Is there enough work for illustrators? The truth about illustration jobs in 2025 - a rising tide floats all boats 🚢🚢🚢

Doors to the Business Course (for illustrators!) are open TONIGHT! We're going to be having a chat over on Instagram and you're more than welcome to bring your business of illustration questions along. Be lovely to see you there. We're @thegoodshipillustration over on Insta.

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This week, we’re diving into the live illustration industry. How much work is actually out there, how to get it, and whether it’s the right fit for you.

We grilled our Katie and found asked her...

• Is there really loads of work for illustrators, or has it been a slow year?
• What’s this new Illustrator Jobs Board all about? (Live illustration gigs, client budgets, and real-life illustration job opportunities.)
• What actually happens in a live illustration session?
• How much do clients pay for live scribing, and how can you charge more?

If you’ve wondered about going into live illustration - or just want to see what clients are paying - this episode's for you!

p.s. If you’re curious about Katie’s Live Illustration Jobs Board, you can find it over on Substack here.

Timestamps:

00:25 The big debate: good year / bad year
 01:50 Why 2024 was overwhelming
 03:15 The Jobs Board experiment
 04:40 What kinds of jobs are coming in?
 06:00 UK vs. international jobs (and why some illustrators have upped their rates after seeing the budgets).
 07:15 What actually happens at a live illustration gig? Is it really 8 hours of solid drawing?
 08:30 What do clients want from a live illustrator?
09:40 The most requested topics: AI, data, and… scrubbing data with a sponge?
11:00 How much do clients pay for live illustration?
12:15 The tech side: Do you need to be a tech whiz to do this work?
13:30 Live illustration vs. fashion illustration gigs
14:45 The Jobs Board results so far
15:30 Should you try live illustration? The skills overlap with mapping, editorial, and even school visits
16:50 Katie’s Live Illustration Course is coming soon! (If this episode got you excited, stay tuned 🤓).

If you like the sound of the live illustration course, you can register your interest here.

See you next time! 

Byeee 🚢💨

Come and say hello!

✏️ @thegoodshipillustration
🌏 www.thegoodshipillustration.com

p.s. We love answering your illustration questions. Click here to submit your question for The Good Ship Illustration Podcast 🎙

Transcript

live illustration Q&A jobs board
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[00:00:00] So following up from the controversial week where Katie and I had a clash of opinions, where she said, there's loads of work for illustrators. And I said, there's not, it's been a really quiet year. Lots of people are really cheesed off. So Katie has come up with this genius idea of sharing Where the work is with us and it's in like well, it's in her specialism.

Do you want to talk about it? Yeah, I mean, so yeah, that's the thing last year I made a post saying there's loads of work for illustrators If you're not getting any work just tweak these three things And then I got a few I got two comments of people being [00:01:00] like you're wrong Um, which I completely, it's valid, valid.

They've had a bad year. A lot of people had a bad year last year. I have had the weird problem of still having more work than I can do. And I talked about how in 2024, I'd really tried scaling almost like an agency model, having a big team, three salaried employees, 24 illustrators. And it was very fun, lots of jobs, but really, really, really stressful, overwhelming, frazzled myself.

I didn't properly burn out, but I was like, if I hadn't stopped when I did, I probably would have fully burnt out. But anyway, all You had a one year old child at the time, and you were doing all your jobs as well, and running this. Yeah, it was too, too many things, too many things. It was silly. And good ship.

This is what happens when you get excited. Just do too much. But, um, In January this year, 2025, so like last month, there was a week on Instagram where I'd give, I'd been posting on stories like, Oh, this job's coming. It's in Edinburgh. Is anybody a live illustrator? And I think I'd given away three jobs that week and I just, uh, put on Instagram, sort of jokerly on a poll, like, should I start a jobs board?[00:02:00] 

Um, and it was a hundred percent yes, like 200 people responded, yes, yes, yes, yes. And I was like, Hmm. So I was sipping my Lemsip cause it is the season of codes. And then I just thought, I'm going to try doing the jobs board thing. Cause I can figure out a way to share the work, share the job without giving the clients details away, cause they would, they don't want to be bombarded with loads of illustrators directly.

