Egads! Social Media Overload!

I was updating the LINKS page on my website, when I realized how many new ones I had tried since the beginning of 2023. Starting in January with Post.news, up to August with BlueSky I count 5 new social media platforms. Needless to say it has become overwhelming to post on all daily even if you just copy and paste. I have found that posting on 3 is not too bad. 

But then someone mentioned that the key to saneness with social media was asking yourself: why you felt you needed to be on social media and to stop worrying about the numbers and focus on the quality of your engagement. 

SO what was I really looking for on all these new sites? 

1: My KidLitArt community and the ability to connect with industry professionals. Twitter used to be IT But now that its X the community is rapidly fragmenting.  I was also told to be on Instagram as that's where art directors look for talent. While that may be true, most of the "calls for illustrators" happened on original Twitter. 

2: A small bit of comraderie with my fellow creatives. Being an illustrator/writer is a very solitary endeavor. It's nice to be able to rant about deadlines etc. And have someone cheer you on or commiserate. Definitely looking for engagement.

SO... from all these new sites is there a clear winner? To be honest, whenever I tried a new site my first reaction was this is great it just needs more functional (fill in the blank). However after the initial honeymoon a few of these were clearly not it. The following is my personal opinion:

POST.news - friendly enough community, left leaning, very NEWS oriented. The first month I was there, there were a few illustrators posting for #KidLitArtPostcard. But at his point it's only a handful of illustrators. Unfortunately the kidlit community never embraced it. 

THREADS - owned by Meta, the people that brought you Instagram and FaceBook. Very friendly. Quite a few editors, agents and art directors on it, at least in the beginning. Lots of kidlit people. But with no hashtags or pinning functions, it is hard to find each other or even engage properly with each other. SO there might be an art call there but I probably didn't see it. Also while I really liked it in the beggining - I'm finding that my time there is not as satisfying as before. But I will prob still pop on it as I can't delete it without deleting my IG account!

Linked-In - supposedly you can connect with industry professionals. I was on it years ago and stopped going there - tried again - but don't quite get it. 

BlueSky - This is the one. I think.   At the moment there is no Pin or true Hashag functions. However, there are Hashtag work arounds and custom feeds set up by kidlit people. Now we just need the PIN function. There's an active growing kidlit community. Yay! At the moment, Bluesky is still in beta so you need an invitation to join or you may add your name to their waitlist.

Find me at:

Website: dianadelosh.com

Illustration Blog: dtdelosh.blospot.com

Instagram & Threads: @dtdelosh

Post: @dtdelosh

Bluesky: @dtdelosh

Check out my illustrations on products at:

Greeting Cards: greetingcarduniverse.com/dianascards

Gifts: zazzle.com/deloshdesigns*

Art Prints: wingedrabbit.imagekind.com

Marketing Without the Bird App

My life on Twitter came to a sudden halt when I was suddenly and unexpectedly expelled from the site on December 1,  2022. I still maintain my innocence. I've requested clarification/appealed the decision and aside from the automated response on my emails never heard anything back. So my account was and is suspended and I have moved on. But the BIG question was how would I fill the void. The bird app played a big part in how I marketed my POD, Print on Demand Wares.

I was left with Instagram and Facebook. Both were problematic in that department. IG doesn't like live links although you can have them in your bio profile . Facebook did not like you being too sales oriented. So yes I can post my  GreetingCardUniverse card links, but  posting the weekend sales promo code got me a warning notice. sigh.  I did sign up for a Facebook Artist Page. In January, I signed up for Post.News. Links and images look gorgeous on that site But I feel like I'm shouting into the void over there. Needless to say, I don't post as many links as I did on the bird app cause it's just not the thing to do on any of those social media platforms. Now what? 

I did get creative in December, and did a countdown to Christmas and posted 25 winter/Christmas illustrations on IG, the majority of which were GCU cards. And yes that did help with my December/Christmas card sales.  I also did a shorter run up to the Lunar New Year, Year of the Rabbit or Cat with illustrations/cards of, you guessed it, cats and rabbits- which helped with the January sales. And now we're at the end of February and my sales are way down compared to last year. Sure I could do a run up to Spring? But do I want to? Must I? Sigh.

