How Your Illustration Business Can Help The Environment

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*Your art can help the environment. An article about illustrators helping the environment and not just drawing tigers!

*The world is full of problems that need solutions. Who cares about a few more trees cut down if it means we are living healthier lives?

*Someday, the last tree will be cut down and that is when we will realize the importance of trees. We will never see them for all the money they will bring us.

“There is a huge market for illustrators who want to be more social and help the environment. We have had a lot of requests for this kind of work, and it has made us realise that there are lots of opportunities out there.”

This was the last sentence in an article I read on the UK’s Computer Arts website. It got me thinking – how can we illustrators use our skills to help the environment?

The first thing to note is that this article isn’t about drawing animals or plants (unless they are endangered). And it also isn’t about creating adverts that show how your clients’ products contribute to saving the environment. This article is specifically about illustrating things that help the planet. The reason for this is that many artists have been asked to create a tiger, or a tree, or an elephant for some kind of advert. And, as you know, these animals and plants are not threatened with extinction – quite the opposite!

A few years ago, I received an email from an advertising company asking if I would be interested in illustrating some tigers for a children’s clothing company. I replied saying that I had no interest in contributing to the endangerment of tigers, but offered to illustrate endangered species instead. The client never replied to my email but ever

The illustration business is filled with people who love nature, love animals and are concerned about the environment. I know at least five illustrators who choose not to own a car, one of whom bikes everywhere.

I’m going to give you top-ten tips on how you can help the environment while also helping your illustration business. It’s not hard to be green!

1) Use recycled paper for your sketches and drawings. Most art stores carry recycled sketchbooks and drawing pads.

2) Try to print on both sides of the paper if possible. This saves trees!

3) Don’t use a toner when printing in black-and-white; use a laser printer instead. Laser printers don’t use toner, which are basically plastic nanoparticles that are just as bad for the environment as regular plastic bags.

4) Leave your computer on standby when you’re not using it. It uses only 1/5 of its energy when it’s on standby versus always being on full blast.

5) Print out digital copies of original art instead of scanning them into your computer if you can help it. The ink in most office printers is made from soybean oil, or glycerin in soybean oil, which is good for the environment (and

I was recently asked to contribute to a book about the impact illustrators have on the environment. It was a bit of a shock, since I’ve only thought about the environment in terms of what I can make money off of. But then I realized that there are many ways that illustrators can improve the environment (and help pay their rent).

Illustrators use paper, pencils, paint and computers. All of these things come from trees. Trees are a natural resource existing in limited supply. Some trees have been cut down so that people can have paper and computer monitors and pencils. And some trees have been taken out of the wild and replanted to provide wood for paper-making facilities. We need to be sure that our “tree products” are coming from managed forests, not clear-cut jungle.*

We should buy recycled drawing supplies where possible. Recycling is good for the environment everywhere, but it’s especially important in illustrator households since so many supplies are made from trees.*

Also illustrators use electricity, which is produced by burning fossil fuels. Although fossil fuel burning produces electricity in an efficient manner (and is therefore better than no electricity), it does create C02 and other gases which contribute to climate change. Illustrator’s should consider

Hi, my name is Andy. In 2006 I started a business called HireAndy.com, where illustrators can find work from advertising agencies and companies to illustrate their projects.

I’ve never been an environmentalist at heart, but when I was at university I managed to get my degree in graphics and illustration; and in the final year of my course, we were told about the environmental issues that occur through the disposal of unwanted vehicles.

As a responsible citizen, I believe that if I had known how much damage was being done to our environment through illustration, then I might have made some different decisions when it came to my university course choice.

So as someone who has benefited from illustration, it seems only right that HireAndy should start contributing to the betterment of our environment by offering those same benefits to those who want to do more for our environment.

Every time we receive a new project we will look into ways that we can use our illustrative skills to help advertise your company’s green credentials in a cost-effective way. This might include:

* Using recycled paper for printing and all our correspondence;

* Promoting companies who are doing their bit for the environment within our newsletters; or

* Producing illustrations that show your company’s environmentally

Artists often like to talk about how they are helping the world. But talking is easy; actually doing something can be hard. Here’s some ideas on things that you can do, right now, to help out with the problems we face today.

It’s too easy to think of environmentalism as a side issue for illustrators. The fact is that artists and illustrators have a unique role to play in bringing about change. I’m not just talking about the people who create the art for Greenpeace or The Nature Conservancy or other organizations that protect the environment. I’m talking about every artist and illustrator who chooses to make art with an environmental theme in one way or another.

Artists have a special power to communicate with people – especially young people – in ways that might not seem obvious at first but open up new vistas for thought and action. One of those ways is through illustration, either directly, or indirectly by using the power of visual imagery to convey messages and ideas.

In this article I’m going to talk about how your business can help with some of these issues, but it might also be useful to look at how you can do your own work as an individual artist or illustrator in a way that will help us all deal with these issues

Figurative art is a broad term for art that portrays the human form directly, such as sculpture and drawing. In this article I will try to convince you why figurative artists need to contribute to environmental efforts, and how they can do that.

Drawing humans is a difficult task. The artist has to create a recognizable image of something that we all see every day, but also must be original enough to stand out from other drawings of the same subject. And because most of us have been drawing since we were children, the viewer will compare your work to the thousands of images he or she has seen before. It’s no wonder then that many illustrators choose to draw animals and fantasy creatures instead of humans; it is much easier to get away with copying or tracing an existing image when portraying something like an elephant than when taking on a portrait of a person.

One thing that many people don’t think about when turning on their computers or lighting up their TV sets is where all these images come from. Most computers and televisions use LCDs (liquid crystal displays) as displays which contain mercury, while almost all TVs are made in China using lead and other toxic materials. Since the LCDs are made of glass, they must be shipped in large shipping containers which contain

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