Get real. If you have visions of hanging out in your loft, splattering paint on some enormous abstract canvas, congratulations -- you have a cool hobby. The Princeton Review profile of artist careers reports that "as a purely self-expressing career, 90 percent of artists make under $1,000 per year on their art." If you expect to make a living as an artist, brand this into your brain: Seventy-five percent of the art available in the United States is produced by the advertising industry. Much of the rest appears on Web sites. And almost all is computer-generated art produced by people with excellent freehand drawing skills enhanced by the computer. You must make good friends with Adobe Illustrator, Photoshop, Pagemaker, and QuarkXPress. The good news is that demand for computer artists is growing. More good news: In production art, degrees don't count; your portfolio does. Send it to art directors at ad agencies or the new design/marketing agencies -- and don't forget the small houses. Oh, one more sad truth: Only a third of people who start a career in graphic arts last five years. About.com's graphic design portal graphicdesign.about.com . American Institute of Graphic Arts: http://www.aiga.org . Graphic Artists Guild: www.gag.org . ACM SigGraph: www.siggraph.org . World Wide Web Artists' Consortium: www.wwwac.org . Long list of artist careers: www.wallkill.k12.nj.us/finearts/artcareers.html .
http://www.martynemko.com/articles/cool-careers-excerpt_id1504
