Hi everyone, I just finished a grueling back-to-back convention sprint for MomoCon in Atlanta and then straight to Dokomi, held in Dusseldorf, Germany!

I’ve never done either nor have I ever done two travel conventions in a row, so I’m feeling super dead hahaha. Not only did we have a four hour delay from ATL to LGA(a two hour flight), but also that gave us only twelve hours to print and restock before our flight to Germany the next day. Also my friend’s cat peed in my partner’s suitcase, making them lose 75% of their clothes for this second leg AHHHH. Thankfully, Germany has this crazy detergent tube?? That works really well when you wash your clothes in the sink.

As I type this I’m running on like four hours of sleep (two of them on a bench at the Copenhagen airport) so if I’m missing anything, or have some grammatical issues, please forgive me haha.

This week we got a bunch of prints dropping at debleeart.com/shop! I’ve been working on these since January so it’s exciting to finally have them out to show you guys. Something new I’ve been trying is inking everything on paper with a Pilot pen/micron, etc and then coloring it all on my iPad.

But without further ado! Here are all the prints we have for this time around. First slide is fanart, the next one is original content.

Lastly, we got 14 editions for Mononoke APs! They have a really nice spot gloss going on. If you want the smaller sizes, I’ll have them back up during the holiday sale in November.

If you read this far, you get 20% off with the code GEMINITIME20. If you’re a Patron, you get first dibs at patreon.com/jdebbiel AND 25% off.

Also, don’t forget to keep these guidelines in mind:

Thanks guys! See you again later in the holidays when we open the vault of new prints.

Joey/Deb

**No I am not actually quitting freelance illustration. I’m just rethinking my relationship with the industry. Sorry, I had to use a clickbait-y title to get you lol

I wrote this for my Patreon in Jan 2025! I largely still agree with everything I wrote, but I will include edits along the way. If you’re a past/present/future client, I have no ill will against you! Most clients I’ve worked with have not been like this. We just want to be treated like an equal, even though we’re at your (and the accounting department’s) mercy.

—

Over the last few months, I’ve been quietly more critical of the world of commercial illustration, drawing for others, etc. Most of my income from 2022, 2023 (not so much 2024, due to the economy, etc), came from big name companies. Google, BMW, Martell, to name a few. (edit: 2025 had even LESS commercial illustration inquiries. We went from 60% of income coming from commercial illustration in 2023, to 8% in 2025). While the money was good, I couldn’t help but think about what these companies were trying to sell and how that affects the world we live in. (edit: yes yes i know yes capitalism yes yes but I’m only looking at this from the position of a freelance artist)

For a lot of these places, I found that most of them are (a) mega corporations hungry for useless/exploitative technology, (b) selling products that take advantage of low-paid laborers and/or will eventually end up in a garbage patch, (c) feeding some kind of addiction, (d) at the mercy of ~~maximizing shareholder value~~, and more. Illustrations for these places are nothing more than a plea for trust towards future consumers, a facade to the general public that they are friendly, human, your family.

And now that I’ve had more time to work on personal illustrations (a first since 2022!), I realized that I don’t miss client relationships. I do not miss being left on read, stretched thin from endless revisions, forced to change direction at the eleventh hour because the CEO finally got around to looking at the progress, being told that the client owns the copyright now and my name being subsequently stripped from the work the first second they get to, being ignored after the project ends when you’re asking for promised APs and then told to make them myself, etc. (edit: yes these all happened in individual projects) Or most disappointing of all, being in a 100+ message email thread and a video call only to be told that they went with a different artist. It’s unbelievable how, the second you’re not useful to them, they have the power to treat you like just a number.

And to be honest, 9 times out of 10, I don’t love the work I do for commercial clients. There’s no room for experimentation, for what they’re paying for is a piece similar to your existing work. Which, yes, of course we all know that is what a job is! There’s also a ceiling for what you can make with these things. For instance, my most popular works ever have a hard limit on how much I can profit. IE, I can’t sell my Dune prints, or EEAAO prints (online). Seeing how all 15 APs of these sold in literal seconds, imagine how much I could have made from making them open editions. (Don’t get me wrong, I love Mitch and Eric. Again, they’re just doing their jobs and following their own contracts)

Not to say I’m leaving the freelance world entirely. Maybe I’ve been more cynical about this world because—for a lot of us commercial illustrators—the amount of assignments have dropped in 2024, (edit: and personally, dropped even further in 2025) whether it’s the economy or trend of artists being tossed aside in favor of Stable Diffusion. (edit: or maybe I’m drawing too much anime) Maybe I’ll be less opposed if I get an offer to illustrate a whole campaign for Chipotle for $xx,xxx. Or if A24 is in my DMs asking me to do an official poster for their latest theatrical release. Over all, I’ll be much, MUCH more critical and selective of commercial projects in favor of making personal work. If it’s an institution for the public (ie, a library, museum, public transit, etc), and/or a budget that is actually appropriate for the project, I’d still go ahead with it.

I’ll continue writing and illustrating books (yes, they’re typically taking advantage of cheap labor too, but at least they are useful to society, and best of all, biodegradable) and selling my own illustrated prints for, theoretically, infinite $$$. Seriously. This last few years I first-handedly learned that conventions and online sales have zero ceiling in terms of profit. And if I can draw whatever I want, why wouldn’t I do this? My friend Dustin made a Youtube video about this [edit: Of all the kind of work I did in my life, this feels like one of the more direct and honest type of artist “job”. You’re just selling printed paper to people who think it looks nice]

Also, it should go without saying, I will never ever condemn another artist, designer, etc for taking client work from companies or mega corporations that I’ve been talking about. Truthfully speaking, I might be as well, on a case-by-case basis. I also happen to be in the position of having ample savings and the choice to say no. Please do not feel bad about taking work from big corporations. You have to eat before you want to be your best artist, person, friend, etc.

