How to properly plan and achieve a great portfolio for project proposals and Illustration Agencies

the illustration industry, is it all fun, games and butterflies?

After pleinair painting for a long while, and having a mix of illustrations, landscapes, and portraits, and not really knowing how to combine my studies (Fine Arts, Design, Illustration & Animation) into one career. I have decided to propel my illustration career as my top priority, and start polishing my whole portfolio. This process which actually started a year ago when I decided to join Squarespace to host my website, has been taking a lot of time, at least almost all my “free time”, as I have also been working part time -and currently am still doing it.

I thought I will share the whole process on a set of posts, hoping they might help someone who is also building his/her/their illustration career. This is more or less the process:

1. deciding on projects and images to work on.

   The main thing here is to ask ourselves: What kind of pictures do you want to draw? Which kind of books or stories are you naturally drawn to? How do you see yourself/your art on these subjects?

2. Selecting the illustrations: choosing which illustrations make the cut

   Here basically is clearing the clutter, and just choosing the best of the best for your portfolio. Yes, you can obviously keep everything, but when you send out a portfolio, I have been told you need to keep only 12 to 20 images top; images which can show what can you do, and how you do it and how well you do such thing.

3. Polishing the website / portfolio: organising, uploading, deleting, arranging in a cohesive manner.

   Omgosh, this takes forever, currently I am actually doing this step too, as I already have built an illustration portfolio for Editorial Illustration, but the challenge on this kind of illustration is that it has to be a constant “send out emails” to keep your art on the Art directors’ mind when they receive an story, it takes a lot of work, and sending hundreds of emails (not exaggerating with the numbers here!)

4. Searching for the perfect Agency

   This is something that is going to be very interesting, and I am looking forward on doing this :D! Tips I can give is, create a list of all the agencies you would LOVE to work with, check out their website, check their group of illustrators and their portfolios, does your style match theirs? Does your illustration path fits with the services they offer? (meaning: picture books, children books, mid grade, young adults, fiction, novels, etc) Do you like the work they have done? Would you like to work with them?

5. Getting hired! :D

   Hello! Agents, editorials, awesome companies, my buddies, Hire me! Haha.

This above list might suffer some changes as I travel this unknown path. I have had commissions for illustrations before, but they are once in a while, and also, they knock on my door, and happen randomly, thus I have a side job; not the style of life I want to keep forever. Have you gone through something similar? working two different jobs (totally not related to each other), fighting, hustling to achieve your dream job? If so, do you have any tips?

My dream job would be to have a constant flow of Picture books and illustrations, and no other side hustle, I love love love painting more than anything in the world (and cats, and pepperoni pizza lol), when I paint, the brush is an extension of my hand and brain, and my brain just flows. I adore painting landscapes, and LIFE, nature specially but also the interaction of the living creatures; I would be tremendously happy if I could translate that passion into a job that actually paid my bills xD! Do you know what I mean?

So, to travel this untraveled path, and come along into this adventure, stay tuned! It’s gonna be a lot of fun and tons of work xD! I’m sure I will learn plenty, but I believe you will learn something too :)!

Go explore and Happy Painting!

ki

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Follow me on instagram @kiyary, I am usually working on several projects! If you need inspiration and wonder the materials I use, here is my Amazon shopping list. If you buy from the link I get a small commission free from cost for you :) thank you!