An Accidental Art Career
How I became an illustrator by happy chance
People often ask how I became an illustrator. The answer is that I fell into it: I didn’t go to art school, I didn’t even study art at A level. I have little-to-no formal training. How did I end up here?
It’s a fun story to tell, once you reject imposter syndrome (I absolutely do) and recognise that there are different routes to an end goal. As a child, I drew all the time. I would sit in front of the TV, or at the kitchen table, and draw for hours. I grew up around horses, so they were a favourite subject, but I also loved drawing miniature scenes with lots of detail. I remember also priding myself as a six or seven year old, that I would colour the sky all the way to the ground, while my friends would do the little band of blue along the top of the page. I would argue about how while the sky is high up, when you look at a view, the sky goes to the horizon. This is obnoxiously hilarious to me now!
At high school, my excitement about art faltered, after being told by a GCSE art teacher that I shouldn’t pursue it as a subject. I don’t recall the reasoning, but I do remember the feeling of confusion that this great hobby of mine had not given me enough to make it something more. I dropped off drawing at home, and focused on my other interests, literature and history (and other stuff like boys and daydreaming about Lord of the Rings).
I have a BA in Medieval English and History and a masters in Medieval Studies. I loved my time studying and fully immersed myself in learning for five years. I dreamed of going into a job in heritage or continuing on to become a curator.
But…2009 was not a good time to graduate. Jobs were hard to come by in many industries, but heritage was on its knees in the UK. For every role, there were graduates but also experienced experts who had been made redundant from other jobs all fighting for the same spot. Most applications insisted on three years experience, and they were finding people with those credentials. After a couple of customer service jobs, it was a long term office job in an unrelated field for me. But, during this time, I started drawing again! Pen and ink, and I had to relearn almost everything. I opened up a little Etsy shop and made it a side hustle. Since then, I have put a lot of time and effort into my shop and have made over 4000 sales.
Five years later, after a lot of fertility woes, I was having a baby! I left my job as we moved from Birmingham to the Cotswolds and once our little one was out of the newborn phase, I was inspired to draw again. This time, I decided I could be doing more, and I networked a little with other mums who worked for themselves, and made a freelance gig of doing commissions part time. This networking group was fundamental in launching illustration as my career. I met the lovely Tash Willmore, founder of Culpepper&Co (an incredible creative company local to me), through a friend in the group, and Tash put her faith in me to work on several projects. She continues to work with me as a retained client and I am SO blessed to be a part of the Culpepper family.
The rest is history - another baby, and now they are both at school, I am full time with my lovely agent Jehane and working on dream projects. I also use my learning in my personal illustration, bringing history, literature and folklore into my work. I am so grateful but also proud of how hard I worked to get here. I still work very very hard, with next to no work-life balance, but I love it so much!"
Some downsides, though. I really wish I had a more established grasp of the fundamentals. I draw from instinct and have to reverse engineer composition and figurative elements as well as having to start from scratch with a lot of mediums. My grasp of design tools like Photoshop is based only on what I need to do, which can be limiting. I build time into my working week to learn some of these things. It’s my belief that an artist can never stop learning!
Thanks for reading!
A
I love your unconventional route into illustration, Anna! While I did study art, it was fine art that I did and not illustration so I knew none of the technical aspects/communication side of it either, I learned basic Photoshop after I graduated when I was working in a furniture shop making POS signs for the shop floor 😂 The rest has been learned on the fly. You clearly have such a deep rooted passion and talent for drawing, it's wonderful that eventually you were able to make it into a career!