Amanda Hall's website has a very detailed FAQ section that is made up of interviews and contains a large amount of information regarding the processes involved in professional illustration. I have found her site very useful when working on other projects this year especially in regards to applied illustration. She offers advice on interacting with publishers and how her practice developed from leaving education up to the present.
A - It was quite a shock for me, going from being at college with a room full of other students to working alone all the time, although it was less distracting and I probably got more done. It took a long time to learn how to be disciplined enough to keep my head down and also to build strategies to compensate for working alone and avoid feeling isolated.
Q - How did you get into the industry?
A - After I left Cambridge Art School I moved to London to look for work. I had already illustrated a pack of Happy Family cards for Dinosaur to be sold in National Trust shops. It was great to have that in my folio to show that I could see a job through, as well as my student projects which included a series of drawings for Old Mother Hubbard. I rang round lots of publishers and made appointments, which you could still do fairly easily then. I had done a bit of work experience while still at college, at the ‘Part Works’ company Orbis in Covent Garden, and then went on to work for an ex-tutor in a graphic design studio near Tottenham Court Road. I also worked for a typographer/designer I was put in contact with and who designed books for ELTA OUP – part of Oxford University Press – from his studio in Clapham. I worked there on and off for a few years and would get odd bits of illustration for the OUP books to take home and do on a freelance basis – that gave me a start. My ‘Old Mother Hubbard’ pictures were spotted by a man in an antiquarian bookshop in Covent Garden who made me an appointment to see someone at Aurum Press. They commissioned me to illustrate the rest of the book, so I was of launched like that. Looking back it was all a bit haphazard."
I keep reading interviews with successful practitioners where they isolate a turning point or a single project that kick started their professional practice. They often talk about it as being quite lucky but I think it has more to do with putting yourself in the position to grab these opportunities, being willing to take part in projects that you may not see as central to your practice but that can act as a stepping stone to what you want to achieve by introducing your work to a larger audience or making a connection with a person or company that may lead to more work in the future.
A - It can be worthwhile, as a site like that is going to get a lot of visitors, especially if you haven’t yet got enough work to create your own website, or you could put some of your work on a website like childrensillustrators.com as a showcase in addition to having your own site. Obviously these sites cost, so you’ll need to weigh it up. However, you can of course offset any charges against tax, as long as you have a receipt."
This is an interesting question. I would like to look more at the costs and rewards of using sites like these. It is a way to get your work seen by a very large pre existing audience and an audience that is specific to your needs as an illustrator (people looking for illustrators to commission). it is quite a daunting step to have your work showcased alongside other professionals but it would be a huge confidence boost if you did receive jobs through this process knowing you were chosen. The cost is obviously the biggest drawback of using these sights and it would be hard to know what the rewards were likely to be before joining. You would need to make a decision about whether your work was up to a standard you felt happy with, a standard that you felt represented you and your practice. It would be interesting to talk to other illustrators that have used these sites and see what their view was and whether the process was successful and cost effective.
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