Tell us a little about your background and how you came to work as a professional illustrator?
I’ve been working as a professional illustrator for almost 2 years now. I went to school at the University of Souther California and studied Fine Art and then after three years I decided to go to a more specialized school and attended the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. At Art Center I relearned a lot of basic drawing and painting techniques and met a lot of extremely talented teachers and fellow students that made a big impact on my early development.

Originally, I planned on studying entertainment design and background painting. I think a little over halfway through my 4 years at art school, I decided on taking the riskier route of freelance illustration. I got my first big break with Steven Heller at the New York Times Book Review who hired me on a regular basis. I worked for him for a while, ended up doing the cover of the Book Review…all of which gained me some visibility with other publications and helped me get rid of a lot of my student work that was in my portfolio at the time. It was also important for me to gain that experience working professionally just because I never really learned much about “concept” or problem solving in school.

What are your reasons for keeping a blog? Has it created any new opportunities as an artist?
Initially, I kept a blog just because it was an easy way to show current projects as well as some process sketches and ideas that probably would never be seen by anyone other than the Art Director or Editors. I started the blog with a couple of other friends that I went to school with and I think it was nice to share the responsibility of posting work. The blog has been really great in getting our names out there….we have all benefited some way or another from having it. I’m actually in the process of redesigning a new one that will have some sort of store attached to it.

How did you develop your unique style and way of working?
I took a printmaking class when I was in school and really enjoyed working with silkscreen printing. Before that I would often paint and render everything in acrylics, but with silkscreen there was really something nice about being limited in the amount of colors you could use and how line work was incorporated. It’s nice to have a method that’s fairly quick so I have more time to spend on the ideas. I use to spend a lot of time looking at vintage children’s books and other illustrations from the turn of the century that were really limited in printing capabilities. Recently, I’ve really been trying to branch out and explore other influences as to not get easily branded as the “guy who does old-looking illustrations”

Could you take us through your design process from the point you are told the brief to presenting the final work?
Usually, I get the brief via email and I try to take time to read it as quickly as I can. If time permits I try to sleep on the problem and approach it with fresh eyes. Sometimes I get an idea instantly and know exactly how I am going to approach the piece. But usually I have no clue and my mind is filled with generic, cliché ideas. It usually takes me quite a bit of time to work through my useless doodles and to come up with something fresh and exciting for both the client and myself. I try to send off a couple of sketches (or more if I really can’t decide). Once the sketch is approved I’m almost home free. I sit down and redraw a tighter drawing, color on the computer, fiddle with last minute decisions and then send it off. I should say it’s really not as easy as I’m making it sound. In between all those stages is usually time for me to procrastinate, wallow in self-doubt, research things I can’t draw out of my head, erase and redraw constantly.

I primarily use Adobe Photoshop. Even when I’m working on my analog silkscreens I try to work the layers out on the computer first before making my film work. I like using the Wacom table 6×8″ (I think that’s the size) as well as the mouse. Sometimes I whip out Illustrator for cleaner vector based stuff. I like to use really any sort of pens, pencils that are lying around my studio.

How much do you get paid for a typical illustration, how do you work out a price to tell clients?
I remember asking my teachers in school this same question and everyone told me to refer to the Graphic Artists Guild Handbook: Pricing & Ethical Guidelines. Really pricing depends so much on what type of job it is. For instance certain magazines might have a higher circulation which will tend to pay better than a magazine that has a very small circulation. Newspapers and books are also in a different category…and then there’s this whole OTHER category of advertising illustration and motion graphics. My best advice is to buy the book and ask friends that have done a similar type of job for an idea of what to charge.

What would you like to be doing the whole time if money was not an issue?
I would probably like to work on really large scale pieces and maybe explore different types of ways my work could translate into motion or products.

the above is a Quicktime movie made by Josh, to view it in Internet Explorer hit the enter key.  You will need the latest version of Quicktime browser plugin to play it. 

What single piece of advice would you give to an aspiring illustrator?
Know what you’re good at.

Thank you Josh for agreeing to be interviewed. To see more of Josh’s work check out his website.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 15th, 2007 at 8:27 pm and is filed under Interviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.