The Early Career Path of a Fishing Illustrator

The cover of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s Summer Ballet album, designed by Fish Face founder Troy Thomas

Part two of a series)

Fish Face takes pride in offering original and unique designs on all our products. But founder Troy Thomas didn’t go straight from art school to drawing a school of fish. After deciding on art as a career path, he spent several years working at a textbook publishing company and as an award-winning freelance illustrator before he opted to focus on fishing and outdoor art. In part two of the series, Troy talks about the early years of his career as an illustrator and what led him to start Fish Face.

During my time at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, I really began to take graphic design and illustration seriously. As a senior, I began receiving assignments through the department head. I produced the design and illustration work for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra's Summer Ballet album (Yep, I said album. I'm dating myself.).

During my last semester, the school bought two Apple computers for the graphic design department! I was given a great opportunity to be one of the first to use the new Apple computer for a freelance illustration job. It took some logistical juggling back in 1984 to get a digital illustration off (or out) of a computer. We had to recruit the photography department to turn the graphic design department into a darkroom to be able to shoot the image I had drawn on the screen. Those of you who are old enough, you may remember the Dire Straits music video for the song Money For Nothing. Computer animation back then was just a series of large pixels to create images. The human face I drew for my freelance assignment was just huge pixels. It was for the cover of a corporate report.

Also during my last semester, I was an intern at Playboy (their headquarters were based in Chicago in the ‘80s). My internship made me somewhat of a hero with my college and high school buddies, but I'm gonna go with "I only read the articles." Yes, it was a porn rag, and times have certainly changed since then. Seriously though, I never went to the floors where the "porn" side of the biz was conducted. I was an aspiring illustrator who didn’t want to be a traditional illustrator, and it was a great time to be there. I truly was focused on just the articles, and specifically the art that went along with them. Playboy often used fine artists to illustrate the articles. At the time, this was very cutting edge in editorial magazines. I held original works by Roger Brown, Patrick Nagel, LeRoy Neiman and Andy Warhol. Say what you will about the overall theme of Playboy; as a young artist, it was mind blowing to work there.

After I graduated from college, I worked a series of jobs (I spent one day working at an art supply store and also worked as a waiter and a handyman). I finally landed a job as a commercial artist at McDougal Littell, a middle school textbook publishing company. It was a good place to sharpen my skills as a graphic artist and helped provide for my young family (Drew, our first child, was just born). I also got to illustrate a little. Learning how to work with art directors was super helpful as I began to show my portfolio around Chicago's small editorial magazine scene. I eventually got assignments from Ad Week, Playboy, Outside Magazine, The Chicago Tribune and Sun Times.

This was the illustration that got me into American Illustration. I admit I was excited and proud to be chosen. The piece was commissioned by The Wyatt Company entitled “Striking the Right Chord” for American Business.

It took about two years, but I finally was getting enough freelance illustration commissions that I couldn’t keep up with both, and I left my job at McDougal Littell. I developed an illustrative style with pastels that incorporated swirls as a motif. No matter what the subject matter, swirls were somehow always incorporated into the composition. I continued my illustration career for another 11 years. I won a few national awards (I traveled to New York, where I was acknowledged for having my work published into the book American Illustration). My work appeared regularly in national magazines and papers like the Washington Post, New York Times, Business Week, and Time Magazine as well as in the corporate communications of AT&T, Motorola and Sears.

This piece I did for a Motorola communications brochure led to quite a few assignments for me. It ultimately led to a commission to do portraits of the founders Paul and Joseph Galvin for their bibliography published in 1990.

A series of corporate brochures. Once again you can clearly see the use of swirls as a stylistic element in my style.

After 11 years of doing the same style (and sometimes the same assignment) over and over again, I became bored and looked to move in a new direction. In 1996 Fish Face was spawned!