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?

I'm sensing something that I have often felt - that being paid for your work is the affirmation and validation that you actually ARE an artist - because someone is willing to pay for it - and not being paid isn't enough... and also your nostalgia for your parents' moral support... it's all validation coming from outside. And I get it, I really do!

Not to mention the very real need to be earning a living in a practical as well as emotional sense...

And yes, the pretty cottage studio that turns out to be financed by Freddie the Hedge Fund Manager that @crackofdoom mentions... 😂 A friend of mine has got her husband to make her a garden studio for her art, which is... horrible, horrible art... no one wants it or likes it but she still refers to herself as 'an artist', if that sort of schadenfreude cheers you up (it does me).

I have no answers, but just wanted to say: have you read Allie Brosh? Her first book, Hyperbole and a Half', is a hilarious 'cartoon' book about her early life; but her second, 'Solutions and Other Problems', is a - still funny - but also heart-rending and relatable work about her depression following the death of her younger sister... From a graphic design POV and a psychological one, they might be of interest to you...

You are hugely talented and it must feel as though you've lost an important part of yourself.
Lots of good ideas have already been posted but here's my twopenny worth.
I wonder if you need to dissociate art as work and art for pleasure. So pursue your other employment ideas, and volunteer in nature conservation to get that essential experience. Then maybe join a creative group but a completely different medium to anything you've done before. So maybe stained glass or printing, where you don't have the same expectations of yourself because you're a beginner.
And be very kind to yourself.

Reflecting on what you have said op I feel like a lot of your identity and feelings of self worth came from being an illustrator and being able to earn a good income from that. I don't think there's anything wrong with that but obviously if for some reason you can't do those things then your feelings of self worth/self confidence also take a battering. You also have been comparing yourself to other people and finding yourself lacking. Everyone will do that at some point in their lives but detaching your value as a person from your perceptions of how you 'should' be doing is important. I agree with PPs that maybe revisiting counselling might help. This can be an opportunity for new things to happen. You might want to start a vision board of where you'd like to be in two years time. Also it might help to recognise that where you are now - someone relatively young with a solid body of creative work under your belt and a track record of making good money from it - is a situation a lot of creative people would envy.

Have you looked at the Good Ship Illustration? They do lovely free timed drawing sessions, tonnes of them on YouTube where they do things like timed drawings using the wrong hand etc, the sort of exercises to get you back into the flow. They also have an online course called ‘find your freak flag’ which was created to help with exactly your problem, professional illustrators who have lost their way a bit or become disillusioned by the industry. Might be worth checking out?

Change doesn't have to be permanent. This is what I keep saying to myself every time I feel stuck. I have an arts degree and, as you, I reached the point where I just stopped picking up a pencil. Often due to stress and low mood. I know that creativity always gets me out of a tight spot but I just can't force myself to pick up the pencil when my mind is ruminating on something else.
So I told myself, "change is not permanent" and got myself a 9-5 job. It's the job that I love and with a lot of flexibility. So guess what I do now... every time I have a spare minute, I draw. I draw in my lunch break, I draw before and after work. I spend 6h a day outside of my job drawing and more at weekend. When drawing stopped being the way to make money, it became enjoyable again. And now I am dropping my hours in my "main job" as my art is naturally bringing more income.
So go ahead and find something else you love which also pays the bills. Conservation sounds like a great idea. And you never know what might happen if you do.

This thread is lovely. I would love a “creatives” section of mumsnet where artists/writers/creatives could gather together.

on a more prosaic level, I also discovered Airbnb (as, I have since discovered, have many artists!). If you have the space and live somewhere people might want to visit, it does work to prop up the income while other things develop.. even a bell tent in the garden can be put to work!

It’s a story as old as human time. The conflict between art and value, there are a lot of compromises to make when you rely on art to pay the bills. The relationship between the artists and the patron or customer or gallery owner is fraught and the artist rarely has the power in the dynamic. It’s far too easy to fall into the trap of validating yourself as an artist through the £££ it attracts.

As others have said above, it’s so important to separate the self as an artist from the cash. That may bring the art back. Paying the bills needs to be a separate conversation with yourself.

Sorry I have not read the full thread but my initial thoughts are, is there a way to do another job temporarily that's completely different?

I ask because I loved writing my whole life and while it was never a career, as an adult I started wanting to actually do something with it. I had some mild success in screenwriting competitions and wanted to write a novel. Then I was lucky enough to have some time off work stress-free for me to try to create something and give a good go at it.

Suddenly I couldn't write. I had no ideas to write about and I seemed to lose the ability to construct coherent sentences. The sentences used to just come out in my head like a voiceover in a movie trailer. It's like I suddenly lost the skill overnight and I felt like I lost a massive part of who I am.

Anyway I returned to work not long after as a temporary support worker for very vulnerable people. It was so stressful and all of a sudden every night I was writing and it became my escape and my joy again.

