I want to do genre illustration, but I have an uncreative day job that pays better than I can expect doing freelance art. I've been out of college longer that I was in it now, and I worry I'm wasting my life. What do I do?
First off, high five buddy because I’m right there with you for the most part. My day job is as a graphic designer/apparel designer, which IS creative and has decent pay, but honestly doesn’t fulfill me the same way traditional art does. So I’m in the same boat as you and I’ve been spending past couple years turning that fucking ship around. I’m just starting to see some of that investment pay off.
Prepare for a looooooong essay…
Okay, so let’s break this down. We know where we want to end up, generally. If you can narrow that down into a more specific goal (because genre illustration is a HUGE field full of specifics) you’ll be even better off since you’ll know exactly what you gotta work towards. So that’s step one.
Step two, look at your art and figure out where it’s at, realistically. Can you produce work at a professional level in a medium you enjoy? If not, what are you weak points? If you have a hard time with this, find a friend or someone whose honest with you and ask. Preferably someone that has an artistic eye, because in my experience general folk tend to be wowed by whatever you produce.
Right, so we know where we wanna go and we know where we sit currently compared to people working in the industry. If those two values aren’t equal then we need to train.
This is where it’s a make or break sort of thing. You have to treat this like you’re training for the olympics. In my mind mentally I think of it like I’m doing weight training but for art (always call it in my head as ‘working my art muscles’.) We need a program, a clear schedule, time, and utter-fucking-grit to see it all through. People are notoriously bad at long term investments, we expect results yesterday. Having stubborn grit will get you through that.
If you can’t get yourself into a school physically (and it sounds like that’s the case) find yourself an online program that can offer a roadmap for you. Self-learning is DIFFICULT, and we don’t need to make this harder by having you blindly wander around in the woods eating berries that may or may not be poisonous.
Fuck that noise, give me a goddamn guide.
Getting into an online program that aligns with your goals will give you a clear path and instruction on what you have to do to get there, all it requires is your time. Think of it like hiring a trainer if this were a gym. Sure we can spend some random hours on a machine and hope for the best, but a trainer, even the most hands off one, can tell us where to start, what we should focus on and for how long, and then let us go from there.
Look at your time and figure out where are you being frivolous. Videogames, tv, etc. That sort of thing. Cut it out, replace it with training. For me, I tend to skew obsessive when it comes to this kind of stuff, so I’ve made a commitment to doing 2-3 hours a night during the work week, then a good 4-6 hours on the weekend. I could do more, but then I’d be cutting social ties and that sort of thing, and honestly you need a bit of that to stay healthy mentally.
After that, it’s just putting in the hours. I don’t know where you sit in terms of skill so I don’t know how long or short your journey may be, but it’s not too late. You can absolutely change careers and get into something you love.
Keep your day job while you train, save and attend workshops, conventions, and slowly immerse yourself into the field you want to be in. Make art friends. Follow artists you like and see what they’re doing. Make master studies. Draw all the time. When you start to feel confident in your abilities, start making stuff that you could reasonably call “portfolio pieces.” Put them into a book and show it around to people you want to get work from. Chances are the first time around you won’t get anything, so go back and keep training, keep improving and keep moving forward. It WILL pay off, it just requires you to nurture it.
If I had to distill this down in anyway at all, I’d say this: Art favors the stubborn. Stubborn makes you improve, stubborn gets you to sit down and work when you don’t want to, stubborn is the only reason you keep going back and back until that thing you want is finally happening.
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