Try to market yourself to design/ad agencies. They always need contractors and have a huge network of clients that need professional work and have the budget for it. I'm currently on salary (working remotely, though), but almost all the work I've ever had came through my connections from a 2 year stint I did at a design firm. If you're in a large city it should be easy to find some industry events to check out (AIGA events are a good place to start). I always had a lot of luck selling my developer skills to designers, and selling my design skills to developers.