Considering a job as an Illustrator? This article will explain the variosu job roles for illustrators and where you can start looking for employment.

An illustrator is an artist who makes fine art illustrations for books, magazines, and other forms of printed materials. Illustrations are commonly done in pencil, pen and ink or watercolours and can require a skill in fine art as well as graphic design.

The main areas for employment as a illustrator are:

Mechanical Illustrators:
This is a specilist job role, commonly mechanical illustrators work exclusively in pen & ink creating black and white images that are then reproduced in low cost product catalogues for a hardware store perhaps, or for product instruction manuals etc. To work as a mechanical illustrators you need to have great accuracy and enjoy attention to detail. The reason there is such a significant need for mechanical illustrators, is becuase reproducing photos of manufactured items often doesn't clearly show detail well wnough, a fine black & white illustratiojn is far suprioer and can be reproduced at low cost, at a small size and still be clear.

Article Illustrators:
People employed as article illustrators are required to create artwork to accompany an article, commonly a magazine or a newpaper article. Here you may find yourself creating a creative paper collage, reproduced in the magazine to accompany an environmental article perhaps. Or you may have to creatively illustrate statistical information to accompany an article about current financial trends.
 
Book Illustrators:
Often someone working as a book illustrator will illustrate childrens books. This job role entails coming up with and presented a story board for approval, one which matches the theme of the book and the various page layouts. Once approved you'll creat interesting creative illustrations of any kind to accompany the story.

Storyboard Illustrators:
This is a specialist job found with-in the film and entertainment industries, where by working with a film producer, or set director you may be employed to interprate a stroy line and evolve it into images, scenes and sets that are then again interpretated and given life by actors and set designers. 

Employment summary
To have a career as an illustrator besides good drawing skills you don't really need any special qualifications, although an experiece in fields such as: Graphic Design can be an advantage all you essentially need is a good portfolio of work that matches the job role you are going for.