How I became an Illustrator

I joined the SCBWI facebook group for SE Idaho a year ago. I hadn’t written or illustrated a book at that point. I hadn’t even become a SCWBI member.

I was still a student at BYU-Idaho pursuing my bachelor’s in illustration.

Student Artwork by Rebeckah Gerstner

In an introductory post I kept re-writing and re-writing my personal labels. Should I say I’m a student? A soon-to-be-illustrator? A wanna-be?? That’s what I felt like. I had made my own 90+ chapter comic, wrote a multi-year blog on manga illustration and was an assistant teacher for the arts classes at my university. I had even done short picture book projects for school. So I had illustrated something.

So, it hit me. Despite my imposter’s syndrome, I was an illustrator. And to take it a step further, I could illustrate picture books.

This reminds me of Emily of New Moon, a book and a girl adjacent to Anne of Green Gables and by the same author, being quizzed at a new school:

“Then what can you do?” said the freckled-one in a contemptuous tone.

“I can write poetry,” said Emily, without in the least meaning to say it. But at that instant she knew she could write poetry. And with this queer unreasonable conviction came—the flash!

So I wrote that I was an illustrator and I was an illustrator of picture books.

Picture Book Illustration by Rebeckah Gerstner

And that is how I became an illustrator. I just told myself I was one.
Within a month of that comment on Facebook, and after a few rounds of portfolio reviews, I had my first 2 picture book contracts with independently publishing authors.