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The Good Ship Illustration
Illustrator vs artist: what’s the difference? + Creating your portfolio 🥳
00:16:45
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- [00:26]
Helen
D asks how do you develop an illustrative portfolio to break into the market if you have mostly fine art examples.
- [00:34]
Katie
He's a good one. The first thought would be set yourself some projects that you like that you would want to do. Maybe ask yourself who, if you were going to be an illustrator, because she obviously wants to. Why? What would be your dream job, dream client, dream brief? And set yourself that you don't even have to find a pre existing one to copy. You could just design a project for yourself and work to the demands of that brief.
- [01:03]
Doyle
Just brainstorm a load of stuff you're really, really into. You know, maybe you support Greenpeace or, you know.
- [01:11]
Katie
Yeah, Causes. Causes and charities.
- [01:15]
Doyle
Causes or charities that you're really into or memories from your childhood or albums you love or stories you love. Like just pick something you're massively into. Maybe make a list of all the stuff that you're into and you've always been into. Like really value those things and make projects around those.
- [01:33]
Helen
Yeah. And if you see work in the wild and it makes you think, oh, I wish I'd done that, like, that looks like a cool job. That's a really big clue.
- [01:42]
Katie
Yeah. Go back and redo it in your own voice. Also, what area do you think you might want to be an illustrator for? I mean, the three of us kind of represent the different corners of illustration, picture book, generalist and editorial. For me and Katie, we call it what new media livescribing. All these different kind of areas. Which one appeals to you and just finding a way to answer it because they all have different requirements, each area of illustration. If you were doing editorial and even if you break that down into different magazines. So a magazine about health and well being will have probably some lovely pictorial representation of someone out in nature. Whereas a business magazine would want you to come up with a cunning editorial concept that doesn't just feature men in business suits looking like clip art from or a Getty magazine image. For business, you've got to come up with ideas that have interesting visual solutions. And for yours, for Katie, you need a big vocabulary of images, don't you? And it's like concept on steroids.
- [02:50]
Helen
Practicing from like I think going to real events, even if not being paid and drawing them live and you know, working on your live illustration skills that way. Or if you're doing live portraits, you'd have a load of portraits in your portfolio. I think just figure out what you want to do and do some before somebody asks you to. Like, you don't have to wait to be asked. You can create a portfolio to show what you're capable of. Maybe that's the secret.
- [03:13]
Katie
But to cut, you know, to, to save time and cut out a couple of years of trying everything. It's probably a good idea not to be a generalist. Don't be everything to everyone. Going back to what Helen said, it's much easier to work from your point of personal obsessions because you've got a ready made language than reinventing yourself to talk in everyone else's language. So if you figure out who you are, which you probably have done because fine art is a path to that, isn't it? You're probably, probably working about things that you love now. They just have to have a communication aspect that allow people to understand what your images are there to say. Because with fine art, you're the author of the work, you're the author of the content, you generate everything. It's a slightly more service based industry as an illustrator where you don't always get to create the content. Sometimes you do for self initiated projects, things like that, but you're in the service of someone else's ideas and they might not be your kind of thing, but you use your cunning obsessional language to make them interesting.
- [04:13]
Helen
We're all just nodding.
- [04:15]
Katie
Can you hear the silent nods? Yeah, I love the way they look like they think I'm talking sense. Yeah. We've just had lunch so we're a bit woozy. Yeah.
- [04:23]
Doyle
I'm full of soup and cheese.
- [04:26]
Helen
It was really good soup. Can you put loads of spices in it? Was it fenugreek?
- [04:30]
Katie
Curried parsnip soup?
- [04:32]
Doyle
Delicious.
- [04:33]
Katie
But yeah, you just, you're serving other people with illustration and that's probably the big change is you don't have so much autonomy that you do as a fine, as you would as a fine artist, but you might have more money.
- [04:46]
Helen
Yeah. If you're, you're responding to what people give you rather than just creating.
- [04:53]
Doyle
I also think if you're a picture bookmaker, you're not so much just responding because especially if you're writing, if you're an author, Illustrator. Yes, of course, you're actually coming from something in you or your life or it's. You're not following a brief. Exactly. I suppose the bit of the brief that you're following is that the book has a certain number of pages at a certain size but. And you want children to relate to it. Those are the boundaries around it. But other than that you're, you're, you are the creator of everything. In it.
- [05:22]
Katie
That's a bit why we. Why we're really envious about author illustrators. And I blanked it from my mind. And these. Even as I was saying, you're in the service of someone else. I'm like, there's an exception. There's an exception. What's that exception? Oh, those damn picture books.
- [05:35]
Doyle
You're in the surface of children, psychopathic children who could just throw your book aside. It's rubbish.
- [05:41]
Helen
Yeah, I don't want that story. It's rubbish.
- [05:44]
Katie
It's the best area, though. Picture book illustrators and authors, you know, get to live in their own world the whole time. You don't have articles by boring businessmen and art directors to change all your illustrations. There's a lot more autonomy in your area.