—

That’s the end of what I wrote a year ago! I still have a few more things to add.

Over the last year, I worked several conventions and was blown away by how much my prints were able to profit while being very low in freelance work, that it’s hard to return to a life where I was doing just that. It helped to have a larger than average following of course, but it’s nice to see that no algorithm will have a say on what the regular con-goer sees in Artist Alley. You can have like a few hundred followers, but with the right display and range/quality of work, you have an equal shot as someone whose audience is in the five digit range. Example: I tabled at AX 2024, and even with a large following of 100k+, my shoddy display, print selection, and table location really did me dirty. I was surprised I broke even.

In my observation, an independent artist doing conventions regularly is somehow both more and less stable than doing freelance work. It’s more stable in that, assuming an artist gets accepted, they will earn SOME money (whether they profit or not, is a different story), but it’s also less stable in that factors out of their control, such as ICE raids, lottery systems, shipping delays, a poor spot in the table map, your display being smothered in a crowd interested in your very popular table neighbor, can make or break the weekend. At least it’s not usually (in my experience) other peoples’ doing that mucks it up. This is good because the only person you can blame 70% of the time is yourself or the US Federal Government.

It’s also less stable in that it’s harder to do if you’re not able-bodied. There’s so much heavy lifting and other physical logistics, even days before the show begins. And during the show, you’re dealing with broken elevators.

I’m starting to see myself rambling about this topic, so I’ll stop here; maybe I’ll write more about this as my opinion evolves over the next year or two. But right now I’m really excited about this venture I’m in even though it will most likely not be forever.

If you made it this far, thanks! I’ll have my next print sale early June with brand new work that I haven’t shared on socials yet (though you may have seen them at shows this year!) If you’re subscribed, you’ll get a discount code in the announcement.

Hi everyone! Can you believe we’re at the halfway point of the decade? Woof……ouch…lol.

My store is open between now and Nov 30 12pm EST. We have *SIX* new prints, 2001 Space Odyssey APs, Magic the Gathering APs! If you ordered in the last drop, you might have received a 20% off code. Everything is on debleeart.com/shop. (You will get another code in your package for next time :))

Before I share more info, some intel:

1. I’m still collecting tax within NYC, so that will be applied at checkout.

2. I can do international shipping, but please note it usually gets much, much more expensive than I expect. If that is okay with you, please continue! If your shipping (plus any fees from Squarespace and PayPal if applicable) ends up being more than $5 cheaper, I will refund you the difference. Same goes with domestic.

   

3. In a perfect world every package would end up at the right place in one piece AND on time. Alas, due to understaffing and the chaotic holiday season, that won’t always be the case. If it appears that the package (that’s not an AP) has been lost, you can request a $6 reprint fee + shipping costs. I think this is the best solution because this is out of our control, but we want you to get your print without having to reorder it all!

I attached photos everything that will be available!

Okay that’s it for now! Thank you again for supporting me and my work, especially in ~this~ economy.

More soon, and Happy early holidays!!

Joey

Hi everyone! Can you believe we’re already nearly halfway through the year?

Starting from Monday June 9 (12pm EST) to June 16 (11:59p PST) my print shop will reopen with brand new, homemade prints! I have a pretty steady rhythm going, making about one poster a month (while working on my picture book(!) and freelance projects). Putting them all together is so satisfying, even though it’s clear what color I’ve been favoring recently.

If you have followed my previous shop drops, you might know that I’ve been using Etsy. But after some thought, I’m gonna leave to go back to my website, which is debleeart.com/shop Etsy is best for their search function, and that’s not too helpful if my shop is open for a total of 2-3 weeks a year.

Anyway! Some info that I wanna repeat:

1. There are three APs that will be dropping! We got Magic the Gathering APs (foil and regular). There’s the Howl AP posters with ~spot gloss~ and Hereditary posters! Because there are only two APs of the latter, I’ll open it up to Patrons first on Sunday June 8 (12pm EST), 24 hours earlier before it opens up to the public. You can join in on patreon.com/jdebbiel if this interests you!

2. I started collecting tax within NYC, so that will be applied at checkout.

3. International Shipping is flat at $40 for everything. If it ends up being more than $5 cheaper (especially if you purchase like. One tiny print) I will refund you the difference; this is just a precaution on our end.

4. On the topic of shipping, we’re in Convention Crunch Season! Which means I (and probably my partner haha) will be scrambling to prepare hundreds of prints alongside fulfilling orders. We hope to have everything sent out before the end of July. Thank you so much for your patience!

Also I think it’ll help to display everything!

—

New Prints:

Small (roughly 8.5×11): $28

Large (roughly 13×19): $38

APs (all signed)

Howl’s Moving Castle (Foil): $100 (19 editions)

Hereditary: $100 (2 editions)

MTG card regular: $20 (45 editions)

MTG card foil: $30 (45 editions)

A few returning prints!

