When lockdown kicked off at the end of March in the UK I tried to keep positive and initially believed that losing all of my childcare(three days at nursery and my mum visiting once a week) for my two year old, and my whole support network (including my husband) would just dent the time I had to work on designs, and nothing more.
“Hey I can work evenings? I can train my toddler to play independently for a couple of hours a day right?”
Hugely naive. Yes we built a routine that meant I had dedicated design time, but I was really terrible at being efficient with that time, I got creative block a lot, my mental health was suffering, and design projects took me a great deal longer than I expected.
My clients were really understanding of me extending deadlines, but it didn’t stop stressing me out. Designing used to relieve my stress, calm my nerves, put me in that happy place, but now it was too hard to come up with my best ideas. I wasn’t looking after myself, and I lost my creative mojo entirely. At about this time I also lost a close family member and that just pushed me over the edge into shutting down any design work until I could see a way back to designing.
I came to understand that focusing on pleasure projects that had nothing to do with paid work would be the key to pulling out of this hole I’d fallen in. I scanned instagram for a drawing challenge that would ignite my passion again, and started following the hash tag #drawthisinyourstylechallenge to find a suitable project.
Original #drawthisinyourownstyle illustration 
My initial sketches 
The finished illustration
This teacup illustration drew me in, and I loved sketching out my take on it.
Whilst I was drawing it a whole bunch of other ideas came to the surface, and inspired a few new illustrations and surface patterns one of which you’ll see below(do we see a theme developing?!). This particular surface pattern was for a client I’d been wanting to work for for ages, and having her contact me off of the back of a fun “just for me” illustration, was really uplifting, and gave me the confidence to pursue other passion projects.
Ultimately once I got my support network back designing started to feel more natural, ideas flowed more freely. I am concerned about another lockdown happening, but in the mean time I won’t be taking for granted going to my favourite workspace in town, seeing and having conversations with other adults, and having the freedom to leave the house by myself!
And anyone else suffering from creative block, I’d suggest taking care of yourself first and foremost – go for a run, a walk, a bath, read a book. Seems simple things, but if you aren’t rested or feel good about yourself creating just feels impossible. Once you feel a little better, try doing something fun and creative just for your pleasure and I guarantee it will open up other ideas.
What have you done to get yourself out of a creative block? How have you found the lockdown for effecting your creative abilities? And just for fun – see below for a design I got stuck on and couldn’t see a way forward with at the start of lockdown, and the now finished design post lockdown.
Creative block had me stuck here 
Post lockdown I was able to reimagine the design
