Illustration student? Want to advance you career? If I was a young illustration student in college or high school here’s what I’d do this summer. Make business cards. This cost very little. Identify yourself as an illustrator or illustrator/designer. Don’t think of yourself as a student of illustration, but as a beginning illustrator.
Postcards don’t cost much more than business cards, and they have room for more art. I made the postcard above to promote my new TOON book, Snails Are Just My Speed!.
Give Yourself a Promotion: Get a web page together. Even a single scrolling page. The page below is by Aubry Joi Cohen. I featured her work here. Aubry is a 2014 KU CD grad and a full-time illustrator designer at Artskills. She has over 1,000 followers. The French publisher Auzou saw her Behance page and contacted her to create a children’s book, Seek and Find Animals Around the World.
Make a zine. A zine is a self-published limited edition book. There are websites with tutorials. Better yet, get a copy of the inspiring book Whatcha Mean, What’s a Zine?
A zine shows your design, illustration and storytelling skills. Put your contact info on the zine and donate a copy to anyplace that collects them, like Kutztown’s Rohrbach Library’s zine collection. That’s a line on you resume. Send your zine to Quimby’s Books in Chicago. They will sell it and may review it, too. Here is Quimby’s consignment form. Folks will be able to buy your zine online.
As my zinester son, Daniel McCloskey always says, ” Zines are a great calling card. Zines have a life of their own.” Often the original reader will think of a friend who likes a particular sort of zine and pass it on. And so on. Speaking of Daniel, he just drew a web-comic on living in a van for the website, The Nib. This is a paid gig.
Submit to digital markets. Image above is the first panel of Dan’s #VanLife comic. you can read the rest at The Nib. That’s another thing you should do. Visit online magazines, Vice, Slate, and check their submissions pages. The Nib publishes political satire, journalism and nonfiction comics. Their submission info page is here. Subscribe to the Nib and you’ll get the idea of what they are looking for.
Submit to nontraditional print markets. Poets and Writers searchable Small Press database is a great resource. There is a filter for presses that consider graphics or illustrated work. I just tried that filter and came up with dozens of publishers. Some pay cash, some pay only in copies. If you want to see these literary magazines you should visit a good university library, but you can get a sense of what they like from their web pages.
Exhibit your artwork. Look for local “Call for Entries” notices on bulletin boards at your locals art spaces A few near Kutztown are: Goggleworks, Reading, The Cigar Factory, Allentown,The Banana Factory, Bethlehem. No matter where you are, there are likely artspaces near you. Do a web search with the term “Call for Entries” Beware of scams if you come across competitions. I seldom spend more that $20 on an entry fee, but some legit exhibitions and contests do charge hefty entry fees. I like a site called CaFÉ, https://www.callforentry.org. You need to register, but you will find contests, exhibition opportunities, fellowships, artist’s residencies and grants.
Last thought. Maybe you have to have work as a server, or in retail, this summer. Fine. Perfect your people skills on the job. Look people in the eye. Listen and talk to people, not just your phone friends. In illustration class critiques I watch students avoiding eye-contact. Work on your people skills, learn to listen and talk to the people in your physical presence. These are skills an illustrator needs. As the guru said, BE HERE NOW!