Snake (small, roughly 8.5×11): $28

Snake (large, roughly 13×19): $38

Birds (Ltd edition, 10×10): $28 (discounted from $50)

Thanks everyone! I’ll be monitoring while I’m at TCAF for the first few days. Since I’m in Toronto rn, wifi might be spotty, so please give me some grace!

-Joey

This is part 3. You can read part 2 here, or go back to part 1.

Being that my last day of work was technically Dec 31, 2019, I guess you could say I quit right before the pandemic.

80% of my work was spent making In Limbo. Now that we finished restructuring the plot, I was rendering mode, completing one page a day. Where most cartoonists go from thumbnails, to pencils, to inks, to color, to final, I was working from thumbnails straight to final. I absolutely don’t recommend doing this, because I also found myself redoing the thumbnails completely before finalizing. Halfway through 2020, when the second graphic novel from Harper began, I would start the morning doing 5 pages of thumbnails for that one and then spend the rest of the day rendering an In Limbo page. (I’ll talk about my graphic novel process in a separate post)

Every now and then I’d get a freelance (usually editorial) job. They ranged from a $300-500 illustration to a $3000 nonprofit series of illustrations. To make sure I wasn’t compromising my book workflow, the majority of the weekend was spent working on those assignments.

I wasn’t getting regular gigs, so the money from my book deals and Lyft and lack of debt was keeping me alive. (Also did a bit of contracting for Lyft again that boosted my bank account one more time) I think a lot of these clients were either finding me on WomenWhoDraw, from social media, or from my cold emailing. I was taking whatever I could. If I only lived off doing pure illustration assignments, this would not be livable for the Bay Area. (The number did triple from 2019, which was a start!)

I really liked living in Oakland! Loved the plants, the reliably mild climate, walking around the lake (when no one was around) But I didn’t really have a community. And when my partner and I amicably parted ways, I decided to go to Brooklyn, instead of Pittsburgh like we planned originally.

There were several reasons for this. I had more friends, I missed the seasons, I was closer to home, and I would be living in the center of the industry (most publishers are in the NYC area) So I headed over in May 2021.

Costs were different then. My partner and I were paying $2200 for our one bedroom apartment. My Brooklyn apartment, a few blocks below Prospect Park, was $1600, in those bygone days of covid rent. (Today, in 2025, it is $2100, still lower than most 1 beds in the city)

Because my stuff wouldn’t arrive for nearly two more months, and I was stubbornly waiting for my building to install Fios, I was stuck on a deflating air mattress without internet. Every morning I’d wake up and work on the floor on my iPad. If I needed wifi, I would go to a cafe. I distinctly remember working on the In Limbo cover from my air mattress, feeling ungrounded and procrastinating by playing Hades on my switch. At least once a day I’d walk or run around the park. It was my first time truly living alone in my adult life and I was figuring things out. After I got my furniture (albeit, some pieces were just missing and my monitor was broken), I finally settled in and got a cat

.

Over the three years I’d live in that apartment working on In Limbo and OSOT, I watched myself and my work grow. I was still getting editorial assignments.

My social media had a presence at the time, (nowhere near where I am right now, though). Every now and then a peer with a large following would share my work. On Twitter I’d make a few memes that spread like wildfire, which also drew attention to my stuff. (I feel like the former, where someone shares your work, is usually how it all starts to snowball eventually) Every now and then there was also #PortfolioDay and #VisibleWomen that boosted more eyes. (rip)

But I was still struggling to figure out *how* I like to draw. I knew I enjoyed detailed line work. And I liked to digitally paint and render things, though I noticed I always separated those techniques into different *styles* altogether. At that time, I always kept a system of layers (linework + fills and a variation of different colors) but I noticed I felt the need to always color within the lines (literally). Once I finished my line work, I wouldn’t let myself go back and change it even though a part of it might be off in retrospect. I stopped doing as much “abstract” rendering as I used to since I couldn’t figure out how to evolve. I went back to lines again since I stopped caring about looking like a knockoff Victo Ngai or James Jean.

However would experiment doing both lines and painting every now and then. You can see it here for this Google Meet illustration.

Eventually, I noticed my wrists started getting used to this pattern of curves, straight lines, and sharp angles. You can see it in this Scientific American illustration (more specifically, that brain)

The beginning of 2022, I made a very bold move where I replied to a sponsorship email from Domestika asking to teach instead of spreading affiliate codes. A few of my peers were making courses already and I was curious myself. Surprisingly, they were receptive to the idea.

It was around this time, maybe even a little before, that I saw a video about gradient mapping. Even though I was very new to it at the time, I started using it occasionally, even used it for my Domestika course. Coloring became more efficient and I realized that that method forced me to paint all on one layer. This was a great way to fuse the two ways I liked to draw (painting and making detailed linework). I became less afraid to “break the rules”. If a painted shape moves across a line, who cares?? And would it kill me to not outline a shape with a line?

After it launched, I made the now-widely-seen reel/tiktok about using gradient maps for my Phantom of the Opera illustration. The illustration that went along with it went viral across all platforms and even a few years later, I get people in real life who recognize the drawing from that video, which always made the print popular at every event where I tabled. I truly think that was the first time I was put on the illustration industry’s radar, and that I was doing something right. Which wasn’t a problem, as this was a perfect blend of what I liked to do. Later, I noticed that I loved using circular compositions, which I attribute to my time at LinkedIn, where most of their illustrations used a circular motif.

