Today with the internet has made communication with getting clients and work more accessible. You don’t have to pay for a portfolio of work to be printed which you would show to people, you can put your work on a website or post to social media for free and it is visible to anyone that comes across your pages. However that eliminates them meeting you in person and vice versa, they can only see the work on a screen rather than in larger print, but with the way society is going it can be more convenient to keep everything digital, and printing something off may not be worth the time and money when there are other options. Also accessibility, it costs money and time to travel to meet others, the fact being that these meetings/events are mostly in cities.

So in my opinion it is better to connect through email or social media to get in contact with those you want to work with, you can be more direct and save time/money on the traditional way of illustrators gaining work. LinkedIn is another good way of finding people as well as connecting, as it is a platform designed for finding work/clients, so contact information is available.

I would say yes I need a cv for jobs that perhaps are not in the creative industry, as with creative jobs your portfolio/website  becomes your cv, but I think you still need a cv as it is an important element to getting work for certain jobs. I have seen that some illustrators do have a cv/resume on their website, but all have loads of examples of jobs they have done to put down on them while at my stage in my career I have very little to put on it that relates to creative experience. I think the simpler a cv is the better, there as some examples in the links below that I think have too much imagery or colours were it takes you away from the information and makes it appear as an illustration on its own. You can still have a sense of creativity in the cv but I don’t think it needs to be fully illustrated.

On the 11th of February Orange Beak Studio held a free talk with three illustrators they have been working with from the start of their children’s picture book journeys. The three illustrators were Ruby Wright, Jen Baranowska and Emma Farrarons. Orange Beak Studio was founded to work with illustrators from graduates to professionals, to help them improve and feel better with their illustrations. 
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• Wright always had an interest in picturebooks from an early age but it was only after working various jobs and having children that she decided to start thinking about illustrating a book. 
• Through Orange Beak she was advised to draw everyday, not to use solely black ink and avoid photoshop.
• This was so she could become confident with other materials and methods, such as screen printing, which to clean the screens she would go to a car wash to use the cleaning equipment!
• Tips = draw from life as much as possible, invite yourself onto projects you want to do, tell people your daily rate before agreeing to any work, enter competitions to add to portfolio, get inspired from all different sources.
• Was approached by an agency rather than contacting them.

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It was really insightful to hear their stories and where they are now with their work. They all seem to have had different paths from graduating a while ago to only in the past few years deciding to fully get into children’s picture books. Their sketchbook work was so lovely with lots of different mediums, marks and colour used, and it is something I think really is important to figuring out what you want to do with your own illustrations, as well as just improving in general with drawing. I definitely want to get back into drawing as much as I can in my own sketchbooks, at the moment it isn’t really possible with university work but when that starts to come to an end I will get back into it.