Do you want in on the fascinating world of editorial illustration? Do you flick through your favorite magazine and see the art that accompanies each article and wonder how that artist got the gig? Let art agent Lilla show you how!
Make Art That Sells co-founder and teacher, Lilla Rogers, was a professional illustrator in NYC before she set up her own hugely successful art agency, so it’s no surprise that she has tons of wisdom and insight to share with anyone interested in the editorial market. She taught her brand NEW course, Editorial Live: Illustrating for Magazines and More, for the first time in spring 2019, and it was so popular (it sold out before it was ever officially launched!) that we’ve scheduled it again this month. Book your spot here!
What’s editorial? Broadly, it means anything having to do with text (words). For example, it could be something like a magazine article, a newspaper article, a blog, a news site like the Guardian or the New York Times, or a book cover or interior.
Editorial work by art agent, Make Art That Sells co-founder and teacher, Lilla Rogers. She has tons of insight to share from her decades in the business.
The editorial market is a thrilling one – it’s endlessly interesting and perhaps the most edgy art market around – plus it’s enormously lucrative. Demand for editorial art has never been higher: just look at the newsstands groaning with new publications, plus the proliferation of websites that all need your beautiful art too!
Lilla’s Editorial Live course takes you all the way from creating a concept to rough to finish, exactly as the art director will when you land your dream gig, but she makes it playful and fun too, because people buy your joy.
Right at the start of class, you’ll get to do an insightful warm up game that will get you thinking about how you can illustrate ideas rather than things. Sometimes in your editorial career you’ll be asked just to draw objects, but sometimes it will be more conceptual. Lilla says: “I wish someone had taught me these things when I was starting out in illustration!” We’ll be giving away your own downloadable copy of the game in next week’s newsletter/blog, so don’t miss out!
Then at the end of Week 1 you’ll get your first assignment: just to have fun and illustrate a bunch of different words and ideas. You don’t know which of these you’ll be using in your finished assignment, so you can stay loose and play and maybe enjoy trying out different styles or media.
In Week 2, Lilla will do the big reveal and you’ll get to find out what text you’re going to be illustrating! This is when you’ll come up with your rough, before going to finish in Week 3. In the first assignment, you will already have created some images ready to use in your rough, so you’ll already have done a good portion of the work. Breaking everything down into tiny steps like this makes the work so much more doable and less overwhelming.
In Week 3, you’ll go to finish and produce a gorgeous piece of art for your portfolio. More and more editorial work is about the moving image, so you’ll also get bonus content on how to animate your work, with the option of submitting it as an animated gif if you’d like to.
We absolutely love to show off the incredible work that students do in class, so we thought it would be fun to show you some of the work that our students came up with last time. Want to learn all about the cool editorial market and make some beautiful art to launch or boost your editorial illustration career? Click here to book your place now, before this course sells out again, just like it did in May 2019!
Concept and finish by Erica Root. When Lilla saw this in class, it really caught her eye, and was one of the pieces that eventually led to Erica being represented by Lilla Rogers Studio.
Are you ready for the show from class? Do you want to see the black-and-white roughs our students sketched out in Week 2 of class, and how they compared to the finished color illustrations they produced in Week 3? Everyone loves a before and after, right? Read on…..
Cynthia Jacquette
The text which students were asked to illustrate in the Editorial class in May 2019 was all about the morning routines of successful women.
In the warm up game, students just had fun doodling and sketching things to do with the idea of “morning”. Then in the first assignment in Week 1, they drew things based on a list of prompts that Lilla gave them, some of which were to do with morning routines, and some of which were red herrings designed to throw them off the scent, so they wouldn’t go to finish too soon. Remember, at this stage they didn’t know what they would eventually be illustrating.
In Week 2, the students found out what they would be illustrating and created their first black-and-white roughs, just as they would in a real job. Lilla talked about the roughs in the weekly live session, and they also got a download with tips for thinking about roughs before they went to finish. You’ll see that some of the roughs here are very similar to the finished illustrations, while others have changes.
Lilla shares plenty of tips and a download about different layout styles, along with more downloads on everything from what to put on your site to get work to how to find clients.
Jen Burbridge
Jojo Clinch
Jade Orlando
Isn’t it fascinating to see how everyone approached the same subject and text so differently? Some are scenes, while others, like this one below, are more conceptual.
Kate Kronreif
We hope that you enjoyed the show from class! In the full course, Lilla will be sharing some of her own illustration work from her time as an editorial illustrator, including the finished original artwork, and how it looked in print: what an incredible opportunity to learn from someone with decades in the industry!
Editorial Live: Illustrating for Magazines and More starts in just a few weeks, on Monday, October 28th: book your spot now before the class sells out again, and find out how you can get great editorial gigs!
Sign up now to find out how you can get great gigs like these by artists Clairice Gifford and Flora Waycott, both represented by Lilla Rogers Studio.
Lots of love
The Make Art That Sells team xxx
P.S. Art agent Lilla is appearing in a LIVE Q&A for Uppercase Circle at 2 pm ET on Thursday, October 17th, where she’ll be talking about her upcoming courses, working with art agents, licensing and more. The live event is open to all – RSVP here.
