We were lucky to catch up with Beth Snider recently and have shared our conversation below.

Beth , appreciate you joining 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?

Yes, I am able to earn a full-time living from being an illustrator. It did not start out this way because I did not have a source of on-going professional clients who would hire me for work. It was more of a hobby that I was paid for but not enough income to sustain me.

When I first started out it was word of mouth from relatives and Facebook friends who asked me to do portraits and wall murals. At that time I painted on canvas with acrylic paint and on walls in people’s homes and for local businesses. It was my main focus for about 10 years. I also did things like made party invitations, paper flower arrangements, and made jewelry. I made anything and everything that was creative that I could sell. I even did traveling art classes where I brought the supplies and taught groups of people to paint and led coordinated community murals. I just worked hard and got my name out there!

Even though I did all these other creative things, the thing I liked doing the most is telling stories through visual art: illustrating children’s picture books! It was always my dream since I was a child and my colorful style reflected that type of art. I told everyone what I REALLY wanted to do was illustrate children’s books.

Eventually, because I made my dreams known publicly and shared my art on the internet, I got connected with a community of graphic designers. These were people who work with the types of clients that I wanted to be hired by. I submitted my portfolio to a book design company, who were making books for self-publishing authors. Because of my connection with a parallel community of Creatives that were working in the same space that I wanted to be in, I starting getting opportunities to illustrate books! At first my attempts were pretty embarrassing. But I took online classes to learn the basics of art and design. I also switched to digital art. These things caused me to level up in just about a year of focusing hard on learning and improving my drawing skills.

I decided to lean in on my book-making process. I now usually have about 3 book projects going at a time while also taking on several short term projects such as the occasional magazine cover or private commission. I can finish one book in about 3 or 4 months instead of 1 year, like I used to.

Of course, I could never have done it without developing my skills of efficiency. I gained a reputation for being dependable, delivering my work on time (or before!), being willing to do the work thoroughly to the required standards, and communicating well with my clients. This includes things as simple as retuning an email as soon as I receive it and as complicated as providing a comprehensive contract that explains the cost, expectations, and project schedule.

I could have sped up the process of getting where I am now if I would have done the following:

1.) Leveled up on my art skills by learning basic skills of art and design.

2.) Made strategic relationships with people in parallel professions, such as graphic designers. (They recommend their clients to hire me all the time!)

3.) Focused on on-boarding clients, streamlining my process, and basically just drawing faster!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I am a children’s book illustrator living in the Kansas City area in Kansas. I became an illustrator fairly organically. Since I can remember, I just shared my artwork with everyone I knew, either online or in person. Everyone that knew me, was aware that I was a creative person that was willing to paint or make things with my hands. They started asking me to paint portraits and I jumped at every opportunity that came across my path. This type of pattern in my life led me to trying lots of creative outlets, failing at some, and excelling at others. I was able to try so many different types of arts and crafts, but I eventually always felt myself drawn back to narrative illustration. I love telling stories with my art. And I loved drawing small. My favorite was using watercolor and colored pencil. (I now do my art completely digitally, because that affords me the most amount of efficiency. But my first love is painting with real paint on paper.)

I answered how I got into my industry in the last question, so I won’t repeat myself too much.

I believe that most illustrators who are serious about illustrating books have their sights set upon working with major publishing companies. Quite honestly, those opportunities seem out of reach because of the sheer amount of talented illustrators out there. Many people give up and settle for keeping their drawing a hobby or fail to develop their art skills. I am actually proud to say that I work with self-publishing authors who want to break the stereo-types of self-published books. They want to hire a team of professionals who know what they are doing when it comes to illustrating, designing, formatting and printing books that look as good as the books on the shelves at major book stores. I serve this group of people. I also love working with smaller publishing companies that have a more narrow focus of topics for their readers.

I want clients, followers, and fans to know that my goal is always to keep leveling-up and becoming better at what I do – both in running my business and developing better art skills. Each book I complete is a huge learning experience that makes the next one even better! I am now illustrating my 15th and 16th book. Some of those were never published, some are for sale now through the authors, and some are yet to be released!

How can we best help foster a strong, supportive environment for artists and creatives?

I really think that if artists and creatives creatives could learn to see each other as friends to encourage rather than as competitors to defeat, it would be wonderful.

