What am I trying to say?

I want my online presence to showcase my work to as many people as possible, but as well as being accessible to a wide audience my work has to reach the 'right' people, as my presence needs to put me in a position to be seen by possible clients and by publishers. A lot of that process will be actions taken by me to be proactive and create a network myself, but an online presence can act as a foundation, an ever-present and readily available display of my work.

Using a variety of social media enables me to cover the most ground and tailor the presence to each audience:

·        Instagram allows me to develop a network of other artists, to gain exposure and to keep followers up to date with current projects;

·        The Dots and Linkedin provide less personal, more professional opportunities for collaborative projects, for networking with professionals and companies, and for keeping up to date with available job vacancies; 

·        Twitter, if used correctly, gives access to a huge audience as well as facilitating interactions with clients, companies and followers; Twitter is not primarily image based, and seems more useful once you have a certain level of exposure rather than to gain exposure in the first place.

By comparison with these media platforms, my own website gives me more control over appearance and content so that I can adjust the balance of professionalism and individual personality as well as making links to other web pages, blogs, etc.

In order to gain greater exposure I need now to think about how I present myself online. I primarily work on children’s illustrations and my illustrations are based around storytelling, emotions and humour, so these should be showcased throughout. This is something I have not done well up to this point. I have been posting single images that show my skills as an illustrator but not necessarily as a communicator/storyteller. I should start to put up sequential images that tell stories, or one-off illustrations that communicate an idea, emotion or situation. We had a talk at Hanbury Hall about using current events to create exposure. Although as a children’s book illustrator I should stay away from very serious, contentious or gritty subject matter, I could still create images that tackle the more light-hearted stories of the time or just current trends in culture.

The majority of children's book illustrators I have looked at have a fairly standard online presence, typically consisting of a website which is easy to navigate with a gallery, a concise ‘about me’ page and clear contact details. Some also have a shop if they sell products themselves. From talking to other illustrators it seems that in children's book publishing it is still common practice to take hard copies of illustrations to publishers to show your work, so it could be that a proactive approach will be more important for me than an online presence. The priorities are to get in touch with publishers and make them aware of my work, to try and form collaborative projects with other illustrators to build a network, and to maintain connections once they are made.

At this moment in time I am not very comfortable with contacting publishers. That needs to change. My next step is to start sending out emails, prints and letters to publishers as well as mock ups of my books to those publishers that accept them. I don't necessarily need to contact them asking to be published but just to ask for advice which would be beneficial to me (which could lead to an opportunity to show my work).

The first step is to research the publishers and find out which my work would suit so that I don't waste their time and mine, and also so that I can show my knowledge of their work when contacting them. As well as explaining my work to them, I can explain why I think it fits in with their current catalogue. Research will also help me to discover the best way to contact them and what I should send. I would like to create some prints to send out: not a full portfolio, just a single image that would showcase my work and make someone smile or laugh. These images could be sent in emails or printed and posted out to publishers.