Charlene Chua, illustration news

I decided to open up a question and answer session with people on DeviantArt, to see if I could help answer their questions about illustration. I found that illustration to a lot of people there was this beguiling, near mystical thing that everyone wanted to call themselves but few people were willing to share real answers about the industry.

So, here are my answers for the first batch of questions. These are my personal answers; they are written in a casual question-answer format and are not meant to substitute any formal teaching on any one point. In other words, it probably wouldn’t qualify if you wanted to quote it for a thesis! But hopefully they are insightful and useful.

Read more below for the questions and the answers.

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Q&A Batch 1

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Asked by: cl0aked
Q: What tablet do you use if any? Do you ever do digital paintings?

I currently use a Wacom Intuous 3 6×8 tablet and a Cintiq 21UX. I use my tablets for Illustrator and Photoshop, for drawing and for applying special effects and touchups. I personally don’t do much painting, digitally or otherwise. When I do, I am more interested in achieving an interesting effect than painting in a highly finished, detailed manner.

Asked by: krissthebliss
Q: How do you launch yourself as an illustrator. you know the first flap of your artistic wings…
When I started, I emailed the art directors at several magazines back in Singapore. I had a small portfolio with some personal pieces, which in retrospect looked so awful I am amazed anyone gave me a job. I got a call from the creative director of a publisher, who introduced me to the art director of the in-flight magazine of Singapore Airlines. He gave me my first true illustration job shortly afterwards.

I think what helped was that I already had a few year’s worth of working experience and I didn’t sound like a complete idiot. I had had experience dealing with clients and so while I was still pretty unsure of myself, when I presented my work and myself, I guess I must have appeared decently trustworthy. They did, after all, give me a gig.

Q: The benefits of freelance or an employee in a company.

There are benefits and downsides to both. The most obvious benefit of working for a company is a steady paycheck, sometimes benefits and the opportunity to meet, mingle and work with other people in a similar field on a daily basis. You pick up a lot of useful skills working in a company – people skills, time management skills are but a few of the things you just get used to.

The benefits of freelancing, on the other hand, are a sense of freedom in both being your own boss and controlling your artistic endeavors. You can get up at any time you want, you can work from anywhere if you’re an illustrator or designer, and you get to write off stuff as a business expense.

Q:What are the necessary tools and knowledge on being an illustrator.

That’s probably up for debate, but I think that an illustrator ought to have fundamental drawing skills and painting skills (yes, even though I myself lack the fundamental painting skills). A wide appreciation for art and an empathy society. Being curious about a wide variety of subjects is helpful.

I personally believe that good illustrators enjoy solving problems first, and making art second. Illustration provides an aesthetic visual answer to any number of problems, from showing the viewer how to do something, to helping make a very complex and abstract concept clear.

In terms of tools, I think you can use just about anything to create an illustration. It’s probably important to have a computer if only to email clients. Most illustrators also scan their traditional media artwork these days and send the final art as a hires file to the client, either by FTP or some other means.

Q: Is it advisable to be an illustrator without any educational on art like having a degree in fine arts blah blah blah.

Well, I don’t have a degree of any sort, so it’s totally possible to be an illustrator without training.

There are quite a few schools offering illustration as a degree, and whether or not these are worth it is, I think, dependent on the student. For a select few, the training is very good – I have seen students graduate with amazing portfolios and they ease into professional work shortly thereafter. They seem to keep in touch with their teachers who lend them their support and advice and that connection is extremely valuable. Good teachers can also help steer a student in a direction to give them the best shot of success when they graduate.

On the other hand I have also see some illustration graduates with dismal art. Even looking online I have seen people with Masters’ degrees in illustration and their work is terrible. Perhaps they got the degree to teach or something, however it would appear to me that their work is too poor for commercial application and I wonder what they did in all those years at school.

I would say if you have the money, then pursue an illustration degree if you are inclined. Or consider a graphic design or animation degree – these usually have an illustration component and tend to impart skills that can actually get you hired upon graduation (you can still get a design job with an illustration degree, but I think a design degree would give you better chances).

Tags: answers, help, illustration q&A, questions

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 1st, 2009 at 3:06 pm and is filed under Illustration questions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.