Working in Home Studio with Children

A Day in the Life of an Illustrator

Five years ago I decided to "officially" work full time from my home studio as an artist. I had many previous jobs that allowed me to get the experience needed to handle most anything that a client would need. My plan was to start a family after work started to pick up and the money-flow was even. For the most part, all of this has happened just the way I imagined it.

Throwing children in the mix of working in the studio has been an eye opener! My daughter was born in August of 2006 (Yes, she's sneaking up on her 3rd birthday and very excited about it). In December of that year, I was offered a "guaranteed print" picture book for children. The time frame was disgustingly quick with a fast turn around. When I started the project, Hannah was 4 1/2 months old. This was relatively easy to manage because she was still sleeping quite a bit and needed bottles. The swing provided sufficient entertainment as I worked my hands to the bone one room away! After the project was finished, I had some brief time where I was able to get Hannah down for naps which provided me a good chunk of time to be productive. By the time she turned 2, naps were history. I never saw it coming! Suddenly my quiet work time had been ripped away and I was looking for anything to entertain my child so I could work! I spent about 8 months in utter frustration "trying to work" while Hannah was crawling all over me and needed stories, juice, diaper changes, walks, you name it! My freelance jobs were slipping away and I felt like I was drowning in stress and straining to see the pin-hole light at the end of the tunnel. What in the world was I thinking? All of a sudden, I became jealous of the people that went to an office to work because it meant they were uninterupted and could get their job done in fewer hours. Hmmm. Obviously, I needed the same thing.

About the time I made the decision to transition to children's illustration, instead of graphic design, my husband and I had a talk about how to get this mess to iron out. What was going to happen if I got a big book deal like the one before? A long story short - we decided that I needed to hold morning and night office hours and take afternoon off to get errands run, the house cleaned, etc. It seems to be working better, however it has taken some time to make the transition.

So far, I have learned this: No matter how hard things get in your life, if you make a few adjustments, there will be a way to make it work a little better. AND - just when you get into a nice, comfortable routine, it's all going to change and you have to adjust AGAIN!!