I did not blog as I said I would in 2010. I was busy getting use to the schedule of the freelance Illustrator.

My sleep schedule is that of a vampires and there are friends I haven’t seen in a year, but I still love what I do. I feel like after a year of freelance work I have this life/work scheduling balance more in control .

In 2010 I worked on 3 full length pictures books. That’s about all I could have tackled in that first year. These books are, “No more Bullies”, “Eat Your Breakfast or Else”, and “A Daddy’s Dream”. All completed in different mediums and styles that seemed to best fit the books. I am versatile, which helps get me jobs for now, but I’ve been refining my own voice as a illustrator to have a more distinguishable/sell able style.

I’m still working with very small publishing houses. Theses houses release 1-3 children’s books per year, so they are tiny. The good thing about being the reliable person at a tiny publishing house, is sometimes you illustrate all of their books for the year. That produces solid work for me.

2010 also found me applying my illustration style to larger format canvas’s for galleries. I ended up with one show and one painting sale. I hope 2011 will find me in more gallery group shows, leading to an eventual solo show.

In 2010 I made about $15,000 from my art. Granted this is a $50,000 per year pay cut for now, but I loved the past year. It really tested if I could do this, and I really think I can. My goal this year is to surpass my earnings from last year and have a little more of a liveable wage so I can rebuild my savings again. Remember Slow and Steady wins the race!

Of the 40 or so illustrators I when to college and grad school with that had real passion and/or talent. About 10 -15 of us are working in the field. Others gave up, some others chose different directions in the art field. It’s not an easy career choice, Illustration is just about the hardest career path I could have chosen for myself. So far though, I’m glad I did. Sometimes though it’s all about being in the right place at the right time.

It took me 5 years to get one book contract. This is because it seems like no one will publish you without being published by someone else.” I constantly asked myself, how do I get published if I’m not already published? How does anyone new, get work? Well, it’s all about timing and connections.

I got my first book deal because of an artist being flaky, this is more common in the commercial art world than you would think. I was friends with someone who also worked for the same publisher, but who had accepted a contract with DC so could no longer freelance. This friend called me, because he knew I was trying to get a book, I was not a flake and could work pretty fast. I had a 3 month deadline, start to finish. I worked on that book every night, even while I had the stomach flu for 3 weeks. I got it done by the target deadline, and my second book sort of fell into my lap because of who my teacher in grad school was.

So it really is who you know in life and being in the right place at the right time. I’ve made it a point to try not to burn bridges with anyone, because you never know if you might need them in some different way in the future.

Getting started in the illustration business full-time is exciting and a lot of work. I’m planning on some mailers to go out in March/April to get more clients. I’m working on a self promotion piece involving my moving for the mailer. I’ll do I show and tell once I have them ready to send.

These are some of the companies that are on my client wish list:
EeBoo -awesome games and puzzles for children
Chronicle Books
Ginger Bread Books
Scholastic
McGraw-Hill

I’ve decided on Marketing Mondays. I’ll use most of Mondays to update my portfolio sites and website. Design Mailers, mail things and research companies. That’s probably when I’ll update this blog too and give a review of the past week.
Tuesday-Fridays will be Illustration days, and any extra time that I don’t find myself busy with travel or personal commitments will be when I work on my fine art pieces. That’s when I get to do the weird dark art that I like so much.

If you think about it, I just went from a 40 a week job to an 80 hour a week job. I believe though, that if you love what you do you’ll never work a day in your life. It’s all going to be worth it when I’m a well know illustrator and get mountains of work without even trying (that’s the goal atleast, correct?).

So last night confirmed it in my head that I need to be a fulltime illustrator.

I was finishing a storyboard that was due on Friday by 1pm after dinner. This means by the time I get off work, cross the bridge, pick up mom, cook and plate it’s 8:30pm. That means didn’t get to start my story board until 9pm. I was up until 1am, which is when I finished. I decided to go to sleep and scan the images in the morning at work because I was exhausted. I spent the morning at work scanning and sending of my work, not something I should do, but something I needed to do.

Now if I didn’t have to wake up at 6am to get to my full-time job across the bridge by 8am, then I could have stayed up all night and finished the scanning. I wouldn’t need to stay up all night though, because I would have had all day. I am so happy that starting February I will be a full time illustrator, I can do this… I’ll still be busy.