Maybe. Yeah. But if they've got the results in a spreadsheet, that's going to be really nice for them. And if the illustrators get the opportunity to apply for jobs that I can't do. And then if I'm nothing to do with it, it's literally like, if the client contacts you, it's your job. So anyway, that was the idea.

And then So I just made it the paid bit on my substack and since then, it's been like a job every other day, a job a day sometimes, um, and people have been getting jobs off it. I got my first, I put a call out, I was like, if you've got a job off the jobs board, let me know. Um, and then some people have just joined to say that they like, they like seeing the budgets that are available.

as well. Price to see what people are charging, what people are paying. [00:03:00] Yeah, because on my, when people get in touch, I ask them what's your budget. Some people don't tell me, but actually very rare now, but the, it's either under 2000 pounds or between two to 5000 pounds, five to 10 or over 10. So they just pick, they tick a box.

Yeah, they tick a box. Exactly. And then, and sometimes they've got a very specific budget. There was one where another illustrator dropped out and they were like, we've got 900 pounds for this job. So I was just like, okay, that's good. Yeah. Um, so yeah. And not all of them are live scribing. Some of them are, how do you, how would you describe them?

Yes. One was like to visualize the results of a survey. So it's data visualization. Yeah. Done in your own time. Really a kind of graphic illustration combo job. Yeah. Oh, there was one for an Australian university. They wanted to like sum up something and print it out big. Yeah. So, and other live illustration jobs in person or online?

Mostly in person. Yeah. Cause the online ones are the ones that I still want to do. So I keep them. As you should. Except there's an Australian one. I was like, I can't do that time zone. So the Australian [00:04:00] online one went on the board. Um, And a lot of them are mostly the, the top reason for people joining and then leaving has been like, cause there's loads of UK jobs, but I'm like, I don't know where they're going to come from.

I'm not psychic, but I'm in the UK. So the most of UK, but it's been fun. And some people have said that seeing the, just seeing the budgets without even joining the jobs board has made them up their rates. That's fantastic. Which was kind of a side effect that I'm really, really. Happy about, because when one person starts charging properly, everybody can, and it means, yeah, it helps everybody out.

Helps every a rising tide floats, all boats. Yes. It's so good. I just love watching it. And then I start thinking. Well, maybe I'll be a live illustrator. I could do some murals or any of the non live things, because I always think live scribing sounds scary, so in my head, that's you drawing solidly for eight hours like a maniac.

I mean, how much drawing? What happens? How does it work? I mean, sometimes it is a bit like that. If it's a big, long conference and it's got five sessions [00:05:00] over the day it'll be like two hours of drawing and then a little coffee break and then an hour of drawing and Then a lunch break and then two hours of drawing and then a coffee break and then an hour of drawing So it is really full on and what's the outcome say of two hours drawing?

Is it an animation? Yes, we get this still the drawing so it's like a big picture. And you're making those on your iPad? Yeah, do not an iPad. And then the, if you're working in Procreate, it creates a time lapse anyway. So that's done your animation. They can see all your bits, even the ones that went wrong and you run them out.

So you do have to tell them like it's chronological. So if you want changes, they just get plopped on the end and I can edit it, but it's a pain in the bum. So they've got to pay for that. But yeah. Is editing really. Difficult at the end. Do you need a high level of tech skill to do that? I would say you do.

It is a pain. It's such a pain. Especially when they want loads of changes. If they want you to edit the time lapse. Yeah. If they're like, oh, we need that to actually appear at the start. And I'm just like, no. Why? And I've experimented with like hiring an editor in the past. Yeah. but communicating to [00:06:00] them how and giving them all the bits they need and that's just not working out.

Yeah. So you need a certain amount of tech knowledge yourself to be able to do this. Yeah. But then again, some, a lot of clients just want it on paper, like all the pen and paper and paints on a board. And I don't like doing that because I always think it's definitely going to go in the bin at the end.

