We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jarom Vogel. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jarom below.
Alright, Jarom thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Earning a full time living from one’s creative career can be incredibly difficult. Have you been able to do so and if so, can you share some of the key parts of your journey and any important advice or lessons that might help creatives who haven’t been able to yet?
I’ve been really lucky to be able to earn a full-time living from my illustration work, but it definitely didn’t start out that way. I graduated from BYU in 2015, and kept working as a web developer and designer at a local company until I gradually started getting a few freelance jobs on the side. My day-job was nice enough to be flexible and let me “fade out” a bit over time as I started getting more illustration work, until eventually I quit in 2018 and made the leap to full-time freelance. My wife was starting Physical Therapy school in a different state, and I’d been approached by (my now current) agent, so it seemed like a good time to try it out. I know it doesn’t work out for everyone, but I’ve loved it!
Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.
My name is Jarom Vogel, and I’m an illustrator based near Portland, Oregon. I’ve been doing freelance jobs for about 6 years, and full-time since 2018. I was originally studying to be a dentist in college, but I decided to major in illustration because there was no official pre-dental major at my school, and I had some vague idea of working as a dentist while illustrating children’s books on the side. Eventually I realized I loved illustration a lot more than I loved teeth, and just decided to go for it.
I did end up working on some non-fiction children’s books after graduating, but pretty quickly realized it was a lot of effort for not a lot of money. I primarily work for commercial clients to create advertising and marketing related illustrations lately, and occasionally do some editorial work as well.
I’ve also been exploring AR and 3D work quite a bit lately. I’ve been lucky enough to work on some AR projects for Disney, Procreate, and Adobe. I like that they require a different way of thinking, and I always love learning new techniques and things.
What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?
The most rewarding part of being an artist to me is being able to try new things and make something that didn’t exist before. It’s sometimes easy to feel overwhelmed by the way other people respond to a piece, but I really love the satisfaction of finishing something without having shown it to anyone else yet—I think that’s kind of magical.
How did you build your audience on social media?
I started posting artwork on Instagram around 2014, which I think was before it really took off for illustration. A lot of people in the illustration world were still pretty focused on Tumblr at the time, so it was a bit easier to stand out, and a lot of people were still looking for new people to follow. I think the best thing you can do now is to try to create work you’re proud of, post pretty consistently, and just try to be part of the community. It’s also definitely worth checking out alternative and new social media sites and trying to get in early where possible and diversify a bit. You don’t necessarily need a huge audience as much as you need to reach the right people, so if there’s somewhere you can go where you’re more likely to reach clients, that’s definitely where you should be!
Contact Info:
- Website: jaromvogel.com
- Instagram: instagram.com/jaromvogel
- Twitter: twitter.com/jaromvogel
- Other: mastodon.art/@jaromvogel
Image Credits
Jarom Vogel