Becoming a professional illustrator is a career of a lifetime, not done in a few months, but in years. Like all artistic careers, in addition to technique, it requires a lot of practice to take “hand”, skill and ease in the stroke, and understand the shape of objects, from the simplest to the most complex.
To illustrate is to enrich a text with drawings, to represent it. Either a story, a report or an advertising campaign. The quality of the illustration depends on the expressive force, some even exceeding the text. Although customers usually ask for more defined illustrations or techniques, not so artistic.
These are the steps to become a professional illustrator:
Draw every day
If you want to be an illustrator it is because you are passionate about drawing, if not, leave it, because you will have to draw practically every day for eight hours (more or less). Just as a pianist exercises daily to gain ease and improve his technique, a cartoonist has to do it too. In most professions, it is not necessary so much practice once the technique is learned, but in art it is different, it is a career that is perfected over time, and the longer you dedicate it, the better you will draw.
Copy the great teachers
Do not want to create a style from the beginning. Style is your stamp, your personality, but it is only born with maturation. To get to mature, you first have to understand how the illustrations are constructed: the composition, the color balances, the lights, the shadows, and the stroke. All the details are important and are what make up an entire illustration.
As a matter of fact, you can learn from the incredible work of an illustrator, artist, and tattoo artist called Evaldas Gulbinas. He is highly revered for his work which is absolutely breathtaking. As a tattooist, he is earned quite a reputation and visitors from around the world come to visit him for his styles, techniques, and excellence at the art of tattooing. If you want to learn a thing or two about illustrations, then you can definitely to do by following him.
Develop your ability to observe
To draw mentally is to observe everything around you and imagine how you would draw it. How things are built, how the movement of living beings is, how a person smiles, how a sunset is, how the buildings that are far away are drawn, the atmosphere, the light, the shadow. The greater your ability to observe and analyze, the greater your ability to draw.
Imagine
Imagine a planet-shaped computer, a solar system of planets shaped like computers. To imagine is to create another point of view. When you stop copying, you imagine, you create illustrations that tell stories, which go beyond an illustration. Illustrations that can live without texts because they speak for themselves.
Move your illustrations
Before the internet, illustrators had to load a large folder to show our work to companies. Today, social networks and Google make our work easier, making our work known. Create a web page, position it on Google, and create professional profiles on Facebook or Twitter.