What Can You Do With an Illustration Degree? 5 Career Options
Illustration degrees are becoming more popular at universities and colleges, which is a cool development for those of us in the field who love to see illustration get a fair representation in the visual arts canon! If you’re interested in pursuing an illustration degree, there are many career paths you can choose from, some of which you might not expect.
Here are five careers you can pursue with an illustration degree:
Children's Book Illustrator
This is probably the type of illustration most people automatically think of. Children’s books are something we all grow up with and often have special places in our memories. Dive into the HUGE world of children’s book illustration, and you’ll soon learn how each age range, genre, and publisher have very different illustrative styles. Almost anything goes in kids' books - from simple, stylized digital cartoons to elaborate and intricate watercolour paintings. Better yet - if you can write, you can create the entirety of the picture book! Publishers love artists who are also authors.
Animation Background Artist
Unless you’ve studied animation, working on the actual motion of an animated TV show or film will likely not be possible with an illustration degree. However, many parts of the animation pipeline remain where can illustrators shine! You may already be familiar with concept art, but did you know background art is also a possible area of practice for illustrators?
Check out the work of illustrator Lara Georgia Carson, a prolific background artist for animated TV shows.
This background by Lara Georgia Carson is in the Netflix series The Last Kids on Earth created by Atomic Cartoons
Comic Artist
If you’re familiar with my work or blog, you know how much I love comics and graphic novels. But this area is a HUGE and diverse market. You can become a piece of the production pipeline for someone else’s intellectual property with a publisher like Marvel or DC. But you can also illustrate with an author or write and illustrate your work. You can publish with a big publisher or indie publisher or self—publish and sell at conventions like the Vancouver Comic Art Festival (VANCAF) or the Toronto Comic Art Festival (TCAF). You can create webcomics for platforms like Webtoons or to host on your own website or blog, or share them on social media like the artist Joshua Barkman does with his Eisner-award-winning series False Knees.
Image Comics is a publisher that wanted to let comic creators build and keep their own IP (unlike Marvel and DC) and their highly-awarded publications show that the system is working!
Mural Artist
While it may be challenging to develop a career around mural art, it is well within an illustrator’s reach to add it to their overall practice. Illustrators make great muralists because they already have a good sense of stylization, colour, and narrative illustration. You can participate in mural festivals, like the Vancouver Mural Festival, or even work with private businesses to add murals to the exterior or interior of their shopfronts. A great example of a successful mural career for an illustrator is Vancouver legend Ola Volo. Not only has she participated in the Vancouver Mural Festival, but she’s also been commissioned by cities and companies to paint enormous murals in her iconic, folklore-inspired style.
This mural by illustrator Ola Volo was commissioned by Starbucks for a store in New York City
Tattoo Artist
Tattoo art is a perfect, practical application for your illustration. Many clients looking for tattoos will choose specific artists for their style and flash tattoo art. How lucky you get to put the art you make and love out into the world, and people will pay you to put it permanently on their bodies! It’s kind of an artist’s dream. If you love the look of tattoos and have a good sense of how to stylize your work to best read on a body-canvas, you might just be cut out for this potentially lucrative career path.
