What You Need to Know to Be an Illustrator in Boston, Massachusetts

The city of Boston, Massachusetts features an Internationally famed fine arts culture.  With a thriving commercial economy of many thousand companies, Boston is bursting with opportunities for local visual artists, especially those who show a special talent for innovative illustrative design.

Boston Schools and Training Programs for Illustrators

Boston, Massachusetts features a wealth of graphic design colleges and independent art studios that offer private lessons, workshops, technical training and degree programs in illustration design.  Boston art students attending local colleges typically major in visual arts and mass media.  Boston area colleges with fine arts divisions include Boston University, Boston Arts Academy, School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Butera School of Art and Massachusetts College of Art in Boston.  Easily accessible from Boston is the American Career Institute, Lesley University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University in Cambridge.

Alternatively, many Boston artists are acquiring graphic design and illustration skills online.  Accredited online visual arts colleges include the Academy of Art University, Post University, Full Sail University, Stratford Career Institute, University of Phoenix, The Art Institutes, DeVry and ITT Tech.  In most areas, online art colleges maintain physical campus locations.  University of Phoenix has campuses in Braintree and Westborough.  ITT Tech has facilities in Wilmington and Norwood.  The Art Institute has a campus in Brookline.  All these towns are less than an hour's commute from Boston. 
 
Working as an Illustrator in Boston, Massachusetts

Boston businesses in need of professional illustrators include advertisers, movie producers, architects, real estate developers and news syndicates.  Some Boston artists illustrate commercial designs for local graphic design firms like Byn-Graphics, Bias-Design, Tim-Foley-Studios, Paul-Weiner-Illustration and Pixel-Cure-Media, for instance. 

Other local illustrators draw technical diagrams for Boston engineering firms like Bhatti-Group, HW-Lochner, HNTB-Corporation, ICF-Kaiser-Engineers and Purcell-Associates, among others.  Precise realist illustrators sometimes work for medical illustration companies such as Bosley-Medical, Tal-Medical or Management-Recruiters-International.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics lists a reported average annual income of about $54,420, with an average hourly rate of about $26.15 for professional illustrators employed full time in the city of Boston, Massachusetts.  Corporations in Boston employ roughly 260 professional full time illustrators, not including part timers and local freelancers.     

Skills of a Professional Illustrator

Professional illustrators are versatile, detail-oriented visual artists who consistently produce high quality, detailed original images for a broad variety of products.  As well as diversity with mechanical drawing media, illustrators are also adept with popular digital illustration design programs like Intaglio, Freeverse-Lineform, Serif Draw, Sketsa SVG and Corel Draw, to name only a few.