How to be an Illustrator

At last! Here is true practical help for budding freelance illustrators. This book helps you avoid the pitfalls that can ruin a career, with advice on crucial first impressions, how to create a portfolio and approach clients, how to negotiate contracts, and how to handle, deliver, and bill the first job. It discusses how to set up a studio, maintain a steady flow of work, and manage time and money. In addition, it provides information on successful self-promotion, self-publishing, and the prosand cons of agents.

Packed with useful tips gleaned from the author's own career and his work as an agent handling major artists in the US and UK, the book includes interviews with nine big-name illustrators. The reader benefits from their experience of starting out; what they learned during the metamorphosis from student to professional; what their expectations and experiences have been. In addition, art directors and commissioners describe the ways they like to be approachedand the ways they really dislike.

Darrel Rees has worked as an illustrator since 1986, joining influential London studio The Big Orange in 1992. In 1994 he co-founded illustration agency Heart (London and New York). He contributed to The Education of an Illustrator, edited by Steven Heller. He is a member of the Society of Publication Designers in New York and D&AD in the UK, acting as a jury foreman on its awards scheme.