All posts tagged: illustrator job

How to get an illustration job aka marketing for artists

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*As always, this post is about my own experience – things which worked for me are not 100% key to anything, but it might be helpful – give those a try if you haven’t already and have fun!. I’m also planning follow up post in few months to show new results as I’m trying new things. I know! It’s been a while, but what can I say? Those last weeks were just crazy! Work, work ,work, giving myself a chance to be shown on Surtex, short trip to Belize (not a great moment, but it was planed way ahead and soooo worth it!) and lastly, flight from Mexico do Madrid which left me crazy jet lagged and all around disoriented. While being in a “go! go! go!” zone, with so many things and deadlines happening same time, I’ve been thinking about those times when there was zero work for me. Well, it’s not an ancient history – I had my longest break from getting decent assignment in 2013. 6 months – that was about that …

Time management tips for crazy artists. Part 1: How to deal with surprises and Internet’s traps.

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*Warning! I’m not a master of organization nor productivity, but I’m trying to get better all the time. What you can read in my blog are my struggles and my own personal effects, not an universal remedy for everything. I’d love to see this is helpful, but don’t get mad if something is not working for you. And if you’re super awesome please share your tips and hacks as well – that would be very very appreciated; How many management tips starts with “write a plan”??? I don’t know (my math skills again), but it seems like most of them. No argument here – plan is important, except it’s next to impossible to follow it, if you’re freelance illustrator and happen to be human (checked and checked). If you work for someone, good luck with creating very intricate schedule – for one amazingly organized client who somehow knows exactly what is needed from you and has all the answers, kind of immediately there are hundreds of others, who are quite an opposite. Yup – standard …

My list of 125 children’s books publishers + how to use it ;)

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As I mention in a post about Print on Demand, in order to gain money from your art, you can either create “what you want” and try to sell it somehow or you can present your portfolio to potential clients to get submission from them. In this post let’s concentrate on second way. How to get children’s book illustration job First step will be of course building kick ass portfolio (I mean strong one). I’ll be writing about what is needed there, (so as always stay tuned) but if you have one go to the next step. preparing outreach list – look for publishers that you feel could hire you – based on books that they already published, their profile, your gut feeling. This is a quite a job! Sure, there are some directories online, Google exists, but over the year I learn that there’s always some companies hidden from you 😉 Maybe one with awesome books, but very little SEO skills, or those from country you didn’t consider. My personal list no. 1 contains …

Plan for new week

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First of all, I wish all of you fun yet productive week! And thanks for those nice words and encouragements on MATS group! I love you for that! Drawing is fun, maybe not for 16 hours a day, when your hand starts hurting, but generally it’s straight up the best job I can imagine. Thing is, that being illustrator is a “little bit” more than just drawing, and I don’t mean painting 😉 Most of us are just one man company – everyone who tried that knows that you need to wear lots of hats. To be honest, when I have tons of assigned work, (like right now) I tend to skip most of those maybe less urgent, but in a long run really important task like: online presence, working on new portfolio pieces (as I’m usually not allowed to show what I’m working on until it’s published, and also as I mentioned in opening post I’d love to try new fields), looking for new opportunities, taking care of my beloved supporters…There’s quite a few …

Where I’m starting from and where I wanna go*

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*The answer to question “where I wanna go” is usually “everywhere, except for maybe Afghanistan or Space”, but that’s not about that. This time it’s all about my illustration career (I turned 30 last year, so I think that word: career, as serious as it sounds, should be in my vocabulary). I have two major love affairs in my life : first, uncomplicated with my husband Tytus and second, with my job, which is not that sweet and easy sometimes and makes me understand all those sad songs about broken heart etc. Yup, this really matters to me – that was my dream job and I put lots of afford in getting where I’m now (partly, because I didn’t know what I was doing at first and partly, because it’s very competitive industry). So, where am I now? If I finally make new business cards (I should), they will say “Monika Suska children’s illustrator” and that exactly what I do – I illustrate picture books for kids and educational materials. It’s safe to say, that …