Advice For Building A Career As An Illustrator Or Cartoonist

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My friend and fellow illustrator Paul Fricke recently sent me a great link:

Advice for building a career as a freelance artist and/or paid cartoonist by Dave Roman

Dave Roman has been working at Nickelodeon Magazine for the last nine years. He is also a frequent lecturer at the School of Visual Arts. This article summarizes his advice for art students just starting out in illustration, comics, and/or cartooning. I’ve been freelancing for over ten years now, and I agree with what Roman has to say. His article is packed with good advice for the beginner (or even the not-so-beginner).

Along the same lines, here’s another great article I’ve blogged about before:

17 Lessons on Freelancing by Megan Jeffery.

Touring An Artist’s Studio

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It’s always fascinating for me to see the studios of other artists. It can give a lot of insight into how they work. Recently I found online studio “tours” (with photos) of some artists whose work I admire. Fun reading. So grab your ticket stubs, buckle yourself in, and no flash photography please:

Scott Kurtz
Creator of the online comic strip PVP.

Funnypages Productions (scroll to the bottom)
I worked with these guys on 3-2-1 Penguins. They were terrific.

Tom Richmond
Parody artist for MAD magazine. I worked for Tom one summer in college.

John Byrne
This one’s not really a tour, but hey, it’s John Byrne. One of the all-time great comic book artists.
EDIT: More photos from John Byrne’s studio can be found here. Thanks to Bryn Hendrickson for the link.

Also, someone (I think it was Charlie Griak) told me about this link to the studio of illustrator Bob Staake.

If you know of any others, leave a comment and let me know.