After I posted more illustrations that used that way of drawing, I got more and more assignments in my inbox. Eventually, I was offered representation from an illustration agency (this is different from literary agencies and less common), ironically from one I submitted to back in 2018. I can say with full confidence that I didn’t have to send a cold email or any kind of self-promotion since; now it all was word-of-mouth from every client I worked with.

The first poster I made was also a personal project, around the time I decided to take myself to Paris as a reward for finishing In Limbo January 2022. Amélie is one of my favorite movies and I’m pretty sure, the first time I ever experimented with gradient maps for real.

After I posted it, I got an email (Thanks Ryan M!) about doing a private commission for a posters group, preferably one of the show Mob Psycho 100. That led to another client, (Thanks Danny B!) who made another commission of Everything Everywhere All At Once, which blew up even more than my Phantom drawing. Even The Daniels retweeted the work in progress a couple times and it was perfect timing when the piece went viral again after the film won Best Picture at the Oscars a few months later.

This led to more and more poster projects from private groups, and eventually Mutant in 2024. (The Dune one went almost as viral as EEAAO, thanks Mitch and Eric!) I think 2023 was the first year where I made enough to know that freelance illustration is a sustainable career for myself)

I think the other thing that boosted my presence in the industry was controversy. The end of 2022, when I was almost a year into working in my “style”, I became the center of art discourse when I called out Fortnite for underpaying their freelance artists for copyright. (Some assumed my career was over, but it actually ended up skyrocketing. It brought me more jobs :)) Which was wild, by the way. Opening up twitter and seeing someone you don’t know talking about you without saying your name is a surreal experience. Hobbyists and industry illustrators alike were debating about the ethics of mega corporations and my finger-pointing.

A week later as the noise died down, I landed that main character role again when I was notified that someone on Reddit was secretly using my work for their Stable Diffusion model. I assumed they found me through the Fortnite fiasco, for the story spread to places like 4chan, online news media, and even a Youtube video essayist I followed already. Once again, controversy boosted my career! If we’re talking numbers, I’m pretty sure my following nearly doubled.

After a few years of nonstop working, work temporarily dried up for the first time at the end of 2024. Whether it was due to the economy or a growing preference for Midjourney, I barely got any commercial work inquiries (this was a similar experience with fellow peers in the industry), which actually was a relief. The work you do for other people is never going to be your favorite, for they are paying for something that is derivative of your existing portfolio. Once money or a second party is attached to it, it was game over (at least it was for me).

So for the first time since 2022, I drew something for myself again, and I hope to keep it a higher priority from now on.

Ironically, I realize that working with freelance clients had similar pains to working in an office (different kinds of unfairness, but at least I get to go ice skating in an empty rink in the middle of a winter day or lie in grass, staring at the sky during the spring). Clients are unstable in not only inquiries, but also the way they treat their artists. They may never respond for two months and then come out of nowhere, expecting an answer within a day. They may strip artists’ credits the second the contract is up. They forget to press the “send” button in a feedback email for a day during a rush job and expect you to work faster as a result. (I will talk more about this in a separate post).

Now that I have a sufficient following, I have the privilege of creating my own work and selling them online as I please. This is a pivot I’m still working with, and I’m happy with what I can do now that I’m focused on only relying on myself. (While taking select freelance clients)

Now that we’re in the present day, I think this will be end of the actual “Illustration Journey” posts, but I still want to talk about publishing graphic novels, and what red flags to look for in clients. Thank you for reading all the way through. I really can’t believe I made it this far since taking an interest in this career, about eight years ago. Once again, if you had told me back then that this is where I’d be, I wouldn’t have believed you.

None of this would have been possible without the art and art-lover community. I can’t wait to show everyone what I have in the works. Thank you again!

<3 <3

Deb/Joey

This is Part 3.

Read Part 2

Read Part 1

Only a few days after graduation, I made a beeline to DC and settled in a cute room I found on Craigslist, about a half hour walk to the NPR Headquarters. I thought a daily walk would be nice, but this was before I realized how humid the area gets in the summer

Anyway, I could go on and on about my time at NPR. Working in the Training Team, forming bonds with the other interns, being at almost every Tiny Desk Concert (there were at least three a week, sometimes every day), in which employees were permitted to sit in, assuming their hour was meeting-free.

The Training Team (an extremely kind and warm group of people!!) exists at NPR to teach journalists and audio engineers, both inside and outside of the company, ethics, technique, reporting, etc. Seeing that they needed an illustration intern for their larger pieces, I was assigned to spend the summer working on those. I was still using colored pencils in my work, so I brought my set to my desk.

There was also a Visuals team, tasked with providing photography, illustrations, collages, etc for various Desks (or Teams), where I met the Visuals Intern Angela Hsieh, a recent grad from RISD. Illustration was also her specialty, so she spent her time providing those all over the org. Essentially, we were doing the same job, mine was focused on Training (and occasionally, I’d beg Emily Bogle (<3), one of the visuals editors, for an assignment outside the team too. It makes sense I have five houses in Capricorn)

And while this was not part of our jobs, Angela and I volunteered ourselves to live-draw the Tiny Desks as they happened in front of us. Bob Boilen, the creator, deemed us kinda-photographers and let us come in during soundcheck, which allowed us to get front row standing room every time!

These really tested us, as most of these Tiny Desks started and finished in less than 15 minutes, so we had to hit the ground RUNNING as soon as the artists stepped out of their green room.

My favorites were easily Yo Yo Ma, Khalid, Dave Matthews Band (no Band but he was up there for an hour).

