Tips on Becoming an Illustrator in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Oklahoma City is Oklahoma's largest city, home to nearly 600,000 urban residents and more than sixty thousand local companies.  Visual artists in Oklahoma City enjoy a continuous assortment of job opportunities in the field of commercial graphic design, especially commercial illustration.

Oklahoma City Schools and Training Programs for Illustrators

Colleges, Universities and innumerable Oklahoma City art schools offer classes and professional degrees in commercial illustration.  Aspiring illustrators enrolled at local colleges often study digital graphics and photography in addition to traditional visual arts.  Oklahoma City colleges of fine arts include Oklahoma City University, Vatterott College and Oklahoma Technology Institute.

As an alternative approach, many Oklahoma City artists choose online educational programs.  Accredited online colleges with graphic design programs include Stratford Career Institute, Post University, Full Sail University, University of Phoenix, DeVry, The Art Institutes and ITT Tech.  Competitive online schools often provide convenient supplemental local campuses.  University of Phoenix, DeVry and ITT Tech all maintain campuses in Oklahoma City. 
 
Working as an Illustrator in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma

Many Oklahoma City illustrators work for local graphic design firms like Banks Graphics, Taben Graphics, PG-13 Graphics and Design, Gridiron Graphics and Graphic Screen Designs, to name a few.  Local illustrators with a streetwise flair might connect with neighborhood tattoo shops like Undisputed Tattoo, Hudson Tattoo, Reality Tattoo, Bricktown Tattoos or Tornado Tattoo. 

Illustrators with an eye for high tech precision might join Oklahoma City engineering firms such as R.H. Osborne, Russell Engineering, Todd Engineering, Spear-McCaleb and Cobb Engineering, among others.  Some local illustrators draw anatomical art for Oklahoma City-based medical illustration companies like Sadistic Illustration, Marcus Eakers, Okie Ink, David Lee Anderson or Convenient Medical. 

According to data collected by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average salary for a professional illustrator employed full time in Oklahoma City is about $33,280 per year, with a reported mean hourly rate of around $16.00.  This data does not reflect the incomes of part time illustrators or local freelance professionals.

Skills of a Professional Illustrator

Professional illustrators are precise visual artists who tend to demonstrate tremendous stylistic versatility.  Illustrators design flyers, banners, posters, labels, logos, packaging, book covers and more.  They also do screen printing, engraving, story boarding, character development and other visual tasks like photography, lighting and 3D-modeling design.  Most professional illustrators are fully proficient with digital illustration design software packages such as Arts-Letters, Draw It, Harvard Draw, Sketch Up and Autodesk Sketchbook, among dozens more.