This illustrator jobs board experiment - a review 45 days in

IT'S RUBBISH

I started this whole Illustrator Jobs Board thing on a bit of a whim.

The Illustrator Jobs Board experiment has now been going since the 17th of January 2025, and in that time, there’s been almost £100,000 of work shared (and no, it’s not *all* in London, and nooo, it’s not all just live event stuff).

I was sick of emailing good clients with decent budgets saying “Nope. I can’t help, go away”.

I had too much work, so now I’m sharing it. Hooray.

Sharing these opportunities on the Illustrator Jobs Board feels really GOOD because:

• I was tired of arguing about whether there was any work out there.
  This jobs board = my petty way of saying “Seeeee? Loadsa work.
  And you can HAVE IT.”

  

  Thanks for the motivation, Nintendofan1984 🥰 - after publishing this article/video last year, other illustrators just thought I was straight up LYING.

• Remembering how painful it felt to not be making a consistent, sustainable income from my creative work makes me be sick in my mouth a bit, and this jobs board makes me feel like maybe, hopefully, I’m helping a bit.

• When illustrators get a job from the board the thrill is immense. I do an air punch. I want to grab passers-by by the face and squeal “THEY GOT THE JOB!”

Sharing these opportunities on the Illustrator Jobs Board feels BAD because:

• Not everyone gets work. It’s not magic. 😩

• I’m frustrated that I can’t force these clients to work with you.

• The feedback so far is mostly ‘omg thank you, this is great’ but I have a human brain, so of course all I hear or remember is:

“NONE OF THESE JOBS ARE IN MY EXACT, SPECIFIC GEOGRAPHICAL LOCATION.

I CAN’T JUSTIFY £7 A MONTH FOR THIS.

I PAID £7 AND DIDN’T GET ONE SINGLE ILLUSTRATION JOB IN THE ENTIRE 30 DAYS I WAS HERE.

I REALISED I’M TOO SCARED TO DO LIVE ILLUSTRATION (fair enough 😆)

TOTAL AND UTTER SHITE. BYE.”

**Deep breath**

There’s something else going on.

I dunno if you can feel it, but there’s major Panicky Illustrator Energy. Let’s call it PIE.

It’s an elbowing-each-other-out-of-the-way undercurrent of “Aaaaagh, there’s not enough work, Katie. THERE’S NOT ENOUGH WORK. IT’S BEEN 2 WEEKS NOW. I HAVEN’T HAD A SINGLE JOB. I KNEW THIS WOULDN’T WORK. I’M DOOMED. DOOOOOOMED.”

Big Fish - Survival of the Panickiest

About a year ago I took my 2-year-old to a park in Yorkshire to feed the ginormous fish. These fish were hurling their big, shiny, slippery bodies up and all over each other, splashing pond water everywhere and gasping their big gaspy fish mouths trying to gobble up the pellets before their giant-fish brothers and sisters.

It was survival of the panickiest.

I know you are not an enormous carp flopping around gasping for yummy fish food pellet thingies. Forgive me for drawing this comparison.

You’re an intelligent illustrator with bills to pay. You might not even be aware of any of that panicky energy - it could just be bubbling under the surface. Maybe I’m just super sensitive to it because I don’t want to let anyone down.

The 100% honest truth is, I’d LOVE it if you’d bugger off and get your own illustration enquiries 😅.

Does paying £7 a month to earn £5,000 seem a bit too good to be true?

Hmmm. Maybe it is!

Hear me out.

• Maybe the real value here is just seeing physical PROOF that there *is* work out there for illustrators

• There *are* decent budgets out there

• Clients do still value creativity and human hands in a world of AI fears and scarcity about the future of all creative industries

The ideal situation here would be you attracting your own clients, instead of scooping up my fish pellets and spitting them out in my face.

Get Your Own Damn Illustration Jobs

Over a year ago now, before the Illustrator Jobs Board was even a twinkle in anybody’s eye, I emptied everything I knew about getting clients into this here online course with my pals Helen Stephens and Tania Willis (who are both much much wiser than me).

Helen’s an award-winning Picture Book author-illustrator, and Tania creates maps and has done incredible stuff like creating illustrations to go on the sides of planes/buildings etc. You can read all about ‘em on this page here.

The doors are open until Friday.

It costs £495, or you can pay in 5 chunks of £99.

(If money is super tight, there are assisted places available for those in financial difficulty. You can click here to contact our Good Ship Alice TODAY for an application form and get it filled in…immediately if you’d like to join in with this live round.)

Doors close on Friday 14th March.

We begin on Monday the 17th March :) I’d love to see you in there.

If you’re already in, I’ll see you there again! You get lifetime access so you can join these live calls for this and all future live rounds, and submit your questions etc.

And - said with love - I’d love for you to get your own bloody jobs! 🤣

x Katie

p.s. If you do join, let me know in the comments so I can do a little air punch and grab a passer-by by the face and squeal “THEY’RE IN! THEY’RE GOING TO START GETTING THEIR OWN JOBS NOW. YESSS!”

Salty (illustrated by fellow Good Ship Illustration captain Helen Stephens of Pencil Pals) flyin’ along on his business car. Go, Salty, goooo!