But the most memorable one has got to be Mac Miller, who performed only a few months before his premature death. It was very human to see him goof around, a 26 year old guy at his core, slamming the tune to Africa by Toto with Thundercat on the piano, just minutes before his legendary performance.

He was extremely grateful for the illustrations that Angela and I scribbled, autographed our iPads (our Apple Pencils touched a LOT of celebrity hands that summer), and went about his day.

That September that same drawing was used for his obituary.

While I was drawing during work hours, I noticed that my energy was quickly depleting by 5pm. Editorial was hard work, it’s normal to expect the final within a week (similar to what I was doing before graduation)—and typically we’re assigned multiple jobs at a time. I quickly realized that using colored pencils as a medium for such a fast-paced industry wasn’t for me, so occasionally I’d go back to Procreate to crank out those finals.

For the first time since I pivoted to illustration, I felt myself burning out. Ed and I were discussing my first picture book pitch, which I planned on basing the Koi Girl drawings I did the previous summer. I managed to get some character designs, a few style tests, and a little extra.

But it was unbelievably hard to draw through work, walk a half hour home in the swampy heat, just to draw some more in my room until I fell asleep. I found myself using my iPad after 5pm less and less. Maybe I worked on two small freelance projects, but other than that, I started spending my nights playing Pokemon Sun and Moon and Animal Crossing New Leaf (had an extremely late start!) and reading the free advance copies I picked up from the NPR bookshelves.

I also spent some time sending thank-you emails to every Society of Illustrators juror from the student show, telling them how much the show changed my life, and some were happy to reply. (This is when I found out that Angie Alzona and Nat Andrewson were rooting for my piece). Kathy Lee, another juror, even invited me in to present my work to some art directors and designers at the Washington Post! Thanks Kathy!

By the end of the summer, I had a healthy array of work in both traditional and digital mediums. I finally got my foot into the door in the editorial industry. I packed up what I got in DC (but not without a new set of colored pencils from the Training Team!!) and headed to the Bay Area to begin my new job at LinkedIn.

—

A week into working at LinkedIn’s headquarters in Sunnyvale, CA, I could tell immediately that the work I will be doing will highly contrast what I was working in editorial illustration.

My job title was officially “Associate User Experience Designer”, reminiscent of the work I was doing at Linkedin as an intern. But really I was tasked to make product illustrations in the Design Systems Team when I expressed a pivot into illustration the previous fall. a group of employees whose work lies in making the visual structure of LinkedIn dot com and all its products. Imagine the icons, typeface, how the buttons look, the number of pixels that are between each post: those were all decided by a Design Systems team. The other product designers in the company would go to us to make sure every rule was followed before sending it to their software engineers to implement.

A typical product illustrator’s job would be to fulfill illustration “requests” from other teams. LTS (LinkedIn Talent Solutions) wants an illustration for a signup page? A product illustrator would make sure that one is necessary (as opposed to just text) before spending about a month making sketches, iterations, color iterations, along with other illustration requests in their queue.

You can’t even begin to compare product illustration with most other illustration work. Someone whose background is in game concept art would not be a good candidate for a position like this. That is, unless they understand UX design, working in vector and in a max 500 pixel-wide canvas, and following the company style guide to the exact pixel. Using your wrist to create brushstrokes isn’t something most product illustrators do, it’s more clicking points with one finger and adjusting bezel curves with another. Making sure that it’s readable from a phone.

The illustration style of these tech companies, notoriously known as “Corporate Memphis”, works with some people! I’ve seen highly complicated, impressive work from others in the field. Many product illustrators continue their creative lives outside of work—making ceramics, printing personal projects on the risograph, and more. Some tech companies even have in-house screenprinting studios that all employees can take advantage of. Not to mention, the pay in these places typically match what a UX designer and software engineers make—I’ve seen some mid-level product illustrators make close to $200k/year. In contrast, editorial illustrators can expect to be paid $300 per illustration. (These rates have not risen with inflation since the 80s/90s by the way!)

Anyway, I’m not in this field anymore. My knowledge may be outdated, so I’ll stop here.

The Design Systems team at LinkedIn, when I joined in mid 2018, was deep into creating a new look for LinkedIn, which most users are familiar with today. Blue was being replaced with beige, icons were being scrapped of their outlines, and illustrations would be more prevalent in the LinkedIn products. My manager at the time, who I will call S, spent a lot of her time working on this, was the only other product illustrator in the company.

Anyway, life was fine! I’d wake up at 8:45, with Heather (my partner at the time), who moved to California with me to work at Google, walk 100 feet to the LinkedIn campus for free (delicious) breakfast until it closed at 9:30, and take one of their campus bikes a couple blocks to my building as Heather boarded a Google bus at a nearby stop. I’d tinker on maybe one or two illo requests on Adobe Illustrator for the whole day, occasionally grabbing a vanilla latte from their coffee bar. After work, I’d exercise in their gyms and eat their free (also delicious) dinners and walk the 100 feet back home. I’d shower, and spent the rest of the night working on whatever project, freelance or the picture book pitch.

In the meantime, I was getting used to the Bay Area. I’ve never lived around so many Asian families in my life, since my hometown in New Jersey was pretty WASP-y. I got really into my feelings about this, and brooded about how I could never have a proper conversation with my Korean grandparents, who didn’t speak English. I channeled this diasporic angst in a four-page comic over the weekend around October.

