To have lost my profession, my calling.

[LichenLights]

I am (or was) an illustrator of 28 yrs. Mostly self employed, lows and highs, but many, many highs!
Around 4 yrs ago I just lost it.
I recall feeling dug out by it and as if on a conveyor belt, so much competition, and then feeling like my work was crap. I am not famous at all, but was moderately successful for most of those years - working with pretty big companies, record labels and novelists.

What bothers me, apart from the massive drop in income, is why I don't just 'do it' anymore. I just did it by nature previously, from my teens onwards, I never had to think about it. I was multimedia, so embraced digital, traditional and video. I never had a social media following but had a lot of work and many different styles.

I just never pick up the pencil or the digital pen now. I thought it might be stress, as I lost my parents at that time, but nothing else has gone awry. So it it was stress related, why just this?

I am living on savings and need to find a regular job, but the loss of that income is huge.

I am happy to move on without it if I have to (maybe), but it feels stupid to ignore it as if it never happened either. This was my profession, and now I feel like a fake or a fraud.

I guess I will be crying into a void here, maybe it's a little too 'niche', but I would love to return to it, yet every time I think of doing it I freeze, or I can't even think of what to do. It feels foreign to me, and that makes me feel even more fed up. I an't even think of where to start.
I tried changing things up for years but nothing worked:(

Is it time to cut ties completely or try to work it out?

Thank you <3

It is like a huge part of me has fallen asleep. I do think it is confidence. The market is definitely more watered down these days but many do very well.
I was lucky to be able to work in a mix of media and styles, and still have a list of companies I was going to contact - but then I recall how I never used to have to and they came to me.

It's a tough industry, but very lucrative when working well. That is the hardest thing to lose.

Yes it is like grief, one following the other...

Your work is beautiful. If you're out in nature hiking, what about taking up landscape or macro photography?

Oh wow, that is so interesting - I have the same thing as you called aphantasia (loss of mind's eye) and mine is because of my head injury and post concussion syndrome a decade ago. I used to have a really vivid and amazing imagination and mind's eye before I banged my head. It was absolutely devastating to lose it, along with my ability to read and write straight after my head injury (not great for an editor and journalist!)

I've never got over it really, and i too struggle with reading fiction, even though I wss an avid reader before. It's kind of broken my heart in some ways 💔

You're literally the first person who's said they have a similar experience 😢

I second the recommendation for the book The Artist’s Way. It will hopefully move you on from where you are now, even if it doesn’t get you back to where you were before.
In fact maybe thinking about being in a new place would be more helpful, rather than getting back to who you were then. Remember, it can take a long to find peace with grief.
If you try counselling try an Art Therapist if you can. Alternatively, try a course in an art medium you’ve not tried or used for a longtime. I believe your creative talents will spring again in some form. Have hope.

I have a BA in photography as well as fine art. I would love to make photo works with poetry, but can't see how that might earn me a living. I will definitely do this as a hobby though. I suppose I miss my 'work', my purpose and earnings. It is like having to start again as a teenager as I have no real transferable skills.

If my child had wanted to become an artist I would have told him/her to grow a 'sensible' career first. Oh how my teenage self would scoff at that!

I relate a lot to this, OP, especially as a,writer who lost my mind's eye after my head injury. It's like a part of me died in some ways. It was intrinsically linked to my creativity and being able to picture anything in my head was a true gift that I literally found contributed hugely to my reading and writing.

I get it, OP. It is so hard 😫

I love all your works. I think it's interesting, psychologically speaking, that your (wonderful) brooding half light paintings came before the light went out. What would happen if you tried creating night? Is it a fog or more an impenetrable darkness? Is there any pulse so to speak?

Apologies for forgetting to reply - I did 'the artist's way' years ago, it didn't help :(

i tend not to be able to consciously game my creativity like that. I know there's a huge market for it, but my mind won't work that way. It either creates, or it doesn't.

Your work is wonderful. You have a great talent. ❤️

This is so interesting, as I feel as though my visual to hand powers are done.
No injuries though.
I was reading about something similar a few months ago, how head injuries created changes in a person.Some good, as in gaining a new perspective or talent, and some that felt like a loss. That must be very frustrating.
Life can throw us a weird curve, and how we adapt to that is everything isn't it?

Not sure it's at all the same but when I was working in academia we were encouraged, if we weren't able to write, to write anything, literally anything for fifteen minutes, timed. After 15 minutes you stopped. I thought it was nuts to begin with but it did work after a few go rounds. Not sure what the creative equivalent is.

