In March 2020, I started drawing comics again. The Quarantine was in full swing, I was living on savings and I had a single regular  illustration gig which tied me over.

There I was, the world stopped, and I still was getting paid to draw. I was essentially, accidentally a full time illustrator.

I wondered if I could build a career out of this.

So like all instagram comic artist my mind went first to Patreon. But I have enough working experience to ‘begin with the end in mind’. So I looked for some of the most successful comics I could find, some had hundreds of thousands of followers, and I went to see how much they earned from patreon, and how hard they worked for it.

I found that maybe 3 comic artist on paetron made anywhere near a decent income. You can actually find a list of what the top paetrons earn. But I saw other artist with meager followings getting paid to do regular strips in magazines  and newspapers, or collect weekly comics into books. These guys were also hired regularly to illustrate editorials and covers. These were the professionals.

I studied the professionals.

I wrote 30 interview questions that I would like to learn from the professionals. And I studied 2 of them, one at a time. I asked the questions in google.

Through interviews, videos  and FAQ’s I learned everything about these artist. How they started, where they worked, what their daily routine was, what events they attended, how they found work, where they got their ideas.

If you can formulate a question, chances are you can find the answers.

I decided then to follow the path of the professionals, rather than the amateurs (in the truest sense of the word)

Now I asked myself a question, what do the professionals have that I don’t.

The answers:
1. A portfolio
2. The ability to walk into a publication company in New York or London, basically access to Art Directors.

As I was journaling these questions and answers, Google was packaging all my search queries to parse into facebook, who passed it to instagram, who served me an ad that said:

“Make art that sells! Do you want to get your work in front of a top art agent? - Learn to make art for top 10 art markets”

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TRY IT!

Be a student, test your assumptions learn from those who are where you want to be in 5, 10 or 15 years. Know that the information is out there, and some of it you need to collect and piece together, and some of it might just be worth paying for!

After a decade as an entrepreneur, I started transitioning into a full-time illustrator, people often ask how it’s done, I was 37 when I started transitioning. ‘For the record’ is a series of posts where I reflect on the past 36 months of this journey, even as I continue to take steps forward. If you find it useful or entertaining I would be grateful if you consider sharing it with someone.

- Adam Ming