My following on social media wasn’t anything to balk at. I think I had around 3000, 4000 followers on Instagram and Twitter at the time. So when my comic started going around the Korean-American community on Twitter, I was shocked. Turns out Michelle Zauner, front woman of the band Japanese Breakfast, retweeted the comic, giving it a larger exposure than what I was used to. We also followed each other.

That Monday, I got an email from Ed, who saw my tweet taking off. He was pleasantly surprised that I could also do comics (honestly, me too. It was my longest yet) and was curious if I ever considered graphic novels, which I haven’t. Both of us saw potential in a graphic novel that related to this Twitter comic, so we agreed to shelve our picture book pitch and dive headfirst into working on a graphic novel pitch instead. We titled it In Limbo.

By the first week of December, I had a synopsis, fifteen “final” pages, and everything else we needed for a pitch packet. (If you want to learn more about graphic novel pitch packets, Victoria Ying, again!!!, has a great blog post that deep dives into this topic). The next week, we signed a triple book deal (from a pre-empt) with Connie Hsu at Macmillan: In Limbo, the picture book that I was working on, and a future, untitled graphic novel. (The two extra books were added on to sweeten the pot during the auction between other interested publishing houses) Connie was renown in picture books as well, so she was interested in working with me from both the First Second (comics) and Roaring Brook (children’s’) imprints. I had successfully shoved my foot in the door to the publishing world.

By the start of 2019, things weren’t looking so great at LinkedIn. S (my manager) and I were constantly butting heads and I had so little to do that I got in at 11am and left at 3pm with no one noticing. When I begged for more work and offered to help with the illustration requests, I was essentially told to stay out of the way. A lot of the work I was doing wasn’t really drawing at all; in fact, we were taking someone else’s illustrations (that LinkedIn had bought from Jamie Jones, an artist from the UK) and I was frankenstein-ing pieces together on Illustrator using the drag and rotate functions. Changing skin color, moving an arm here and there, etc. I was copying and pasting for a living.

Having little to do for a ridiculous amount of money would sound like a dream job; but I noticed in my work contract that everything I did, including works on my personal computer, even on weekends and after work hours, would be owned by LinkedIn. Any freelance illustration I would do would be effectively under their umbrella, including In Limbo. I was able to clear exceptions with the legal team, but having to do this all the time left me like a husk. When I looked even deeper, I realized that I would have to remain at the company for at least 12 months, otherwise I’d have to return $10,000 that I received as a signing bonus as a converted intern-to-full time. I had nine months to go.

Over time, things have soured so much with S that I reported her to HR for questionable remarks about queerness and her subsequent retaliation. I would cry during meetings, in the bathroom, even had a mental breakdown in front of my previous manager from my summer internship, asked me how I was during our catch up. I had to return to therapy. Heather was just as disillusioned about big tech, so much so that I vividly recall a night where the two of us were staring at the dark ceiling quietly crying ourselves to sleep, thinking about returning to work the following morning.

On September, Friday the 13th, a coworker typed into our team slack channel, “Happy 1 year anniversary Deb!”. The next message was from me: “Thank you! Actually, I just in put in my two weeks.”

I began working at Lyft the following Monday, after moving up to Oakland the day after my last day of work. I had secured this position for a six-month contract a few months prior, so I was eager to begin. Lyft HQ was in San Francisco proper, and being across the Bay Bridge, I commuted to work via the BART every morning.

Over all, Lyft was a better fit. Even though I had to figure out my own benefits and health insurance, I knew it was a good step into diving into freelance one day. I was actually making illustrations from scratch (still in vector, though), and was left in charge of designing the visual language of Lyft dark mode. My day was full and engaging. Best of all, I got along much better with my coworkers. I learned a lot during the time I was there—everything I spoke about product illustration is what I gleaned from my Lyft experience.

However, it was during this time where I finally realized that product illustration, while high-paying and fun in its own way, just wasn’t for me. This was hard to see at my previous job, where I was so bogged down with my work relationships and couldn’t understand what my role there fully entailed.

A few months prior, around the summer of 2019, I was offered a new book deal, this time a co-creation project with Harper Collins with picture book author Tina Cho, who was looking for an illustrator for her graphic novel, then titled “The Tune without Words”, a historical fiction about children escaping North Korea in 2013. The editor, Carolina Ortiz, found me on Twitter (my audience was growing), and found me to be a good fit for the project. After I pitched some character designs and fully-rendered spreads, I was given the job.

With this book, In Limbo, and the multiple freelance projects that started to roll in, I was overwhelmed. It seemed like more came from Instagram and Twitter as my following escalated, which was a good problem to have. This is what I wanted in college—to do a bunch of freelance projects while maintaining some kind of stability.

However, it was taking a toll on my mental health. I wasn’t really spending time with anyone besides Heather in the periphery. Perhaps I saw a friend once every few months—I didn’t have many friends in the East Bay. All my free time outside of work was dedicated to the books and my editorial assignments.

My regular weekday schedule would look like this:

• 8:30am: wake up and commute to work

• 5:00pm: leave work

• 5:45pm: arrive back home

• 6:15pm: exercise, shower

• 7:00pm: cook, eat dinner, wash dishes with Heather

• 8:00pm: start freelance work

• 2-3:00am: go to bed

• 8:30am: wake up, start over

My regular weekend schedule:

• 10:00am: wake up and work

• 12:00pm: eat lunch while working

• ~2pm: exercise

• 3:00pm: work some more

• 7:00pm: eat dinner w Heather

• 8:00pm: work again

• 2:00am: go to bed

In December, I had a check in with my Lyft manager. Even though we were only halfway with three more months to go in the contract, the fiscal calendar had us divide up the timeline. My contract would renew to complete my role from January to March, with options to go full time (if I remember this correctly).

