What You Need to Know to Be an Illustrator in Charleston, South Carolina

The charming coastal city of Charleston, South Carolina is the second largest city in the state.  Charleston enjoys a vigorous, tourist-fueled economy featuring a large number of luxury hotels, quaint inns, quality retailers and award-winning restaurants.  Visual artists living in Charleston have no trouble finding work in this town.  Competitive local companies maintain an ongoing economic demand for commercial graphic artists, especially illustrators.

Charleston Schools and Training Programs for Illustrators

Charleston, South Carolina is filled with colleges, Universities and private art academies that provide one-on-one instruction, workshops and degree programs in commercial illustration.  Colleges in Charleston with graphic arts departments include Trident Technical College, American College of Building Arts, ECPI University, College of Charleston and Medical University of South Carolina. 

Nevertheless, a broad assortment of pressed-for-time Charleston illustrators prefer to acquire skills and degrees online.  Accredited online colleges of fine arts include University of Phoenix, ITT Tech, The Art Institutes, DeVry, National University, Full Sail University and Stratford Career Institute.  The convenience of virtual design colleges often includes supplemental physical campuses.  ITT Tech and The Art Institute both maintain facilities in Charleston.

Working as an Illustrator in Charleston, South Carolina

All sorts of businesses in Charleston hire talented local illustrators.  Many are employed by graphic design firms like Alumnot Graphics, Fiber Graphics, Deborah Daniels, Laughalot Graphics and Charleston Graphics, to name a few.  Some local illustrators create fine designs for local tattoo distributors like Tattoo I Candy, Lucky-7 Tattoo, Holy City Tattoo or Broken Lantern. 

Charleston illustration artists with technical expertise might work for leading local engineering firms such as Watermark Engineering, Skylia Engineering, Metering Engineering, Orbital Engineering and Charleston Engineering, among others.  Some local illustrators design anatomical charts for medical illustration services like Illustration Project, Paul F. Rossmann or Trident Medical Arts. 

According to information from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, professional full time illustrators employed by corporations in the city of Charleston, South Carolina report an average annual salary of about $56,010, with a reported mean hourly wage of around $26.95.  These figures, however, do not reflect the salaries of local freelancers, part time illustrators or Charleston artists employed by companies based outside the USA.    

Skills of a Professional Illustrator

Illustrators are versatile visual artists, able to consistently produce innovative, hand-rendered designs in a variety of visual styles, from clean and minimal to elegantly expressive to intricately detailed.  Illustrators are fully familiar with traditional drawing and coloring methods, as well as with mainstream digital design software.  Popular illustration software packages include Silhouette, Autodesk Sketchbook, Adobe Illustrator, Compact Draw and Xara.