5 Illustration Jobs You Should Know

As an illustrator, you can transform a blank page, capturing fleeting moments in ink or in paint. To pursue this creative career, you’ll need to take your artistic and technical skills and build a strong portfolio of original designs and artwork. Once you’re ready to show off your artistic chops, check out our list of the top five illustration jobs, below.

1. Book Illustrator — Whether you’re illustrating serious novels, engrossing comic books, or lighthearted children’s stories, being a book illustrator requires strong communication skills and a thorough understanding of literature. You’ll need to partner with writers to turn their words into images, making their vision a reality.

2. Architectural Illustrator — If you love buildings and design and can draw with precision and accuracy, you’re the perfect candidate for architectural illustration. You’ll partner with architects to bring their ideas to life, creating something concrete rather than conceptual to show to investors and developers.

3. Fashion Illustrator — What’s better than clothes and fashion? How about drawing all those fabulous styles to begin with? As a fashion illustrator, you can work for a fashion designer, helping them put their ideas on paper, and the deciding on the best cuts, patterns, and colors for production.

4. Medical Illustrator — You aren’t just an artistic thinker; you also know your biology and anatomy. In medical illustration, you combine art and science to create visual representations for medical books, used by students and physicians alike. With care and attention to detail, you magnify and dissect images that would otherwise be impossible to view and understand.

5. Cartoonist — Do your drawings have a tendency to come to life and take on personalities of their own? If so, you might consider becoming a cartoonist. Whether you get your own daily strip in the local paper, try freelancing for the New Yorker, or parlay your talents into video game illustration, you’ll never be bored.