While I enjoyed my team, I knew that the kind of work I was doing wasn’t as fulfilling as the books, the drawings I was doing on Procreate, not to mention the little sleep I was getting. And luckily, I had money saved up from LinkedIn, Lyft, with an extra chunk from the advances that the two book deal brought in stashed in my bank account. If I didn’t get any work at all through the following year, I would be fine. So I quit.

You can read about being a full-time freelance illustrator and developing my style in Part 3.

Hi, this is my first substack! This one is for the students, new grads, and new professionals in the industry who are curious, in need of insight, or content for a certain school assignment that involves a cold email. I’m gonna be extremely thorough for you guys, but I hope this helps everyone regardless of their career level!

Part one covers: building my first ever illustration portfolio, getting a literary agent, and being offered an illustration internship

—

It’s 2025,

and if you told me in 2017 that I would be in the place where I am now in the tail end of my 20s, with a gold and silver medal from the Society of Illustrators, a French book tour, a Tokyo residency, a billboard in NYC, comic industry awards and nominations, two graphic novels (and more on the way!), AND a shiny silver sticker on my debut book under my belt, I would never believe you.

Because in fall 2017, no one was responding to my cold emails, all 100 of my promo postcards were sent back (You can’t send vertical postcards with just one stamp), and I felt incredibly behind thinking about all the illustration seniors at RISD, who’ve been at it for four years already. I was desperate to leave my career trajectory of working in big tech and pursue illustration. I only got started three months ago and now we’re about to graduate. Knowing that RISD was the other option I could have chosen, I felt like an idiot.

In retrospect though, I was much further ahead than I thought eight years ago. One of which was financial stability, which afforded me high quality portfolio classes that guided me into Carnegie Mellon University and RISD, both schools with hefty price tags that I didn’t even need to take out a school loan for. Carnegie Mellon (CMU) is widely recognized for its pipeline from undergrad to Silicon Valley, which got me the six-figure job offer at LinkedIn that was waiting for me post-grad. If all else failed, I had a cushion to fall back on. I estimate that without these circumstances, it would take me several years longer to “catch up”.

Anyway. I disclose all this to dispel any myth of the illustration world being a complete meritocracy.

—

Now it’s 2017,

and I deleted my design portfolio to make room for a new website just for illustration, which was blank save for maybe four illustrations that I completed in the last several months. Two of them were the first pieces I did on my brand-new iPad, which I bought over the summer with my internship money from LinkedIn. The other two were done on Photoshop during the last month of my junior year, the first serious illustrations I did in a year or two.

The School of Design at CMU didn’t require drawing skills, so I just stopped trying and told myself I don’t need to draw again. Most students in my design studio weren’t serious about illustration, so I thought it was a me problem. Turns out I was just in the wrong place—I wasn’t as excited about typography, branding, and UX design like everyone else.

I think it was around that September when I realized that someone I did precollege with, Ariel Davis, was now a successful freelance illustrator. I had no idea that was something people could do outside of the tech world (I had previously connected with Alice Lee, an illustrator mostly in tech at the time, who graciously met up with me over the summer to talk shop). After some digging and a facebook message to Ariel, I was given several names to look at, such as Kenny Wroten (now a friend), Armando Veve, among many others.

Another suggestion was to experiment and try something new, because it seemed clear that I was heavily influenced by Victo Ngai (true because I found her work on Pinterest and became addicted) and James Jean (I did not know who that was at the time). A CMU alum, Samia Ahmed, sent me the link to the podcast Your Dreams My Nightmares by Sam Weber, which opened up a new world for me. Who’s who, names to know, annuals to submit to, etc.

A probably-unhealthy addiction

I don’t think I’ve had an obsession as deep as this one. Finding my “style”, getting illustration jobs, pouring through every American Illustration annual I could find, running straight to the scant illustration section at the university library after senior studio ended at 4:20pm. Because I knew nothing about the industry, the protocol, the jobs that existed, the way to email art directors, what art directors were, I had to rely on myself for all the detective work. I looked up artists in these annuals at the library, found their Instagrams, and took notes on their clients, agents, scholarships, etc.

There was even a while where the first thing I’d look at in the morning, and last thing I’d scroll through before bed, were illustrations on Pinterest. When I closed my eyes the kinds of drawings that I just learned were possible flashed in the dark. I was amazed how wide and weird and varied styles can be past what I would see on Instagram and Twitter.

Second school

My portfolio expanded rapidly over that fall semester. While I was doing my design projects, I was working on mock illustration assignments that the School of Design’s photo professor Dylan Vitone would give me every Monday. Sketches due Wednesday, final due the following Monday. Of course, this was not for any school credit. It was just a self-directed test to see if I can handle an editorial assignment (the industry I wanted to break into) per week. I did my Inktobers during HCI lecture and doodled through Senior Research Studio. My Friday nights were spent being a remote studio assistant for Alice, where I’d help her with her client projects through the evening. Seeing all the assignments an illustrator can do, I’ve never wanted something this badly in my life.