I feel like "stress and story" jobs where you're working directly with different people all day and hearing their stories and it's a job where you keep busy is a really good way to kickstart lost creativity.

Could you spend 6 months to a year just really mixing things up and trying something different? Something like temp work or maternity cover? Or is there some sort of art class for kids you could volunteer with?

I feel like perhaps you need a reset.

I am a barrister - very different - but I completely lost my mojo maybe 18 months ago. Could only produce work weeks after the deadline and under extreme pressure.

I am starting to get it back by using this (at least this is the puzzle piece that first started me going again):
https://in.flow.club/upcoming/

I am now managing to organise my time, and even produce work on time. I am starting to enjoy it again and am started writing a new book (very boring law stuff - but something that I am interested in). 6 months ago I couldn't have imagined this. Good luck!

Thankyou @HornungTheHelpful - good choice of user name there! I will have a look at that myself

Nothing constructive to add apart from I absolutely love your Desolate series.

I really like these. Do you have any kind of online shop?

I can't reply to every post, but some really helpful stuff here, thank you to absolutely everyone for your varied perspectives.

I hadn't thought about being negative or low but I can see that now. The sense of grief is also coming from the loss of the income, and in terms of practicalities that has been so stressful that it has knocked my confidence and passion.

I have felt for years that the pressure to regain the income and flow is doing me more harm than the human loss itself! I appreciate someone pointing this out.

I would love an occupation that didn't demand originality from me every day, yes. And it has occurred to me often that the pressure has killed the drive to create. I think this is why I am so enjoying poetry and photography and nature right now, it is life affirming and doesn't have to be sold.

The abstract landscapes really are desolate, I really loved that cold, wintry mood at the time, and they felt like a strange sort of solace to me. Not big earners like the colourful stuff by any means.

I also agree that many artists online are now like 'brands' and there has been a loss of real connection in the communities since social media made everything about number counts. I have seen excellent painters become flattened and dried out by this 'machine'.

Lots of thinking to do.

Thank you! My only remaining carriers in the UK are with Redbubble and as direct downloads. I work mostly with a few companies in the US and Australia. My name at Redbubble is Dansedelune.

I forgot to mention that I have occasionally enjoyed creating 3D and paper collage this past year, with a mixture of my drawings, watercolour and vintage cut outs.
Somehow though I don't see it as 'serious'....

Here is an example.I really really ought to branch out and do more. This brings me to the conclusion that the 'art' would likely recover if not pressured to earn from it, definitely.

The landscapes remind me of this place. I know the owners and that they have gone through related challenges around art and being commercial.

https://www.lingwoodsamuelart.com/

i know what you mean. I write books as a side hustle. I have been doing this for about 15 years and feel completely burned out. I am lucky to have other income because the relentless pressure to produce and generate sales is brutal. I definitely need a reset.

Gosh that is the most beautiful space and collection! If only I wasn't in the far north right now, and had unlimited funds!

@Holluschickie
I think there's an added pressure when you self support through creativity as it is so easy to blame and chastise the self, as opposed to a boss or company. There is only you, and the resulting pressure is unforgiving in a way.
Even if you have a regular job on the side, the other income still matters, and the loss if it is awful.

This is lovely. Definitely something to keep exploring.

I think you have done very well to support yourself for so many years.

I am now menopausal myself and I think that definitely has something to do with it. I don't have the energy to peddle my brand any more ( such as it is) or chase my publisher.

I’m a beginner illustrator, making a few sales here and there and trying to build up.

To me, a couple of years out of long art career doesn’t sound shocking or like a failure. Just something that happens. Lots of creative people I’ve followed long-term have done similar and then came back and talked about it.

I think the fact you earned so much without an audience speaks volumes!

I think to find your way back you’ve got to decide to “show up” at your tools every single day and suffer the crap work until the muscle is working properly again. Fight the resistance and all that.

I read a lot of Susan Hill's novels, {years before they were so popular} and it was obvious that Hill was probably suffering Grief of some sort- the darkness and loss in her novels was palpable.

Weird! I was only watching the 1989 version of 'the woman in black' a few night's ago!

@OriginalUsername2
I did have an audience over the years, began with a good amount of success at Etsy back in 2006. That led to a lot of work for me which carried momentum for a long time. Not sure what it's like on Etsy nowadays though.
I then went on to commission contracts with various companies who promoted and sold the work for me, this lasted over 12 years. Some of those companies such as Society6 are not doing great now, and have really started to cheapen and sell out.
During this time I was sought out and hired for book/music covers, label design and stationary/tshirts, often earning a good amount for single use of an image.

This was mostly the digital lustration, which is easier to reproduce without losses, et.

With the advent of instagram, I never really felt comfortable with the urge to collect followers and personal fans. I had previously been part of larger communities where 'likes' and branding weren't as demanding. There is a possibility that I don't fit in today's market, even if the work is good.

I wish you lots of good luck and fun on your illustration journey!