GTS 2014: Mini-Terrarium Wall Art

TAh Dah -drum roll please... here's my take on mini-terrariums... FLOURISH

Flourish © Diana Ting Delosh 2014
Ink, Watercolor and Photoshop

The brief for round 1 of Lilla Rogers' Global Talent Search was to create Mini- Terrarium themed wall art and type was a requisite.  My process begins with doodling. To come up with a phrase or word, I jotted phrases that came to mind in my sketchbook, my journal on the edges of job scraps, napkins, etc. I began with a large terrarium image focus and phrases like: Small World. As the doodles progressed I found the foliage kept growing out of my container and sayings like Grow Where You're Planted or Get Out of Your Comfort Zone or Grow Wild came forth. Could I distill that essence into 1 word?? 

Flourish Sketch © Diana Ting Delosh 2014
The sketch only hints at whats to come.

Finally came up with FLOURISH, a word with a lot of meanings. It could mean thrive or to brandish something like a sword or  to embellish. My concept was of a delicate plant growing inside the mason jar, bursting out of the confines of the safe jar to be this wild, slightly chaotic plant with big showy blooms.

Mini Terrarium Plant - Ink  © Diana Ting Delosh 2014
Note after I painted the lines I decided the composition was too tame . The plant needed to be growing off the page.

The actual art was created as 3 separate pieces: the mini-terrarium, the Flourish hand lettering and watercolor background wash.  Put together all in Photoshop. Couldn't decide if the type should be bigger or smaller and in the end went with the smaller type version. Only to hit submit and decide a second later that I preferred the bigger type layout as in the original sketch  - oh well.

Incidentally, the GTS 2014 Gallery is Live -Click here to see ALL 999 Entries. My Entry is on page 13, mid-way down the 1st row smack in the middle of amazing gorgeousness. And in case you were wondering -Nah, I'm not 1 of the 50 semi-finalists.

Art/product

I don't know about you - but I need to create on a fairly regular basis or I get very cranky. Must have that creative fix or else. To make matters worse, lately the creative fix is getting less satisfying. I think the need to make a living with my art is making it all feel like product. Need to put the fun back in creating without loosing sight of my big goals.

Making art for art's sake is 1 way to go - but it still doesn't take the pressure away from the need to be art smart and make it all count. So I'm going to really lower the bar for myself. My goal will be to create "bad art" and lots of it! Take the stress out of creating: sub worthy, portfolio worthy, award winning, saleable, marketable, will they like it, etc. creations. It can be trash worthy. Maybe I'll post it or maybe I'll just toss it. Enjoying the process again is what's important.

Feeling totatlly in awe of the guys on http://pageadaysketches.blogspot.com/
If you're not familiar with this blog I reccomend taking a gander... and they call them mere sketches! Not too intimidating. Yes I know visiting this blog may be totally detrimental to my bad art goal.