Is illustration a creative job?

Is illustration a creative job?
Oh yes! But creativity isn’t always where you expect it to be.

Let’s begin with the rather debatable assumption that work is whatever brings in income, and take a look at the structure of my income using June of this year as an example. Why not July? Because in July, 100% of my income came from teaching, and that’s not really typical.

I should mention that since 2015 I’ve been carefully recording every bit of money that comes in, down to the second decimal place (while recording absolutely none of my expenses — why would I, it would only make me sad!). So looking at the structure isn’t difficult.

Money counts as earned when it arrives in my hand (which is rare, almost never), in my bank account, or on PayPal.

June means money that arrived between June 1st and June 30th, even if I delivered the commission in January or will teach the prepaid lesson in September.

Also, unfortunately, I still haven’t developed the habit of immediately subtracting VAT, so until the moment I have to part with it (February 2027), I keep thinking of that money as mine. Which is a mistake — VAT is 6% on illustrations, 12% on original artwork, and a whopping 25% on teaching, which is quite noticeable.

So what did my income consist of?

In June, and this is a fairly typical distribution:

38% freelance illustration commissions

6% selling original artwork

56% teaching

Also, after rounding, 0.01% of my income from books sold on Amazon disappeared (every time I do the bookkeeping I wonder whether this astonishing amount is worth the effort of recording it).

How much of all this is creative work?

About 100%.

But different parts of my brain are involved, and that’s probably both the greatest joy and the greatest stress of my job.

It seems that the most obvious creativity is drawing itself: I take out a sheet of paper, pour water into a jar, and sit there with my brush at the ready. In other words, illustration commissions.

Not at all.

In a way, that’s the most routine part of my work. I keep walking the same familiar paths over and over again and, honestly, get annoyed with myself because of it, thinking I’m not a Real Artist.

What I absolutely love about illustration commissions, though, is the negotiation stage with clients — building that bridge of communication that starts out fragile and later becomes solid. The art of understanding, and the art of explaining things so that I, in turn, am understood. I get so happy when communication is beautiful, when everyone understands each other correctly and openly enjoys that fact.

A picture or a book is born as a result, of course, but to me that’s almost a side effect of that beautiful interaction. That’s where the real creativity lives.

Teaching — the lesson itself — is more creative for me than drawing, and I love my lessons more than my pictures. But even more than the lessons, I love everything around them: all those wonderful conversations with parents about rescheduling classes, the feedback, meeting new children and parents for the first time. I love those things even more than the regular lessons in the middle of the year (although we don’t have nearly enough of those for them to become routine, and honestly, every lesson still feels like the first one).

I often think it would probably be a good idea to delegate the course management. My colleague Katya, for example, is an absolutely brilliant organizer and manager and would probably do a better job than I do.

But I don’t want to.

I genuinely enjoy doing it myself.

Advertising, on the other hand, I would happily delegate. It’s also a very (perhaps too) creative process, but I have no idea to whom or how.

Selling finished artwork is nothing but creativity, because once again it’s all about communication and inventing new ways to tell people why they need exactly this particular cow.

One thing is absolutely clear: no one has ever needed any cow without personal interaction. Selling artwork requires my 100% presence, whether in person or online.

People don’t need pictures.

People need stories, and only stories.

Or perhaps (says that annoying little voice inside me) I should simply paint things that look nicer in interiors.

But then we’re back to that other kind of creativity — the quiet one with a blank sheet of paper and a brush ready to go.

And that’s not really the kind of creativity I’m particularly good at.