Since You Asked #2
"Am I ready?"
Emily H asked:
Do you think I’m ready to put myself out to the big wide world as an illustrator?
It’s hard to know when to take the big leap as much as taking the actual step. To those who are standing at the edge of a metaphorical diving board, I suggest you to ask yourself these three questions:
Do you have a distinctive and consistent visual identity?
Do you have a focus?
Does your visual identity fit in the chosen area?
1. Do you have a distinctive and consistent visual identity?
First of all, I don’t like the word “style”. I prefer “visual identity”. “Style” is too restrictive. Now this might sound contradictory to what I just said but your work should be distinctive and consistent.
When you look at your portfolio, Instagram grid or website, does it look like made by one artist or by different people? This doesn’t mean you should stick to one type of medium or technique.
Check out
’s portfolio. Sometime she creates her artwork purely on paper and other times she uses digital tools but her visual identity is always clear and coherent.
Or see
. She uses pencil, paint, ink, collage, digital and more but her artistic personality is consistent.
OK, your visual identity might be consistent but is it unique? Or does it remind you of someone else? No artist is born in a vacuum. However, there’s a fine line between “inspired” by other artists and “copying” others. Quite frankly, publishers do hire illustrators who copy others’ styles. (Look how many Karl James Moutford-style book covers out there.) But who wants to be a second-rated version of someone else?
If your portfolio doesn’t look like done by a person with a split-personality or doesn’t remind you of someone else, move on to the next question.