustration’ was especially popular on its launch. I’d say the income created from teaching on this platform is ‘semi passive’, as there is considerable work behind the scenes to keep this many classes relevant and seen by potential new students. The proportion of revenue from online teaching has increased year-on-year, and in the last two years it's hovered at just over 50%.

I mentioned that outgoings or expenses have also increased in the last year, partly due to outsourcing professionals in these areas:

• Editing of class scripts and blog posts : Henry Cordes

• Filming and editing my two Skillshare classes : Angelika Winnett and Diana Kenyeres

• Professional photography for branding, blog and pack shots: Nat Aubry

• Designer for page layout and general artwork : Barney Bryant

Furthermore large slices of my outgoings were spent on equipment purchases, such as a new iMac, iPhone 13 and Canvas clamp for filming Reels and classes. I was also in a position to donate substantial amounts to various charities helping those affected by the military coup in Burma in the last year.

If you are still at the beginning of your creative career, you mustn’t get disheartened if your portfolio isn’t the complete package yet, and please don't worry about taking a few years to get it into shape. It's taken me nine long years to ‘retrain’ and then build a business that provides a comfortable income from my art. The bottom line is that gaining traction takes a lot of intentional effort over time, belief in your abilities, with much happening outside of your comfort zone. I’m only one of thousands of illustrators who are making a living from their art, and we are all at different stages, with different financial needs. I have two kids and can’t rely on a partner to pick up the slack. We all have different experiences of the industry.

I’d like to be clear about the reason I’m sharing all this. It would be nice to think I’m a positive example and show people that it really is possible to make a good living as an independent artist in business. Someone reading this early in their journey might be mentally comparing themselves to me and feeling down about where they are, but the truth is that I struggled (quite a lot) at the beginning too. People are often overwhelmed with unrealistic images and blurbs in their social media feeds, and it's easy to get warped ideas about what real life is like for the creators behind those posts.