Have I learned anything? 

• Posting daily helps as far as engagement and getting new followers. No big insight here.

• My followers on all my sites seem to respond best to my Art Process Posts for illustrations or greeting card designs. They seem to find the  process as interesting if not more interesting than the actual finished art. Thankfully, I enjoy documenting and sharing my art process.

• I realized I stopped blogging because I was micro-blogging on Twitter. No bird app and the blog revives. Hmmmm Maybe I'll do an occasional upcoming holiday blog post.

I would love to hear what social media sites you use to help promote/market yourself or your creations. 

You can find me at:

Website: dianadelosh.com

Illustration Blog: dtdelosh.blospot.com

Instagram: @dtdelosh

Post: @dtdelosh

Check out my illustrations on products at:

Greeting Cards: greetingcarduniverse.com/dianascards

Gifts: zazzle.com/deloshdesigns*

Art Prints: wingedrabbit.imagekind.com

Art Process Experiments 4 - 6

As I mentioned in the previous post, I've been experimenting with my art process. Hoping to shake things up a bit in 2018. SEE Art Process Experiment 1- 3 

Experiment No. 4A and 4B - Squirrel with Snowdrop: Semi Reverse Process
4A: Sketch. Watercolor. lines added with brush Scan. Add digital details. 
4B: Sketch. Watercolor. Scan. Add all the lines and details digitally. 

Results 4A: Similar to my usual style. But there's less black line, a Limited Palette and the squirrel looks younger because overall he's rounder. I love his Buffalo plaid jacket.

Results 4B: Felt my digital brush lacked the accuracy, smoothness and expressiveness of a real brush. At least at this point my brush skills are light years ahead of my Wacom pen skills. Frustrating. Trashed this effort hence: Art not shown.

Squirrel wrapping his scarf around an early bloomer -Posted this on Twitter for my #colour_collective illustration for the prompt, Cinnabar Green. Not sure if this counts for much, BUT it is my most popular illustration to date on Twitter.

Experiment No. 5 - Sleeping Giraffe: All digital with sketch.

Results:  Did this late at night and perhaps my judgement, focus, and coordination had gone to bed without me but I found the process clunky and frustrating. IF given many more hours of practice, perhaps I could come up with something more satisfying.

Sleeping Giraffe - Hate the colors. Had problems picking colors amongst other snafus.

Experiment No. 6- Sleeping Giraffe: Semi reverse Process Plus Digital Flourish: Sketch, Paint with watercolors. Scan. Added some additional digital flourishes. Note: Giraffe, Weedy Bits and Night Sky are are created separately. scanned and put together digitally. 

Results: Felt happy with the final art. The loose digital weedy flourishes seem to tie it all together in a new, for me, way. I want to explore this direction.

Sleeping Giraffe - Note, I used the same sketch for both Sleeping Giraffe  illustrations. Yes, I know, I should've done ALL the experiments using the same sketch BUT I didn't think of it earlier.  Posted this on Twitter for my #colour_collective for the prompt Delft Blue.

CONCLUSION: To be honest, there were times that I felt the last few weeks were an exercise in procrastination. I was afraid that I was going to just go back to my same old process but with only a few minor tweaks, experiment 4. Which would not have been the worst thing except for the time lost. Luckily experiment 6 came along.

Web: dianadelosh.com

Illustration blog: dtdelosh.blogspot.com

Product Blog: arthareswares.blogspot.com

Group Blog: drawntopicturebooks.blogspot.com

twitter: @dtdelosh

Check out my shops:

Greeting Cards: greetingcarduniverse.com/dianascards

Gifts: zazzle.com/deloshdesigns*

Art Prints: wingedrabbit.imagekind.com

Gifts: society6.com/dianadelosh

Check out my ThumbNailer

To Share or Not to Share?

