Clare Owen

Artist Clare Owen gave a talk to us about her practice, as an illustrator and the many mediums that she works in.

At first she talked mainly about what can benefit us such as having a job and a shared apartment so that it becomes cheaper to support yourself when you are still new to the illustration world.
Owen worked in LUSH design studios and that allowed her to dress the store front, allowing herself to subtlety get her work out there even if she was working in a non artistic position at the time.

Owen used on-line platforms such as Blogger and Tumblr to consistently display her work and submit her work to competitions. This is where she got her breakout in the tiger print competition where she was freelancing more due to an increase in her popularity and was able to set up an Esty and freelance more. This led to big name brands such as urban outfitters wanting to stock her work.

Clare was offered a place in a small studio working with conical books , having being in charge of her own brief. she was working next to Tom Frost and Ben Newman having the experience of many older artists in the studio was both an threatening and interesting experience.

Her next job was when she signed with an agency and was more focused on making work, she felt that she grew a lot as an illustrator in that time, she diversify her portfolio more working for magazines, cards, and interior design.


She then talked about licensing  and interacting with other people and how she's delt with it in the past.
licensing can effect your ability to sell you work, and you may lose rights to your images depending on the contract, the contract may be on a royalty basis, or maybe on a one time basis.
it is also important to check if the company has the rights to change your image as they may modify it.

She tells us the importance of meeting real people face to face and treating everyone as an opportunity to get a new client, you don't know where new people might lead you in life.