What are some good careers for someone who loves to draw and is working on a portfolio for colleges?

Question

I need job ideas for a student who is interested in art, mostly realistic work.
Are the Art institutues a good place to attend? or should I go to another college instead.Im a senior, and the nearest art institute is is New York City, I want to go to the Las Vegas institute of art but I don't know what its like there and if Las Vegas is a good place to live.

Answer 1

I think advertisement for companies might be a great job. Had I not chosen nursing, because I'm an artist too, I would have gone into advertisement. However, I didn't know if I myself, could make it. I knew I could at nursing.
Check out schools of art in the place where you want to live online first then decide. I wish you the best of luck.

Answer 2

The art field is a tough one. It can be quite competitive and job security can be a pipe-dream. But if this doesn't scare you off, then here are some options.

Portrait Artist (this is what I currently do).
A very competitive market for the high end money (thousands of dollars per portrait), but if you price to the midline price market (in the hundreds) you can stay pretty busy. To make a decent hourly wage you will need to work fairly quickly and keep a steady influx of clients with midline pricing though. To really get a great feel for what a portrait career is like, I highly recommend that you look at the Stroke of Genius website. It is the premiere portrait artist website. There is a forum associated with it that you can link to from their sidebar. You will not be able to post until you pass a juried board of approval, but you can read the posts and not be juried in. You will learn a lot about portraiture in terms of creating it as well as what the field is like from a career standpoint.

Illustration (I used to do this before I had kids):
Illustration is a very diverse field. Some branches of it can be very high pressure and intense, others are relaxed and let you have much more freedom to paint what your own instincts suggest. Book illustration is probably the less stressful. The deadlines are fairly long. Advertising is often very intense with tight deadline and you have to be able to paint almost anything well and fast. Magazine illustration, typically freelance not staff, is pleasant. I was staff illustrator for an equine magazine. It was great. I got to draw what I loved to draw, but I would never be able to live off of it alone.

Teaching Art:
Accept it. It is steady with good medical and retiremnet benefits, it has lots of holidays, but you will be abolutely the expendable crewman. Expect to get all the non-art duties that other more important teachers can pass off to you. None the less, if you love kids and like to teach it can be very rewarding all politics aside.

Answer 3

There is medical illustration for like text books, not for the squemish. Illustration for children's books can be realistic. You can also go into business for youself as a person that does professional portraits, I've heard that can be very lucrative. Advertising is good too.