We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful DeAndra Hodge. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with DeAndra below.

DeAndra, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. It’s always helpful to hear about times when someone’s had to take a risk – how did they think through the decision, why did they take the risk, and what ended up happening. We’d love to hear about a risk you’ve taken.

Definitely the biggest risk for me was going freelance full time. So far it’s working out pretty well for me, but the months leading up the decision had me feeling all kinds of anxious.

It felt like a risk because it went against everything I had been told from a young age: do well in school, get a good paying job, move out on your own, climb up the corporate ladder and retire etc. I would be giving up a high paying job with amazing benefits to become a freelance illustrator. Not to mention I live in one of. the most expensive cities in the country So needless to say I was stressed.

I tried doing what they tell every freelancer to do, which is hold on to your day job and freelance on the side. It was working for a while, until it wasn’t. I was getting more and more freelance project offers that I couldn’t refuse, but after months and months of waking up every day (including weekends!) at 5 AM and working all day until midnight to finish all my work, I had to let something go. And it for sure wasn’t going to be my dream job.

After a few more months of planning and saving, I decided to quit my full time job as a graphic designer in May of 2022.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your background and context?

Earlier this year I attended the 2022 ALA Conference to talk about a book series I worked on called Kid Confident. At the book signing, a teacher wanted to take my picture next to the books because she wanted her students to see that there were Black illustrators out there. That moment really meant a lot to me, because that’s something I would have wanted when I was her students’ age. I realized I was what you could consider a “role-model” of some sort. Since then, I’ve thought a lot about what it means to be an illustrator, especially a Black illustrator, and what lead me to this career.

So with that I say Hello! I’m DeAndra, a kid lit illustrator. I focus heavily on digital illustration for children’s, middle grade, and YA books. At the moment I’m most known for illustrating for the Kid Confident series by Magination Press, and the That Girl LayLay book series published by Scholastic and Nickelodeon.

I started in this career pretty organically I’d say. I always enjoyed drawing and art, so much that I ended up majoring in Fine Art at the University of Montevallo. However, I focused on Graphic Design for my degree, that way I’d always have a sought after skill to find work. I did a lot of design internships before graduating and landing a job right after college, leading to me moving to D.C. in 2020. Of course, 2020 was the pandemic years so we were all bored out of our minds or anxious about the world being on fire. I tend to cope with things like that through escapism, i.e. drawing fan art of my favorite shows. Luckily that was easy to do cause I used my first paycheck from my new job to buy an iPad and apple pencil to save paper.

I started posting my art on instagram and twitter, and over time I started getting more followers. One of those followers was a literary agency called The CAT Agency. Christy Ewers, the woman who would become my agent, emailed me about the possibility of signing to that agency with her representing me. Not gonna lie, I thought it sounded super sketchy at first so I did a ton of research and figured I should give it a shot! For a while I did my full time graphic design job and freelanced in illustration on the side. Then in May 2022, after a lot of planning (and saving money) I decided to go freelance full-time.

As an illustrator, it’s my job to represent written media in a visual way. In order to do that, I have to think a lot about what’s the most important thing the author wants to get across to the reader and how I can show that visually. What draws me to this career is how much can be said without words. We all know the saying “a picture is worth a thousand words” but I started understanding that more as I began to grow as an illustrator. Colors, expressions, environments, really any small visual detail can say a lot about a story.

I find I get really engrossed in visual storytelling, focusing on details in my illustration that say something about the characters or the plot based on the descriptions I get from the author/editor. There’s a lot of symbolism that can go into an illustration with the right amount of thought and planning. Of course, considering your audience is also important when deciding what visual elements mean. For example, if the theme is mourning, western audiences would associate the color black with that concept. However if the story takes place in a country like Ethiopia or certain Asian countries, white is more symbolic of mourning.

I try to find anything I can put into the illustration that makes the characters relatable to the young readers in a multitude of ways. Part of why I started drawing in the first place is so I could put myself and my friends into stories we don’t usually see ourselves in. Now I feel empowered to give that representation to kids in the work I do. Books were a really important part of my childhood and I want every kid to be able to experience the joy of seeing a character that looks like them or whose story they can relate too. I feel really proud anytime I give my younger cousins a book I worked on and they say “This one looks like me!”