- [05:59]
Doyle
Yeah, I think there is. I think maybe that's how I ended up doing it, because I really, really don't like to be told what to do. I really don't like to be told what to do. So if it's a job where you come up with your own idea and you pursue it to the end, perfect winner.
- [06:15]
Katie
Do you remember that TV show Wife Swap? Was it Family Swap, where people go and live each other's lives?
- [06:21]
Helen
Are we going to do Illustrator Swap?
- [06:23]
Katie
Yeah. Why don't we just rotate and that means we have two versions. Oh, it would make for great.
- [06:28]
Helen
I would be crying a lot.
- [06:30]
Doyle
I don't. I could think I could maybe. I could definitely draw live in front of people. But I would be really stuck with all of your tech knowledge and to draw a map or something like that. Oh, I think that would be so hard.
- [06:43]
Katie
I'm just going to be funny to see you in such a fury and phone them up saying, I'm not doing this. I've got a better idea.
- [06:49]
Helen
I'd be following the map client the day before, like, right, I started. Just a couple of questions about the content. They're like, what, we signed you up for this four months ago and I'd.
- [07:02]
Katie
Be having a nervous breakdown being watched draw. I don't go on art clubs. I don't like being watched drawing. I have to overcome that. But, you know, you can see each area has a different personality type that it's suited to, which you never really think about.
- [07:16]
Doyle
It's really funny as well, that I think my whole life, the whole time I've been making picture books, I've never really thought about it closely, as closely as I do now, since we've started talking about it all the time, and now I suddenly realize all of us are in exactly the area that suits our personalities. I never even thought about that until we all got together and started talking about it.
- [07:38]
Katie
It's amazing when you're forced to be kind of conscious and articulate, what you do that you've just done as a knee jerk reaction, you've never analyzed it. I think that whole teaching thing, especially when it bounces off each other and we're not just talking alone about our own thing, it's all in comparison to the other. And you can see how they're different. Because when we all started chatting about illustration, when we would meet up at the corner kitchen, we were like, yeah, illustration. That thing? Yeah, it's this shape and it's blue and it's soft and fluffy or something like that. But then you realize after a while, we all perceive it entirely differently because of our experience in different fields of illustration. So then it would be like, no, no, no, it's not like that. Nobody is in my field.
- [08:19]
Helen
The thought of doing a whole picture book as well, like, I think writing, because when we wrote together, it was fun. We just bounced ideas. But like, the pressure of, like, working with one publisher for a long time and like, just knowing that there was months straight even thinking about it, I'm like, I feel my heart beating more.
- [08:38]
Doyle
I would hate it if I didn't love the people I was working with. And I have had situations where I haven't. And I've had to move publisher numerous times. But when I find the team I like to work with, that's it. I'm like, I'm stuck. Whether they like it or not, I am sticking with them forever. And I love the feeling of right now. It's time to start the artwork. I'm going to hibernate. I'm going to stop doing all my social stuff for a while. I'm going to be in here in my studio, dog at my feet, rain on the window above my head, going to hibernate. I love. I just love that. Although they're making it sound idyllic and it's not all idyllic. There is some pain involved, but we.
- [09:14]
Helen
Got to have the nice.
- [09:15]
Doyle
It's the pain that I am used to and I enjoy it.
- [09:17]
Helen
What if I like the misery?
- [09:19]
Doyle
I like the misery.
- [09:20]
Helen
This is Doyle.
- [09:24]
Katie
Yeah. It's like the length of time and how long you can be in that zone. Like, you can be in the zone for eight months. Katie wants it over and done within three hours. She's had enough by then.
- [09:35]
Helen
The shorter the better.
- [09:37]
Katie
I can do two weeks Max. And then I want something new. Which is all a long winded way of going around saying it's worth knowing what area you want to work in to create the portfolio that winks at that particular area to get the jobs in. Because if you haven't got time to hang around you and I'll have another career and spend two, two years in totally the wrong part of Illustra, that doesn't suit my personality and my work maybe doesn't work for it because you don't want to be too bent out of shape. So what would your work already suit? Does it look like stuff that you see out there in the world? Do you see commonalities? You really have to put your. You really have to look hard because it. The great work exists in weird places, doesn't it? Like in a museum shop or sometimes I find things like in a tour at a tourist attraction in a city they have a gift shop. Like all these lovely things, you don't normally see them anywhere else. And then you get really inspired and think, I could get a job doing this.
- [10:37]
Helen
You think somebody somewhere is making money drawing pictures for this?
- [10:41]
Katie
Yeah.
- [10:41]
Helen
Like I saw somebody, my friend Georgia in Sydney, she did a partnership with. I think it was Malmaison or the Kimpton or something, but it was. She illustrated dressing gowns, the gowns for the, like the robes for the hotel room. I was like, that's so random, but so cool. Like there's jobs you don't even know. I remember at school, like they didn't say it to me when I was at school, but I think to my little sister, they said, like, don't worry about what job you're gonna have because it doesn't exist yet. I think that applies for illustration too because you don't know where anything's going really.