I just wanted to say, you will always be an illustrator. Even if you never pick up a pen again in your life. You have a huge body of work behind you - you will always have the right to call yourself a professional illustrator. You will always be a creator, someone who has created. No one can take that away with you.

An artist who only created a handful of works is still an artist. A writer who only wrote one or two books is still a writer, forever.

Even if you never find your way back to it, you should take pride in what you’ve done. We shouldn’t measure our value by our ability to constantly be productive.

Hi OP I have no suggestions about income but I completely understand about just not feeling it anymore. Illustration is hugely competitive, I think few people realise just how much. It’s not my area, but I do recall that many years ago I did a week’s summer school course at Central St Martin’s, when it still was that, and there were several people on that course who earned their living in the creative industries but had found that the way the different areas had developed, they had little opportunity for actual artistic creativity. The week was literally about the creative process. I’m not sure what you’re missing or wishing to rediscover but there is a creative urge in you and I wonder if you would like to get some of the quite fabulous books there are now on journaling, and creativity and just… play? Good wishes

Problem is, I spent a ton over the last 5 years on new media, tried mindful/mindless painting, new styles, just going with the flow, and every damn one of them was a disaster. Not just critically, but emotionally.

I think the hardest hing to admit is that I miss the money.
I could gravitate to writing poetry which I am far more attuned to these days, but my income loss has hurt me.

I miss being able to apply myself to my work and making a good living.

Maybe I need to move on, however hard that is financially, and begin again fro the ground up?

I am 50 now and past meno, my last period was at the age of 48. It could have a link but god knows.

I love this.

I do believe the brain is incredible and very neuroplastic... my brain has definitely been through a heck of a lot over the past decade and i think I'm proof that it can heal to an extent. Just the other night, I had a really brief very vivid vision of my mum in my mind, as though it might have been before my head injury. It essentially showed me a glimpse of how my neurons were kind of reconnecting lost connections between damaged cells, and occasionally they fired in such a way that they regained some previous functions.

I think it's a bit like getting over the loss of anything, OP. I'm so sorry you lost your DB - and I can relate to that too, as my DB died a few years ago 😢 Sending you a big hug ❤️

I’m at another point in this spectrum. I made some money with my art, started to push it to the front and get into the game. Very quickly hit a wall (the wall was me) and lost my voom. The only way I got it back was decoupling it from the money. I pay my bills doing something else and the artist came back. Still sell a bit here and there, teach sometimes, much much happier.

A timely response as I do feel like an interloper. A talentless hack. It was a few yrs ago when I last called myself an illustrator, and now it feels...sheepish. I suppose we call ourselves after what we 'do', and I no longer....'do'.

Those moody landscapes are beautiful!

How about life drawing classes? When I did these years ago it was 2 solid hours of work because it's all timed poses, so you have to get on with it, there's no time for chatter. The tutor walks around criticising everyone's work (constructively!) and reminds you how little time you have left to make you get on with it. I got more done in those 2 hours than the rest of the week.

The class included all levels from amateurs and A Level students to professional artists - but the main thing is the tutor makes you get on with it. Maybe something like this would kick-start your mojo again.

It will always be "you" though, OP. As i am always a writer, it was a calling I had from a very young age. My life was definitely in some form or other going to have something to do with writing, as I could literally feel it in the very essence of who I am.

But I won't ever be a novelist now, I don't think. My eldest DD is very much a truly gifted writer, and I see her fulfilling perhaps an ambition that I had but may never fulfill.

I was always lucky, I never created work for anyone else. For all of those many years I only ever worked on what excited me, and people were happy with that. I often wondered if they were insane

Landscape has definitely altered since the rise of social media, but even peole with over 30K followers are having to do tutorials as regular sales and jobs are scarce.

I never feared AI, although I am aware that many do.
I will share a fabulous, disturbing cat that I made on the youtube AI app now, god help you all

Absolutely love that wonky eyed cat lol.

Do you mind if i ask why though?
I was similar, excelled at writing at school, won poetry prizes and was considered to be destined to write. I gained more firsts at uni with my essays and critical writing than my actual 'art'.

I now prefer poetry, and would love to give in to that, but would have to recognise that it won't earn a living. The loss of a living is the hardest really. I envy people who don't have to create to survive!

I get this; I published a book then completely lost interest in writing anything else.

Then some traumatic stuff happened and I couldn't find a way to get it out, so I took up an instrument thinking I'd set lyrics to it; I haven't but it's a different kind of creativity which feels maybe even more satisfying.

My advice would be to do the design equivalent of free writing; ten minutes first thing in the morning, just draw without plan or expectation and see what comes.

I love your work.