Even as a professional illustrator, I don’t think of myself fully as a pro. I don’t mean that in a self-deprecating way, the thing I love most about art is constantly improving and evolving as an artist. I love the hours of practice and experimenting and seeing what else I can learn. I love seeing how far I’ve come since I first started posting to social media, or going home for the holidays and finding my old middle school sketchbooks. Being an illustrator is still so surreal to me, and freelancing is a little scary not gonna lie. However, I’m incredibly thankful to the people in my life, my followers on social media, and my mentors and colleagues that I get the chance to make my career what I want it to be.

How did you build your audience on social media?

Social media is literally the reason I even have a career. It’s how I gained enough visibility to land an agent with a literary agency and was able to build a career for myself. Social media is an incredibly powerful tool that really shouldn’t be overlooked by people wanting to be freelance anything, but especially artist. I don’t even have particularly big following (a lot of professional artists don’t!) but it’s connected me with a lot of clients and other art friends of mine! I used social media as a way to get eyes on my work, and theres a lot to consider when posting to social media.

I’ll try to keep it brief, cause there’s a bit of a science to it. Figuring out the ever changing algorithms on a platform, best posting times for each platform, what topics or hashtags are trending, planning social media content, all of it can be overwhelming at first. While posting often helps with algorithms, quality of work is more important that quantity. Figure out how many posts a week is reasonable and attainable for you based on your schedule and how fast you work. Even if it’s just one post a week, or even one post a month, as long as you’re consistent you should be fine. Again, consider the platforms you use, because even if you can’t post a finished piece, you can post a sneak peak to your instagram story or ask for advice about it on twitter. The last thing you want is for people to think you’re a dead account.

One of the ways I grew a following was by making fan art. People LOVE fan art, especially if they’re apart of the fandom so they’ll want to share it with their friends. Sometimes I’d get lucky and the people who worked on the project I made fan art of would share it themselves. I still tell people that Tatyana Ali quote tweeted a drawing I did of Ashely Banks TO THIS DAY and that happened back in 2017.

If the goal is to get more eyes on your work, you have to post at the right times. It all depends on your audience and what platform you’re using but there are some key times to remember. For example I post at noon on instagram cause that’s usually when people take breaks at work and scroll social media. I notice my posts tend to do better if I post at noon on insta instead of 8 PM. On TikTok I usually post between 5 PM or 7PM because my content does better at those times than if I post at noon. I post at 9 AM on LinkedIn since people in hiring positions tend to be on it during work hours. Using hashtags also gets eyes on your work, and it’s best to be specific to what your art is actually about. Posting a Scarlet Witch fan art under #art on instagram alone isn’t going to cut it. Instead try #scarletwitch or #marvelfanart or even a hashtag of what mediums or programs you used.

Following the right people is also important. I mainly try to follow other artists, art directors, companies I want to do work for etc. This is a good way to create your own community of artist to engage with which is REALLY important if you’re a freelancer. Art directors like to crowdsource on social media for projects they’re working on, so staying active is a good way to see what work is available. At lot of people get jobs through networking even outside of social media.

All in all, figuring out social media for art can be tricky and it takes a while to find your groove. There’s going to be a lot of trial and error involved because it’s not an exact science. There’s always going to be a lot of adjustment to how we use social media for art (just look at instagram reels for example) but the important thing to not get discouraged by likes or follower counts. What matters is that you are getting work and getting paid for that work. The best part about social media at the end of the day is the way we get to build our own communities with people who share our interests!

Is there something you think non-creatives will struggle to understand about your journey as a creative?

I think one thing is a lot of non-creatives think is that I’m naturally gifted at what I do, which can be frustrating. In a lot of my interactions with non-creatives, the general vibe for conversations about work is “Oh but you’re naturally good at what you do, so it isn’t hard for you.” which couldn’t be further from the truth. People tend to have an affinity for the arts sure, just like people have an affinity for things like math, science or public speaking. That doesn’t mean we’re just good at it from the jump. It’s that interest that keeps us going, and the constant practice is what makes us better. If I treated math the way I treated art back when I was in school, I wouldn’t break out into hives when thinking about fractions.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.deandrahodgeart.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/deandrahodge_/?hl=en
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deandra-hodge-1b2b27161/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/deandra_hodge
• Other: Linktree: https://linktr.ee/deandrahodge