I want to do illustration. I don’t know how to draw and I’m past my mid 20s. What should I do?

I answered this question for a Quora member yesterday. I’m posting it again here, as the response to my answer has been overwhelmingly positive.

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First of all I would chuck aside ANY anxiety about being in your mid 20s. This is irrelevant. Professional colleagues of mine have started in their teens, twenties, thirties, forties; after a whole career; after two careers. This part doesn’t matter one bit. A client couldn’t care less how old you are — just whether your work fits what they’re looking for.

Secondly I would look hard at what being an illustrator means. In a nutshell, it means to Someone who makes images to help sell, embellish, explain, decorate, highlight or communicate an idea, a text, story, product, song or concept. You’ll be working as what used to be called ‘a commercial artist’ — that is, your work will first and foremost be ‘doing a job’. The job of your illustration might be to decorate an eyeshadow box or whisky bottle. It might be to sit on the front of a greetings card. It might to explain a difficult idea — one that photography wouldn’t work very well for, for example — in a scientific magazine. It might be to draw readers into a short story in a magazine. Or it might be on a book cover, to get people to pick up that book and buy it, while giving juicy clues about the novel inside.