I used to work with a business owner who made children’s apparel. My designs were on a lot of things she sold. She was very successful, even selling her products to major celebrities. I really wanted to structure our relationship as more of a partnership, rather than a work-for-hire arrangement. She said no and refused anything like that, trying to keep the costs as low as humanly possible!

I could understand that her goals were different than mine and there were probably legitimate reasons for her not wanting to share a portion of profits. We could have worked out a deal where we were both benefiting. But she never credited me in any of her social media posts. One time, I told her that I would be willing to adjust the price of a commission if she were to do an instagram story promoting my work. She told me she did not ever make posts like that. Then the very next day she posted all about a young up-and-coming artist that she was featuring one of their designs on a product. What was worse is that the post was featured on her main instagram feed for all to see, not even in ‘stories’! What an insult to me as the artist. I finally had to stop working with her because the amount of work she requested paid too low.

I don’t understand how other creative people can feel threatened by sharing their success with others. I think that there is enough success to go around for everyone. As the saying goes: “A rising tide lifts all the ships…” Something like that!

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

Over the years, it’s been a dream of mine to work with my sister somehow. We decided to start a creative business together using my art on products After pricing out different products, and not having a lot of money to start out with, we got creative and decided to sell wall art for kids and babies rooms. We ordered lots of good quality printed art with my illustrations on them: themes like birds, cute animals, flowers, and more. We also created banners with cards that spelled the phrase “Sweet Dreams” that matched the art. Because frames were expensive, we created our own hanging frames with wooden panel across the top and bottom of each print, hanging by twine. We got my dad to build displays for us to put our artwork our for sale. We bought all the gear for quite an elaborate booth set-up intending to bring our art to different street fair and craft shows. We each spent a few thousand dollars on all of this.

First Failure:
We paid a thousand dollars to rent a space at a local Christmas Market in a convention center. We had such a cute set-up with even a tv screen showing live drawing! It was four LONG 12 hour days of trying to sell to thousands of pre-occupied shoppers. Turns out that having a huge amount of traffic going by your booth doesn’t add up to successful sales. We hyped it up before hand on our social media accounts and had a few friends come buy from us, but for the most part we got ignored. The interest as a whole was a lot less than we had hoped for. For a first show, we were exhausted. We did not make our money back and some of our items were even damaged by the take-down crew!

2nd Failure:
We signed up for an outdoor festival this time at the end of summer. This time we bought a canopy with side walls. We set up our adorable booth with our “Wall Art for Kids”. Just as we got finished setting up, it started to rain. All our inventory was on paper, so we turned it toward the middle of the tent and covered it with blankets. It was a raging thunderstorm for 30 minutes with a river running through the back of our tent. After we recovered and the sun came out, we set up again and waited. No customers. Not one sale for 4 hours! Next, the wind kicked up. Our displays caught a huge gust of wind and were totally knocked over! This happened 3 times in a row. After that our canopy was literally lifted off of the ground by a huge gust of wind and flew into the wall of the building behind us! At this point about half of our inventory was warped with water or twisted from falling. We were not supposed to leave, but we gathered up all our stuff, left early, and vowed never to do it again.

Our art business had a short but particularly unsuccessful run. I will admit, it felt personal after the first failure. These were my ideas and my drawings after all! It hurt my feelings that other people didn’t want to buy the things I thought of! The second failure was actually more comical because of the epic disasters.

We learned that even though these were our ideas, it is ok that people didn’t want to buy them. I had plenty of clients who have commissioned customized art form me and that is where I really get to shine! (Plus, after we left the festival early, my sister and I went shopping and to dinner and laughed about our crazy day the rest of the night!)

I get to make a lot of people happy by bringing THEIR unique ideas to life by being an illustrator. I serve them to the best of my ability and I am so grateful I am successful in that area of art. I know what I would do differently now. And I have some ideas for products that I really think would sell better, but for now I will focus on what I am doing well. I think that is what makes this a story about resilience. Sometimes we try really hard to make something work and it just doesn’t. I won’t blame other people for not liking my ideas or my art. I will choose to learn from it and someday I will give it another chance! I believe this experience will one day be used for a building block of success.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.bethsniderart.com
• Instagram: @beth.snider.artist