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?

My family were ''Industrial'' photographers, and used to earn extremely good money doing it.
Hand made prints were the norm then, and even us as kids could help earn money by glazing hundreds of Black and White prints - I loved it.

Family invested many thousands to set up a colour processing lab...then Digital came to the fore- and literally with digital cameras, it made it 'easy' for people to take photographs- and no prints to be made.

Then every man and his dog wanted to do ''photography'' at college.

There is only one person doing photography professionally in the family now- it's an industry massively affected by digital age.

Yes, and the art market is quite oversaturated now, so no one is paying anyone £1000 for the use of an imagine on a teeshirt! Some things really have just changed, I agree. Industries wax and wane.

And with AI it will be much easier to make a design 'to order' in-house in seconds.

I see so many landscape paintings in acrylic in actual galleries, another very saturated area. Seascapes especially. Every second woman on instagram is painting the cornish coast!

Some do very well but it looks like very tiresome work to keep relevant and constantly providing 'content'.

Thank you!

I remember Instagram absolutely wrecking the blog world, which I loved! I was a seamstress back then with a small shop but we had networks sharing each others blogs and commenting genuinely, guest-posting and having so much fun. Then Instagram sucked everyone up very quickly and the blogs now sit there as relics.

There are a lot of artists that can’t be doing with the social media grind. Post 15 reels a day? Madness.

Every second woman on instagram is painting the cornish coast!

That cracked me up!

I think your work is wonderful op, really beautiful & evocative. I want to gaze at your pieces & lose myself in them.

You touched on something key when you spoke out losing your main 'champion'(?) in your parent so I would give that more attention.

Also, what you're experiencing is very normal and I completely get the grief of losing touch with thise side of yourself. It seems to me though,that you're blocking your creativity & holding yourself back. Creativity is a force, like a river and we can only follow where it leads. Yours is leading you onto new things but you're holding back from them.

Forget the old ways you worked for now. Give yourself permission to move on. In my experience theyre not gone forever, you will come back to it one way or another and they will inform your work in new mediums.

Do what you feel drawn to. Play. Try. See what happens. Don't feel pressured to complete, just play.

Find something completely different & non taxing the plug the gap in your income. It doesn't matter what.

You need to let go of your old creative practices to move forward.

I used to do some freelance wildlife/outdoor writing. It was on the side of my main job but I loved it. I hoped to slowly build up and eventually make a career out of it. Then I had my second child, horrible divorce and I just couldn't any more.

It's been a few years and now I'm desperate to do some kids illustrated books for neurodivergent children (I have two). I've written the majority of it but I'm too scared to take the next steps. The doubt and fear of rejection are enormous.

I'm realising lately that I have ADHD with RSD (rejection sensitive dysphoria). Possible autism. The stress of juggling everything has taken the creativity and confidence. I'm hoping having an area I'm passionate about now will help inspire me. Perhaps you just need to find a bunch of people like me that need an illustrator 🤣 But make sure it's in areas that interest you.

Etsy’s a shitshow. My advice would be don’t touch it if you are a seller OR buyer! Such a shame, it was a great resource on both sides back in the day.

Same with Instagram, personally I wouldn’t put any effort into building followers there. Friends in the industry who used to make good sales/contacts say it’s fallen off a cliff since they changed the algorithms a few years back. Quite a number have withdrawn as well, due to them making it near on impossible to de-permit them from using the images for AI.

On a more positive note, I think people are starting to become more canny about online art and are returning to the analogue market. I have had better success in recent years than before at art fairs. I pick carefully tho, curated and established events only. It’s undoubtedly more work but it’s been fairly lucrative.

Just another thought - I haven’t looked at your pricing but beware of selling too low just to stay in the game. It feels counter intuitive but I sell more (volume) if I price higher. The valuing of art in £££ works both ways, if people see cheap then they think cheap if you see what I mean.

I've sent you a PM 😎❤️ Look forward to seeing what you think of my other bits of writing ✨️

This really chimed with me! I think one of the reasons I'm out of love with copywriting is AI. Not that I don't think I'd 'win' a fight against AI copy, but I just actually can't be arsed standing up to do it.

I can identify with this. Maybe grief is playing a bigger part than you think.
I had a craft I enjoyed - knitting. I wasn't particularly gifted at it but i enjoyed it.
I lost a parent suddenly a couple of years ago and I haven't been able to get back to knitting at all.
I pick out patterns and pick up my needles but I just can't make it happen. It's like that part of me switched off.

Is there a way of connecting with people, maybe running a class at a local U3A session or something with less pressure. As a way of connecting with people and testing interest in teaching. Sometimes I need to recharge my battery by being by myself other times I need people for energy.
locally we have pop up painting sessions, usually in an evening with drinks and snacks. People go for the social element and the art is the connector.

I am planning to teach next year to get a break from writing. I am hoping to partner with a writing retreat so I don't have to market it on my own.

Someone from this thread sent me an email about my work.
It was like a tiny, perfect glow in the darkness.

I'm glad I posted this, even in AIBU. I was several glasses into a bottle of Bushmills at the time, holed up in a cottage in the mountains. Spending money I really can't afford.
I climbed my dream fell today. My bucket list endeavour. I almost died and cried at the summit, and remembered why I create.

You would actually make a great writer too!

I would seek therapy. It sounds like you have lost confidence, not skill.

I wish you'd turn art like this into greetings cards. (That suggestion probably makes an artist's heart sink but I am sick of looking for cards and finding nothing worth sending. The designs are so bland they look like even the AI that generated them was coded not to get too creative about it all.)

@SereneCapybara There are greetings cards on the OPs Redbuddle which she posted on the thread! I bought some a couple of days ago :)

My name at Redbubble is Dansedelune

There ya go. You can filter by category for stationary/greetings cards.

Duh. Thank you. I am recovering from flu and very dopey. I'll take a look.

When my mum died I stopped writing stories, when my dad died I stopped taking photos. Both were huge creative outlets for me and a way to process life as well as make some money. I've never gotten back that creative spark unfortunately. It feels like that space had been taken over by a quiet sadness instead. Now there is no drive to create, no ideas popping up, no curiosity anymore. I do miss it.

Your work looks incredible, I really like the collage.
I am posting because I took feel like I have lost my calling, although I'm not an artist. I was working in healthcare but had to leave, and now can't imagine working in that role again, but am living off savings and need to get a job. Feeling pretty useless.
Anyway you said it's been 2 years since your last period. Have you considered HRT? Your body has stopped producing oestrogen and it may be that this is having a bigger impact than you realise. Have a read about the symptoms of menopause and consider if trialling an HRT patch might help.

This has been something of a therapeutic thread, which I certainly didn't expect when creating my OP. I have learned quite a it about myself on reflection, and am wondering why I quit the wintery landscapes, which, however sombre, made me deliriously happy.
Because many of them were digital (hand drawn digital, not AI!) I told myself that I could never find a market or audience for them. Definitely a confidence issue, I agree.
On the positive side, I do think they are very unusual for digital pieces, and not quite run of the mill!

I fell out of love with the colourful illustration because I had been repeating it for so many years, and I needed to explore more meaningful themes.

I was a little bit sad to hear that the wintry landscapes made a couple of people think I was painting my grief or depression, when they came from a very warm and creative place - they were very much a solace and a source of joy for me a the time.

Thank you for these varied perspectives, all of them, I think it is rare that any artist truly receives them, and I consider myself lucky to have been able to have some dialogue about it.
It is also enlightening to hear about people experiencing a similar issue in a different profession.

Maybe you have menopausal anxiety that is also destroying your confidence

PS: your work looks great