I had a taste of a professional commission when I was reached out by Procreate, my primary drawing software. Earlier in the summer, they featured my illustrations on their socials, and after some back and forth, they offered a job to do a demo piece for their next update launching in the following summer. It came out the following June.

And over the months, my portfolio grew piece by piece. By finals season, I had an entire array of work ready.

Fucking around and finding out

Over winter break, I started trying traditional media, specifically posca paint markers and colored pencils, as I was inspired by both Kenny and Ariel’s work. I purposefully made my work a little weird, using more graphic shapes, seeing how far I can push compositions. Over January I did a virtual plein air every day to exercise my digital rendering.

When I came back, I was more determined than ever to experiment. I was taking a screenprinting class over at the School of Art that taught us how to use the risograph machine, making posters for my friends’ senior music recitals, and continuing my figure drawing classes at the School of Drama. At this point all my work was exclusively traditional, save for my senior capstone. I got away with doing a more-illustration-focused project, a picture book proof of concept for a friend of one of my capstone professors. I was even “officially” registered to do an independent study with Dylan, where I was making a Life of Pi series with colored pencils, which I sent to the Society of Illustrators Student Show. (No one from CMU has ever applied, so I had to register our university for the Society’s records. Normally the professor has to pick out the pieces to send, but Dylan just gave me his email address to use lol. Thanks Dylan!)

Things were looking a little bleak for me. Granted, in retrospect, it didn’t take me that long to get my foot in the door since it was only six months when I made the decision to pivot, but good god I was (and still am) so impatient when it came to career goals. I sent out at least 200 postcards to art directors in the mail, hand lettering and calligraphy-ing each one with a specific style. I emailed professional illustrators for advice. No one responded. (This is why I try to email everyone back nowadays) I wasn’t shortlisted for any of the professional competitions I entered.

But I knew I was a good draftsman, so I kept experimenting with weirder ways to draw, even if it turned my brain into jello. On a personal level, I ended a long-term, long-distance relationship with my first boyfriend, and a week later, blacked out and fell down a flight of stairs, landing me in the hospital (I was discharged a few hours later)

March 2018

For a long time I called this week my ~Miracle Week~ because three pivotal moments happened in this order:

1- The Society of Illustrators emailed us back! One of my Life of Pi drawings not only made it to the student show, but got one of the highest scholarships available. I was ecstatic!!! I was to appear in their museum for the reception that May among other illustration students. (I found out much later that two of the jurors, Angelica Alzona and Natalie Andrewson, now also peers, fought tooth and nail for my piece to receive the scholarship :))

2- I received an interview for the NPR Illustration internship, and was subsequently offered for a summer position before my start date at LinkedIn. I was doubly ecstatic for this one. Not only was this specific position a very rare foot in the editorial illustration industry, but it was paid, for students and recent grads only, and comes once in a blue moon when NPR has the need and the budget. I saw so many professionals and basically every RISD and MICA student sharing interest online in that one role. Dylan and I sat down together to make the best resume and cover letter possible. I made my documents as typographically appealing as I could, pixel pushing for hours. Turns out that made the application stand out. Graphic design works!

3- After seeing a feature of my winning Life of Pi drawing on the Society of Illustrators twitter account, a literary agent sent me an offer of representation. Was I interested in drawing picture books? I never thought of that route since I was so editorial-pilled, but I didn’t see the harm in trying. I did some cross-checking and learned that Ed Maxwell, an agent from a very reputable agency, was in the business for eight years at that point. But still, I didn’t understand what representation meant, so I asked one of my studio professors, the only one in my department with past illustration experience.

Oddly enough, my professor told me I wouldn’t graduate when I asked her for advice on working with a literary agent. Her argument was that because our university “owns [your] work” according to the enrollment contract, it will conflict with the literary agent, who allegedly will also “own [your] work”. I was shocked, but believed her.

I called Ed immediately to tell him what I was told. After a moment of shocked silence on the other end of the line, we decided to pick back up on work once I graduate in May. He had never heard of such a policy, which got me suspicious. I even mentioned this to my academic advisor, who denied this rule. Students are allowed to be agented. Literary agents do not own any work. There is even no contract involved. No one is bound to anyone or anything. (You can learn more about finding a literary agent —specifically for graphic novels—from this great blog post by Victoria Ying)

The professor never found out what my academic advisor said. I concluded that she, who began her career as an illustrator and pivoted to design, must have either been severely misinformed at best, or attempted to sabotage me at worst.

Five years later, I run into her when I am back on campus for my In Limbo tour. She says she’s proud of my successes. I thank her and smile politely.

(Ed and I have been working together for seven years)

Some things I took with me:

1. Illustration is not a meritocracy. It’s having the money, the time, and the luck, all at the same time.

2. Simultaneously though, sometimes really putting what you’ve got because you *want* to, can get you further than someone who’s doing the same thing just because they *have* to.

3. Postcards and cold emailing are *hard* to get answers from. Social media tends to work better (or at least it did in 2018. These days I can’t be sure! I’m hoping postcards, or any tactile, traditional media, come back)

4. Look beyond the zone of what’s available and/or trending on Instagram and Twitter. Pinterest was such a great way to see what can be done (at least it was before AI started spreading into it)

5. Some opinions are just bad.

WOW this was long, so if you made it this far, thank you for reading!

Next time I cover illustrating at NPR vs LinkedIn vs Lyft and getting the In Limbo book deal. See you soon! You can read Part 2 here.