- [11:13]
Katie
And it's often design groups who get those really nice jobs. And we again, we talk a lot, lot about that on the business course, tracking things down. So if you see things and you don't know who commissioned them, you can use your stalking detective work online, take some photographs, see where they come from. I love that. Like, who got this job? Who's the commissioning editor? I want this job. And that's when you know you're on the right track, kind of for your work. But that other question does. We could talk about that one. Because it is appropriate to this, isn't it? What's the difference between illustrator and an artist? Yeah, it was roughly. That wasn't. And is there an illustrator artist as a role? And we Decided there it were such.
- [11:53]
Doyle
A scale of artist and illustrator. You can be anywhere along that line. And I don't know that there's a lot of difference really. My partner, he illustrates or he has illustrated children's books in the past and now he makes screen print at home which are completely self motivated. And he still calls himself as an illustrator because he just feels like one inside somehow. Even though I suppose maybe you would say he was a printmaker or a fine artist and he's making his own. You just choose your own label, don't you?
- [12:24]
Katie
Yeah. An artist is a word that has to do a lot of heavy lifting because it covers so many bases. You're just basically a creative. And I don't think these titles make a lot of sense anymore. You know that work that would only exist in a gallery and couldn't be used anywhere else, that's an artist, a fine artist or whatever. But there's a lot of hybrid people who maybe do the odd bit of commissioned work, but they do loads of self initiated like Jerry and people who are commissioned to create images for walls. Like there's lots of poster work and sites selling posters that are generated specifically to look like art posters in interiors. And there's also a lot of commissions for hospitality interiors, whether it's hotels or restaurants where it's kind of make something artish but groovy. And there are illustrators who are working to that brief. So to a certain extent that illustrators are being commissioned but they're creating work that gets framed and put on a wall.
- [13:22]
Helen
Yeah. What about those galleries where they have a painting but you can choose what colours are on it so it matches your wallpaper.
- [13:28]
Katie
Really?
- [13:29]
Helen
That's a thing? Because then I was thinking maybe illustrators, the more commercial side. But then there's artists, inverted commas, you know, artists that are really commercial and they're just creating art that is going to match your wallpaper. Yeah, I don't. I think it doesn't matter, does it?
- [13:44]
Doyle
I don't think it matters. You just choose what you want to call yourself.
- [13:47]
Katie
I think all the categories have just been kind of blown apart now. I mean there is obviously that whole field of fine art, but the rest of it in between. Even like textile artists who used to be very clearly for textile have become print and pattern and print and pattern has become an area of illustration so that all, all the edges have been blurred. And people would like art for their walls, they like art on their objects. So illustrators extend the life of objects. You know, you used to just Have a phone case that was that color, a tote bag that was cream and some other stuff. But now you can have multiple versions of them because you put images on them. So suddenly there's 200 versions of the phone case or the tote bag. And that's where illustrators have great potential to do loads of work and they can just produce what they want and see if it gets licensed or it's commissioned.
- [14:37]
Helen
I was thinking maybe in terms of logistics and people finding you to work with you, it depends who your ideal person to work with is. Like, if you want to be working with brands that want to do a collaboration with an artist, maybe calling yourself an artist is more strategic. But then if you want to be hired as an illustrator, people are going to be searching for an illustrator. And if you call yourself an illustrator, they're like, okay, that's the right person.
- [15:00]
Katie
Because you said you were commissioned as an artist, weren't you?
- [15:03]
Helen
You knew early, early on I did a job for Nespresso painting on Windows and they were like, we've got an artist in store. And I was like, oh, artist. So fancy. But I'm like, I'm just an illustrator. Like, I'll just draw pictures. I'll draw whatever you want. So I don't know if it's a, maybe a mindset thing or a class thing or if it's just words that don't matter anyway.
- [15:23]
Katie
Well, because you can say you're something, but if a marketing agency wants to perceive you as an artist and pitch you as an artist, you know, what you say you are is as much as what people see you to be or want you to be.
- [15:36]
Helen
So in that case, they probably saw more value in calling me an artist. Be like, it's a fancy smancy artist that we're collaborating with rather than be like, got an illustrator paint on the windows, did you?
- [15:49]
Katie
You should have stood up at the end and pulled off your T shirt and it says Illustrator across your chest. Yeah, proud Illustrator. I am not an artist.
- [15:56]
Helen
I'll draw anything. They didn't really answer that, but it's not.
- [16:02]
Katie
I don't think there is an answer, is there? You can't. But we covered some nice vague areas there.
- [16:09]
Helen
Our post soup chat.
- [16:12]
Katie
See you next week then.
- [16:14]
Helen
Yeah, goodbye.
- [16:14]
Katie
Bye. It.