We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sabrena Khadija a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Sabrena, appreciate you joining us today. When did you first know you wanted to pursue a creative/artistic path professionally?

I’ve been obsessed with art since I was a child. And even though my family helped nurture my love for art, they never made me feel like pursuing it as a career was an option. As a first generation child of immigrants, I went to school thinking I had no choice but to grow up to become a doctor or a lawyer and saw art as something I’d do for fun on the side. It wasn’t until college where I took up a second major in art and graphic design that I realized a path to being a full-time creative was possible.

I found myself in a creative environment that expanded my knowledge of the world and encouraged me to explore the places I could go with my creative skills. Through studying and working full-time as a graphic designer I found myself missing my roots in illustration more. The more I drew, the more I shared, the more I realized I wanted to pivot my artistic path towards illustration instead. But it was thanks to those years working as a designer that let me know this path was possible.

I just think its funny I started this journey thinking I’d be a doctor with a secret art degree, instead I’m an artist with a secret psych degree.

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

I got into the illustration industry mostly by sharing my work on social media and connecting with other creatives. By sharing my work and making these connections I was able to develop a following as I developed my work and my style. These kind of connections can usually lead to client work down the line which over the years helped me transition from freelancing part-time to full-time. Something I’m extremely thankful for!

I primarily work as a freelance illustrator now which can cover many areas of creative work. Currently I do a lot of work in Book Cover Design, Children’s Books Illustrations, Editorial Illustration, Corporate/Brand Illustration, Packaging Design etc. I’ve been lucky enough to work on a myriad of projects where clients reach out to me because of my style and artistic voice, so It’s been a really freeing and validating experience for the most part.

When I first started my journey as an illustrator, I was still stumbling around trying to figure out what I wanted to depict or communicate with my art. I’m still stumbling around, but I’m proud to say that I’ve found standing in creating art as a Black Non-Binary Femme artist and centering that representation in a lot of my work. It’s been really good seeing people resonate with my explorations. It really motivates me to keep honing my craft.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

The biggest pivots I’ve done in my life and career took place because I chose joy over safety. My first pivot happened when I dropped my double major in Criminal Justice and Criminology (because I thought this could be a path towards studying Psychology and becoming a lawyer for whatever reason *cough* my parents *cough*) and took up a major in Art instead.

I chose that path because of my parents and found myself in a miserable place by the end of the semester and decided I didn’t want to feel that way anymore. So I pivoted towards the Art major instead, initially for fun, but by taking that leap I found the path towards pursuing art as a career that I had abandoned in my childhood. It was here that I learned about Graphic Design and was able to begin a career as a creative straight out of school.

My second pivot happened when I found myself feeling unfulfilled creatively in my role as a Designer at the time. Despite being able to work on a lot of cool projects over the years (some of which I still find out in the wild), I found myself missing Illustration more and more. This feeling led me to start drawing on the side and sharing my work online. After a few years in, I was given the chance to work with a big client on a friend’s recommendation (Thank you Shelby! Love you Shelby!) that led to an even bigger opportunity that ultimately helped me feel comfortable enough to quit my job and give full-time freelance Illustration a try. It was terrifying but I knew I wasn’t happy where I was and I needed to see where this new path could take me. It’s been almost 5 years since then and I’m grateful to say I made the right pivot.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

I’m still figuring out how to build an audience on social media. Each platform is extremely different.

I found most of my audience on Instagram since it was a more visual, picture-based social media site. I would upload my art on there, tag it appropriately, and send my art out into the world. Now Instagram wants to push for more video content which is a whole other hat that not everyone can wear (including me). Twitter (I’m not calling it X) is a little different. It has a really thriving artist community on there and plenty of opportunities to join in trending art tags to share your work, find artists, and let people find you. Tiktok works best with video content so I see the more successful artists on there sharing their work through tutorials or time-lapses so people can see their process. I’m not built for that so I’m not on Tiktok yet but one day.

In my early days I really struggled to get followers, but with time and consistency I was able to get where I am today. People sharing my work really helped me gain followers over the years, but consistently posting is a huge factor that can make or break it for a lot of people. I gained a lot of followers when I was constantly uploading new work, now that I’m more booked and busy I update sporadically so my follower count as been pretty stagnant, so don’t be like me.

Unfortunately we’re in a time where sometimes you can’t just be an Artist, you need to be a bit of an Influencer as well in certain creative fields (at least in my lane). This is a balance I still struggle with, but I think it’s worth it to use my art and platform to connect with others. All it takes is one message from someone telling me how much my work inspires them to make the struggle feel worth it.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.sabrenakhadija.com
• Instagram: @sabrenakhadija
• Twitter: @sabrenakhadija

Image Credits
Sabrena Khadija