For a lot of illustrators, the dream seems to be one thing like this: land an agent, safe common editorial commissions, work with big-name manufacturers, and watch the Instagram likes roll in. However what if you happen to’re not touchdown these jobs? What in case your inbox stays stubbornly quiet whereas everybody else appears to be asserting their newest collaboration with Nike or The New Yorker?
Jacqueline Colley
has spent 10 years proving there’s one other means. The London-based illustrator, identified for her maximalist, joyful paintings, has constructed a sustainable profession that does not depend on chasing commissions.
“I’ve made my dwelling for a very long time by creating illustrated merchandise and promoting them on to individuals at market stalls or on-line, and likewise by way of wholesaling to small impartial retailers and galleries,” she explains. It is a mannequin that is allowed her to achieve a major milestone. Final yr, she employed somebody to assist pack orders twice every week, a luxurious many freelancers solely dream of.
From textile designer to market dealer
Jacqueline admits, although, that her path has not all the time rigorously plotted. Her profession in illustration started whereas she was “slowly leaving” a profession in trend textile design. She began by freelancing part-time for previous employers, whereas promoting prints and merchandise at market stalls on the facet. “Quickly I used to be doing markets as soon as a month and promoting a good bit.”
The turning level got here when she joined a programme run by her previous college, UAL, that takes alumni to commerce reveals. “It was there that I received my first wholesale orders for playing cards and tea towels, and Swoon Editions ordered one among my material designs to upholster a midcentury chair for his or her vary. I started to understand I might make a dwelling designing and promoting issues I really like, slightly than working in-house for a model.”
Her strategy advanced step by step. She discovered what offered and what did not. She experimented with new media comparable to Risograph and silk-screen printing. And he or she discovered that working with small impartial retailers was a pure match. “I did pursue huge manufacturers like Anthropologie, however realised that led to a variety of admin work, whereas indie retailers are small companies like mine. It is very human; buying and selling in tangible and tactile items.”
A maximalist strategy to course of
Jacqueline describes her fashion as “female, maximalist and nostalgic”. As a baby of the Nineteen Eighties, her work carries what she calls “borrowed nostalgia” for American popular culture. “The suburbs of Edward Scissorhands or the streets of NYC in Ghostbusters have been acquainted to me, and my work is commonly its happiest when these popular culture references are pulled from the display screen and drawn into my illustrations.”
Her course of is methodical. “I am all about layers of course of, and there is no skipping a layer, as then I will not be proud of the end result,” she explains. She begins with pencil thumbnails, works as much as bigger sketches, then makes use of a lightbox with Caran d’ache colouring pencils and Tombow felt suggestions so as to add color. “I then scan on this colored drawing and relying on the end result, I work on the pc.”
For digital printing, she usually compiles hand drawings in Photoshop to keep up that handmade high quality. For spot color work like Risograph or silk display screen, she redraws all the things digitally, creating separate color layers. “I am cautious to not ‘overcorrect’ with the pc, which is really easy to do and dangers erasing the appeal of the hand-drawn,” she stresses.
The a number of earnings stream technique
In 2026, what makes Jacqueline’s profession work is not any single income supply, however the mixture of all of them. Her on-line store and wholesale enterprise type the spine, however she additionally takes on commissions, teaches, and licenses designs.
The panorama is not with out challenges. Her Etsy orders are down 25% in comparison with final yr, which she attributes partly to AI-generated paintings flooding the market and partly to Trump’s tariffs affecting US prospects. Brexit continues to influence European gross sales. However orders by way of Faire, a wholesale platform she joined in 2023, are up 74%, serving to her discover new stockists close to and much.
“In the end, you simply want to search out just a few earnings streams that be just right for you as an illustrator,” she says. “Which may embrace educating, designing gifs, editorial, or perhaps a part-time job to take the stress down. When you maintain watering these totally different pots, they may bloom and wilt at totally different occasions. However general, they may tide you over and maintain you creating, which is all we actually need to be doing.”
It is not over
At a time when many within the trade are declaring that “illustration is over” and worrying about AI changing artistic work, Jacqueline affords a unique perspective. She lives in “the world of the tangible, sending individuals snail-mail packages with cute stickers on, full of Risograph prints which have the tactile contact.”
And so her recommendation for constructing a sustainable profession boils all the way down to this. “I feel there’s a spot for everybody drilling down and discovering your area of interest. Discovering a technique to flip your extracurricular hobbies into an outlet to your illustration is commonly the easiest way ahead.”
“I feel it is about realising that almost all illustration work is not glitzy and glamorous,” she provides. “Like perhaps your favorite climbing wall might do with a cool mural, and you must pitch that concept. It is about pitching to your local people or exhibiting up at a craft honest each month, and studying from the suggestions of actual purchasers who may not be artwork administrators at cool magazines however know their viewers and what they want.” As a result of on the finish of the day, as Jacqueline places it: “We’re designers fixing issues with drawings.”
Whether or not you are simply beginning out or 10 years in and nonetheless ready for that huge break, Jacqueline’s profession affords a roadmap that does not depend upon anybody else providing you with permission to succeed. Discover what works for you, construct a number of earnings streams, and maintain making the work you’re keen on. The remainder will comply with.