Recently at an SCBWI event, the speaker, Grace Maccarone, executive editor of Holiday House warned never to share ideas as someone else could take it and get it out and in the stores first. To wait until you have it in a tangible form before sharing it. After all ideas can't be  copyrighted. Only the specific tangible form inspired by the idea can be copyrighted.

Of course mum's the word when it comes to commissioned art. Unless the client is OK with you sharing. So that leaves sharing sketches and other personal art but not too much of it. Must leave some of it in the bag.

Bag Head © Diana Ting Delosh - Biro sketch

But... but... but if you don't share you're invisible. Plus sharing on social media is fun and gratifying. I'm a twitter girl myself so I know participating in one of the many art challenges and getting all those faves and Retweets is very, very nice. Addictive even. And you never know whose looking. It seems like every other day you hear of someone getting discovered/published/agented due to their Twitter, Instagram, blog, whatever activities. 

To share or not to share could be the digital era's equivalent of to be or not to be. There is no question that you should share your art despite fears of copyright infringement. The question really is how much, what and when?   Quite a few of my illustrator colleagues share some piece of art daily via Twitter or whatever. In fact that's how I discovered a lot of them via their daily art practice of creating and sharing.

So I am wondering if I should make this one of my daily art biz habits. I'm also in the throes of  prepping for the NJ SCBWI June Conference - which means hyper focusing to make  lots of art. Yes, currently creating lots just not sharing yet. Guess I'll be working on my "sharing" after the conference.

web: dianadelosh.com

 twitter: @dtdelosh

 

Make MORE Art

My 2015 #colour_collective illustrations
#MyCC2015
© Diana Ting Delosh

One of my personal challenges every year is to Make MORE Art, MUCH MORE and 2016 is no exception.  To that end, last year I started a Finished Creating list (included my writing as well as art). I had read somewhere that the artist, Vincent Van Gogh made over 200 paintings a year. Now I could have remembered it all wrong, but it got me thinking about how creatively productive I was in a year. No I didn't end up with 200 creations on my list, But I liked keeping the list and some of the art challenges I did to keep me on my toes. And I bet adding to that list motivated me even more. Yup - doing the Finished Creating list again - already have number one done.

Last year I participated in #colour_collective on twitter and above is a compilation of all the art I created for that weekly art challenge. I had started it with the idea that I could use this challenge to try out new techniques, mediums, practice and just explore in general. Wasn't able to do all 53 weeks but it spurred me to make more art than if I hadn't joined in the fun. I'll be doing it again in 2016. This year I'll be doing it, with an eye to practicing and exploring my brush pen technique or even using just the brush or a bamboo pen even. 

Here's to 2016 - and making MORE Art.

FYI: #colour_collective  @Clr_Collective is a weekly Twitter Art challenge started by @PennyNevilleLee. A color is announced on saturdays and everyone posts the following friday at 19:30 GMT.  The first color announcement of 2016 will be on saturday January 16, 2016. In the meanwhile some of the colour collective artists will be participating in the #MeetTheArtist challenge to be posted this Friday at 19:00 GMT. Will I be one of them? Perhaps.

And follow me at @dtdelosh

Twitter & Creativity: #colour_collective

Ballerina Bunny
© Diana Ting Delosh
Ink & Watercolor
for #colour_collective Pale Pink 3/6/15
I will probably be making this illo into product designs for my POD stores

One of the things I love about Twitter is the art challenges and artist community. I'm currently doing my best to keep up  with #colour_collective, the brain child of the talented illustrator, Penny Nelville Lee, @PennyNevilleLee .  #colour_collective is a weekly art challenge where participants create an illustration any media/subject - based on the weekly "it" colour and post their illo on Fri on or after 7:30pm GMT (2:30pm/3:30pm NYC time depending on daylight savings time) or as close to it as possible. The next week's colour is announced on Saturday. So you have a week to come up with something to share with your fellow illustrators. From the looks of it, the majority of participants are creating fresh works vs sharing already created art.

Cupcake Fox
© Diana Ting Delosh
Ink & Watercolor
for #colour_collective Flame Orange Light  2/27/15
Think this will make a cute birthday card.

