How to Become an Illustrator in Tucson, Arizona

These days, illustration professionals in the city of Tucson, Arizona find fairly regular local employment at many of the city's 70,000 commercial businesses.  Freelance illustrators create compelling, hand-crafted artwork often used for corporate logos, promotional matter, animated characterizations, internet display and precise technical diagrams, among other things.  Media-oriented Tucson companies maintain a vigorous ongoing demand for skilled, talented professionals in this intensely specialized field of visual arts.

Tucson Schools and Training Programs for Illustrators

Several Tucson, Arizona Universities and colleges, as well as innumerable independent art schools, offer technical training programs for aspiring illustrators.  Accredited Tucson graphic design colleges include Tucson Design College, Pima Community College, Chaparral College and University of Arizona at Tucson.

As a viable alternative, some Tucson artists prefer private instruction, while others are enrolling at accredited online schools like Full Sail University, Stratford Career Institute, University of Phoenix, The Art Institutes, ITT Tech, DeVry and many others.  Many online art colleges additionally provide convenient local facilities.  University of Phoenix, ITT Tech and The Art Institutes all have campuses in Tucson. 

Working as an Illustrator in Tucson, Arizona

Among the teeming masses of Tucson companies recruiting freelance illustrators are ad agencies, website consultants, music producers, photo studios and real estate firms.  Some local illustration experts join Tucson engineering firms like CFW-Engineering, GLHN-Engineering, Innovative-Illustrations, Land-Engineering and Softech-Engineering, for instance.  Other Tucson illustrators work at local graphic design firms such as AB-Graphic-Design, CP-Graphics, Edge-Graphic-Design, Design-&-Graphics and Paul-Mirocha, among others.

According to data recently obtained by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, full time illustrators employed at businesses in the city of Tucson, Arizona claim to earn an average of about $44,640 per year, with a reported mean hourly rate of around $21.45.  Corporate employers in Tucson support roughly forty full time illustrators, not including part timers and local freelance artists.  Thing is, most professional illustrators are part timers and local freelance artists.

Skills of a Professional Illustrator

Aside from patience, passion and insane attention to detail, illustration requires certain technical capabilities.  These include mainly drawing in various styles, coloring expertise and complete proficiency with digital illustration design software programs.  Popular varieties include Adobe Photoshop, iDraw, Corel-Draw, Macromedia Freehand, Quark-Xpress and Intaglio, to name a mere fraction of the many available products.  Professional illustrators are entirely familiar with all visual media forms, as well as with traditional printing techniques such as etching and engraving.