Yeah. So would they be doing it on a flip chart or something? What would they be drawing it on? Well, that's the thing. It's a lot of the time clients want it on foam board, which is plastic and you can recycle foam board if it's clean and it's not clean because you've painted all over it. So that's tricky, but you can get like

a cardboard one that's more eco friendly, but even then I'm like, it's just such a waste and silly. Yeah. And they can't do anything with it afterwards. If you've done it on your iPad, they can use, or they can ask you for the rights to use those drawings. Yeah, exactly. And that's why I'm always saying, I'm like, you can be sending it, you can be posting it on LinkedIn before people have even left the room.

Exactly. So this sort of paper or stuff on phone boards is, that's in person, old school, standing there conference [00:07:00] drawing. in your human, as you say, in your meat suit. Yeah, in the room. Yeah. And then the thing, when it's digital, you're in the room with the iPad, but part of me is like, I could be at home.

Why have you got me here? But that's the tech bit, is the broadcasting from your iPad. Do, does the client deal with that setup or do you have to come with a lot of knowledge? That's a good question. Somebody asked this the other day, they were like, if I'm not doing any of the tech, then do I charge less?

And I was like, no, the client usually has an audio visual and AV team to sort all that. So all you have to do is log in. You might have to do a tech check before the event, which is fine, but they'll be like, oh yeah, we're going to patch you in at this time and like, here's your special link and the mic, everyone's mic'd up so you get like a good audio channel.

Is it stressful? Do you do bad drawings because you're nervous? Or did you, to begin with? Yeah, when I was starting out, I was really bad. I think everyone starts out really bad and you don't realize how bad you were until afterwards. That's the same for all illustrators in every, [00:08:00] every area of illustration, isn't it?

Definitely for me. You look at your early work and you cry. Yeah, it's like an apprenticeship, isn't it? And are there any things that you have to draw again and again and again? So do you have like, A whole catalog of how you would draw a, a phone or, yeah. What are your kind of top things that you draw again and again and again?

It used to be a virus image. 'cause covid. Oh yeah. Do loads and loads of them. Oh. Now it's AI things. Oh, so like AI symbols, AI robots. That's really hard to simplify, isn't it? Yeah, it is. This is like editorial illustration on steroids. Data. People talk about data all the time. How do you draw data today? How do you draw data?

I usually do like lots of zeros and ones. And if it's about capturing data, I'll have somebody with a net in the air capturing the data. Or like if it's about clean data, like somebody scrubbing the data with a little Soapy sponge. You just get to be stupid really. Well that's why they want you because this is kind of boring and they want somebody with a brain like yours to draw a sponge because [00:09:00] who wants to read about cleaning data and getting good data sources.

It's fascinating how important it has become to conferences as a must have add on to keep people engaged. I mean, what did they do before you had live scribing? I don't know. I'm honestly, my favorite conferences are when they've gone all out and they've got a sign language, like a BSL person signing and live closed captions and a live illustrator.

I'm just like, that is the coolest ever because it's so accessible. Everybody can enjoy it. And it means you're not bored if you're there. Well, and if you don't know which kind of clients Katie's done before, they are seriously impressive. Starting at the top with Apple, Adobe. Google, Meta. I had a nice stint at the end of last year where it was the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Shakespeare Globe Theatre.

Within like a week I was like, oh, I'm so cultured. British Library? British Library, yeah. Bloomsbury? Yeah, Bloomsbury. This is good, you've got good Brainstorming all of Penguin? [00:10:00] Penguin Random House, yeah. It's funny because he, I think, I think I've got desensitized now because I used to make a list of like, who do I want to work with?

Who's my dream client? Is there one left or have you done all of the ones on your dream list? The one elusive client was Adobe. Yeah. And then they got in touch and they booked me twice in one week. And I was like, Oh, what am I going to do now? Like I just retire. I've got nothing to aim for. Proof that manifesting works.