 I've only done a few weeks of #colour_collective here and there but I'm finding it a lot of fun and a bit addictive. I've decided to do whatever comes to mind. Could be a technique I want to try or my old stand by. My thing is to create something fast and furiously, stay loose, enjoy the process. Even if I can't do an illo for the week I find I must check out everyone else's pieces. I am always amazed and inspired by all the great art.

Thumbelina
© Diana Ting Delosh
Ink & Watercolor & Photoshop
for #colour_collective Powder Blue 2/13/15
Liked the way how this one turned out may use this on my promo postcard.
- Made the portfolio.

 What I've found is that's it's helped boost my creative productivity. Sure not everything I've done is portfolio worthy but I've brought doodles to finish that I wouldn't have if I hadn't decided to participate. Experimented versus just thinking of experimenting. Best of all I've worked on more personal art than I normally would have. All good stuff.

Puppy Love
© Diana Ting Delosh
Ink & Digital Color Experiment
for #colour_collective Flame Red 2/6/15
thought this would work as a fun Valentine so it's in my POD stores - ready for Valentine 2016

If you're curious and on twitter, check out: #colour_collective

Follow: @PennyNevilleLee @dtdelosh

Please feel free to join in the fun.

Penny announces the new colour on saturdays

Everyone posts their illos on Fridays after 7:30 pm GMT

Opera Rose Girl
© Diana Ting Delosh
Experimenting with Black Prisma Color Pencil & Digital Color
My first #colour_collective Opera Rose 1/9/15 

CAKE+HAT Twoodle

CAKE + HAT - Pen sketch © Diana Ting Delosh

Estella thought her latest creation, the Gateaux-Chapeau was the best thing since sliced bread. (Please excuse her french.) She was sure all eyes would be on her at the spring parade. Best of all, if she got a bit hungry while strutting in the parade she could always have a quick nibble. 

The 2 Twoodle words supplied this week as the inspiration behind the above Tweet/Doodle are:
CAKE by moi. Please follow @dtdelosh
HAT by the amazing illustrator, Anita Solver . Please follow @solver

So what the heck am I chatting about???? Well it's an illustrators weekly game on wednesday. Please read the previous post. If you're on twitter search #Twoodle and see some very amusing and amazing illos and of course join in the fun.

The Twitter Effect on my PBDummy

Detail from an illustration from my soon to be finished picture book dummy, CUPCAKES

I usually try and do a Picture Book Dummy a year. My standing Deadline is Halloween. Doesn't always work out, but I try. This year with the help of TWITTER I'm ahead of myself.

It all began Nov of 2010 when I signed up to do PiBoIdMo (Picture Book Idea Month. See cute monster badge in side bar). A challenge I found on Twitter to come up with 30 picture book ideas in 30 days. Which lead to the #PBDummy challenge on Twitter - brought to you by KidLitArt in January 2011. This last challenge was to complete a picture book dummy by well - NOW. Wish I could say I've victoriously crossed the finish line but I concede I have not. This is by no means an admission of failure or defeat because having accepted the challenge I am that much closer to completing my PB Dummy whereas if I hadn't I might not have even begun the project. Which is what these creative challenges are all about. Helping you to achieve or grow as a creative, while having fun and even possibly interacting with other like minded artists.

So how far do I have to go? Well the dummy is all roughed out and the text, is pretty set. I actually continue to tweak both art and text throughout the whole process as I suspect do most of my fellow illustrator/writers. My "finished" dummy will comprise of 3 colored finished illustrations and 13 spreads of ink sketches. The illustration above is a detail from one of the finished spreads. I've even created some fun hand lettering for the cover. Well to answer the question I've still haven't reached the halfway point but I'm getting a bit done every week between jobs and sundry other art biz activities. Taking part in this challenge has helped me stay motivated despite all the interruptions and distractions. I see myself finishing way before my self-imposed Halloween deadline. In fact, I may even try and squeeze in this other PB dummy idea or at least begin it. Well, we'll see.