10 Years is a long time to take off from something you once loved to do. There were so many reasons for my leaving illustration and art behind. When you do anything all the time, you risk burnout, and one of the downfalls of being an illustrator is your creative profession can turn in to an assembly line. I burned myself out.

Also, technology, stock agencies, and recessions were devaluing illustration in the early 2000’s. Suddenly my custom illustrations were in competition with $5 stock art. We see this problem everywhere in fields that involve creativity. Now you can get a logo for $5. Some of us remember a different time. A time when individual creatives enjoyed the many hours of labor behind making something useful and beautiful, and were compensated with a livable wage.

Although my reasons for getting back in to illustration are personal, it is also nice to see this recent resurgence in illustration in new venues. Now we see illustrators selling illustrated products on Etsy. We see Patreon donors serially donating to illustrators who agree to provide a weekly illustration that they will one day provide as a compiled book. There are companies using illustration on their blogs, packaging, and collateral. Even though the field continues to be highly competitive, there seems to be more opportunity that a decade ago.

The past decade I have run a web and print design business called Schildbach Design, and still do. Although I do like providing web design for my clients, it demands more of my technical abilities and business sense, than it does my creativity. My web design business will certainly stay open for the foreseeable future, but I’m excited about bringing back making unique imagery in illustration.

I’m coming back to illustration with the spirit of why I originally did illustration in my 20’s. The reasons are multifaceted: Visual communication with a human touch. Telling stories. Feeling something from the art I create. Hopefully, getting others to feel something from the illustrations I create. Bringing beauty and soul back into our rushed and overly task driven lives.

It starts with the sketch I did of the vase of sunflowers I watched transform daily at the dinner table.