And if all this is confusing, at some point, Katie's going to do a live illustration course. I'm working on it. I'm working on it now. Have you already started? It's behind the scenes. Yes. I made a big list of what's going to go in it. Um, yeah. Oh, I can't wait. I think I'm going to do it as well. You should.

Yeah. It's fun. Mapping's a bit like it. It's that kind of graphic visual communication meetup of all those things. And mapping is, is a language anyway. Yeah, it's kind of adjacent to live illustrations. I feel like it has a lot of overlap with mine as well, because on a school visit I draw live, I draw what the children shout out.

I feel like it has an overlap [00:11:00] with me a little bit too. You could do a bit about drawing in front of children, workshops maybe, that kind of live illustration. Oh, of course, yeah. There's the live illustration as well, that sometimes people get in touch with me by mistake for, which is, drawing fancy ladies in clothes and shops.

So like sometimes posh things like Prada and Gucci will hire a live illustrator to draw people at an opening night. So it's like live portraits. Oh like caricatures. Kind of, but they're more like fashion illustrations. Okay. So everybody gets drawn all long and slinky and stylish and people email me about that.

I'm like, have you seen my work? It's not that. And I've tried, I tried to do it once, never again. And would you put those on the job board? If somebody asked me about it, I would, but I think people are really switched on. You're very clear about what your work is on your website. So I imagine that filters out people who are completely irrelevant.

Yeah, definitely. I did want to get somebody in touch recently about a birthday party. And I was like, Hmm, is there a keynote speaker at the birthday party? [00:12:00] And they were like, My client really wants a live illustrator and I was like, no, but really look at my work. If there is a key, if this is an unusual birthday party and there's a keynote speaker, fine.

I can draw the speech. Was this Tanya? Because Tanya's birthday, she's having a party soon. I'm imagining there might be a keynote speaker. My party organizer is such a twit. And eventually they back down and they're like, okay, yeah, I think you're right. I was like, yeah, no, thank you. Goodbye. Because there's that other one, they used to ask for it a lot.

When I was in Hong Kong, but I just hadn't got the nerves to do it. They'd have a big Christmas party for one of those huge corporates. And then they would say, uh, can you come along and draw on these huge boards? Like draw what? I didn't really know. Oh my God. Now that's absolutely terrifying. I couldn't do that.

I've never been able to draw while people are watching me. So I may be a held back a little bit. You do at art club now though, Tanya? Oh yeah. I did draw a bit at art club. Yeah, but it was, Oh, Once I was invited, when I worked for the South China Morning Post, I went for the Christmas party. And so then we were at this big table with all the people I'd worked for [00:13:00] at a distance.

I only knew a few of them, but the main editor was this really glamorous Australian woman. And they said to me, right, as the illustrator, I want you to draw Do a cartoon of everyone at the table. I was like, do you want me to lose my job? And if I have to draw the glamorous editor, she's really glamorous, and I'm only going to end up insulting her with my bad drawing.

It was so cringey. I mean, that was a trauma moment. It's a separate skill in itself, isn't it? There are those people who go to parties and draw people. I don't know how they do it. It's incredible. I think, yeah, it must be. If you just do that one thing and you're good at it, I bet you get comfortable in it, but jack of all trades, no.

I think that's part of the thing with illustration, like finding that bit of illustration that you're good at and honing in on it and doing it, because live illustration is definitely not for everyone, but people who can do it. It's a brilliant bit to be in. And if you're looking for Katie's jobs board, it's on her, the paid section of her sub stack.

I think if you Google Katie Draws jobs board pops up. And it's only 7 a month, which if it's a [00:14:00] 2, 000 job, it's well worth it. That's what I was thinking, you get one job off it, boom, it's paid for like. Or even if you don't get a job off it, but you see what everybody's willing to pay, that's really useful in itself.

Yeah, definitely. Up your rates. Yeah. A lady called, a nice lady called Cassandra said she'd upped her day rate by hundreds. Brilliant. Brilliant. Go Cassandra, go. More Cassandras. But yeah, have fun. Speak to you later. Bye.