@scholarme you sound like me a number of years ago. Optimistic for your kid, wanting them to pursue a profitable angle and needing advice. Fast forward to today and I’m the parent of an illustration about to go into his “1st senior year” or “2nd junior year” as I call it because he’s going to take 5 years to graduate.
My advice at this stage is to not get too wrapped around the axle over income potential. There is plenty of money to be made by highly skilled, well trained, networked, educated and passionate artists of almost any field. Let your kid develop as an artist without trying to control the direction while at the same time maximizing your kid’s exposure to the various aspects of the field.
Encourage her to sketch, sketch and sketch.
Encourage her to draw from observation as much as is possible.
Put her in art classes in the local area - look at university weekend and summer programs and portfolio development classes.
Let her work one on one with an art instructor.
Never force any of this. Art may not be her passion after all.
There is much more you can do but this is enough to get going. Her talent and drive will let you know when you need to do more. My epiphany came when an art teacher said we can’t teach your son anymore, you need to go to ____. This teacher gave us a couple places to go to develop our son’s talent.
As you should, occasionally plug some artistic areas that may complement her other goals - a photographer for national geographic gets to travel, for instance.
I’ve found the journey as a parent of a creative kid to be fun, exciting and thrilling as well as emotional, rocky and difficult on different levels. The critiques get harder and harsher as they move up to higher levels. They have great days and crappy days, ups and downs and one distraction after another. Add the challenge of being so creative in a world that’s obsessed with checking the right boxes in order to get ahead. My son just wants to color in those boxes