20 year old me, out my depth 6 G&T’s in and illustrating half of Manchester…
My first ever client (that wasn’t a family friend wanting a portrait of their niece) was actually a pretty decent name to start off my client list! I remember I was in my final year at Falmouth university studying Fashion Photography, I always used to look at the #fashionillustrator on Twitter as I’d seen a few other illustrators reply to call outs on there and thought I’d keep my eye on it in case anything exciting came up!
So once a day I got into a routine of searching this hashtag and scrolling through to see if any call outs or jobs were posted. I stumbled upon an agency doing a call out for live event illustrators, I’ve always been a fast drawer but I’ve never done anything like illustrating professionally at an event but ‘fake it ‘til you make it’ and all that. So I emailed the agency that put the call out and I don’t think at that stage I knew who the actual client was or even where the event was, but they emailed back and it seems like I got the job!
Baring in mind I was at a university in the furthest corner of the country, never worked professionally for a client before and had never illustrated an event in my life, it was safe to say I was already punching above my weight ever so slightly. But in the reply they let me know the client was Ted Baker and the event was during a ‘Vogues Fashion Night Out’ event, I couldn’t stop smiling thinking how cool it would be to go back into university for a lecture and be able to tell my tutor I could add ‘Ted Baker’ to my client list!
As I said I was studying at Falmouth University which is a tiny town in the furthest part of Cornwall, the agency told me the event was in Manchester …just a slight 350miles away. I don’t think I told them where I was based, but I just went along with it and said yeah that’s all fine. Then the topic of payment came up and they sent me over the rate and being a 3rd year uni student who was doing portraits of their friends for £5 or a couple Jägermeister, safe to say I was on cloud 9.
Live illustration events tend to pay extremely well because you’re assumed to be highly skilled, producing a portrait every 5 – 10 minutes, being chatty and friendly to everyone who gets drawn and be able to do this for 4+ hours straight. Again I had no previous experience of any of this I just knew I could draw well …kinda, but all was fine and luckily even booking a hotel and a flight to Manchester from Newquay I managed to still pocket half my fee which I was over the moon about, shots all round!
The event went well, the team were great, they dressed me and the other illustrator up in Ted Baker clothes. I had to wear a little bow tie and one of the Ted Baker employees took a shine to me and kept me stocked up with gin and tonics for the entire night. Still to this day after doing a fair number of events that one is still the busiest I’ve ever been, people were queuing around the shop for us to draw their portraits for the entire night. We must have drawn over 100 portraits between us, insane!
I wouldn’t always recommend taking on jobs you have no previous experience with, they can really lead to some sink or swim moments which I’ve previously been guilty of doing both (That’s a story for another time). But it was a great learning curve and from then on being a naïve 20 year old fashion illustrator being able to have ‘Ted Baker’ on my client list was so encouraging, where it remained at the top of my client list for a long, long time until I had some other clients finally who were at that calibre.
But morals of the story! keep an eye out on social platforms for call outs, don’t be shy to approach projects even if you feel like you’ve got no chance of getting them and never be afraid to take a risk!
P.S. A weird snippet that I forgot to include, I randomly started drawing on tote bags during the Summer before this event to sell on Etsy, posting them up on my social media and then my first client job ends up being exactly that. So I do think it’s worthwhile doing personal experimental work and posting about it, plant those seeds, you never know what might grow from it!
Keep reading:
Illustrating Live at Events - A Fashion Illustrators Tips For Live Drawing
How I Got An Agent As A Fashion Illustrator Plus Tips On Getting An Illustration Agent
