Audience

One of the more frustrating things to figure out as an illustrator/ artist is trying to identify your audience. I mean, after all, you want sell your work / be hired by someone.  Identifying an audience is a kind of critical distance; it's the ability to see your work from another's perspective.

Ok, so many of you will say, "Well, I just want to make the work that I like. To heck with my audience." This works alright for well-known commercially successful fine artists who have the luxury of experimenting midstream, or for art students because they are expected to experiment with their work. But like most professional fine artists will tell you, upscale gallery representation usually comes when an artist's work is finally consistent in style and content. We have often heard the word, "branding," discussed in relation to this.

In the illustration world, clients generally seek to hire an illustrator for a certain style and content year to year; abruptly changing the look and feel of your work can have deleterious effects. Of course, an illustrator will often be able to work in many different markets depending on the age-appropriateness of the art, and will often have a portfolio with ranging styles and content. Such a portfolio should be separated as much as possible because those disparate categories attract different audiences. For example, you wouldn't send a dark and edgy sci-fi cover illustration to a gardening magazine. This separation allows you to seek out the appropriate clients for the different kinds of images you're making.

And now you're saying, "That's easy; there's the market-- it pretty much dictates the styles and content out there for us to place our work."  And so it does. But are you making work to fit the market or are you making your work (with a certain genre in mind) and allowing the market to make a place for you? The former is not the best situation to be in. It leads to a lot of copying of other's styles and an adoption of preconceived themes and ideas that are not your own. Making work to simply fit in with other work out there is not the most unique kind of work. You want clients to want you because your work offers them something that no one else's does.

On the flip side: what if your work is so unusual and different that you're having a hard time getting illustration work from traditional publishing clients? If you're not considering having gallery representation of your work, maybe you should. However, for illustration, this is a good place to be as it probably offers the most opportunities.  Your work is more in a position to be able to shift and change, for one. Other possibilities include self-publishing your work as a small volume or writing a story around the art (see Katie Sekelsky's blog). Sales will tell you what and who is your audience. If something sells, ask yourself what "thing" did it have; if something doesn't sell ask yourself what did it lack?

You will, as an illustrator, have (hopefully) a long career. But to remain interested and happy with your artistic journey means to have a sustainable practice. To do this, one *must* experiment with new ideas, new materials and ways of working with them. By identifying the correct markets and audiences,  you will be able to better place your work and create the images that you want.