Productive Procrastination

Concept is like that rare elusive bird you've finally glimpsed  but of course it's gone into the dark forest. Do you dare go after it? Turning that concept into a tangible thing is like stepping into a forest, full of shadows and possibilities. There are no clear paths BUT if you thrash about you may find your way through. 

Where middles are where you've got your bearings. You may even see your path out of the forest to where that rare elusive bird is posing waiting for you to take it's picture. It's just a matter of putting one foot in front of the other until finally, Snap!

If you're like me, you prefer the phase after most of the messy explorations been done. Which is why I did not dive back into my BIG Project or start this other idea, both of which I'd been itching to do while I was trying to finish the important MUST DO NOW life thingy.

Big Project - rough rough roughs - thinking and sketching.

NEW PB Concept - EEEK! All those blank boxes. (See ThumbNailer in side bar)

Instead I worked on something that I put aside a few years ago. This piece just needed some hand lettering and then I could add it to my budding Surface Design Portfolio. But why now? Because it had a clear next step and the end was in sight. Plus I was lured by the idea that it will only take a second and then we'll begin one of the other projects, maybe even do a bit of both. A warm up project. HA! Needless to say it took more than half a day as I needed to change the size, tweak the art and do a bunch of loose hand lettering, to get just the right balance of carefree and legible. Well, at least it was productive procrastination.

Beware the rabbit hole: It'll be quick - just takes a few seconds.

Sip Breathe Repeat, 2 Chawans, Japanese Tea Cups  - © Diana Ting Delosh, Ink,watercolor, pencil, digital - this piece is available for licensing.

You can find me at:

Website: dianadelosh.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

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.

PiBoIdMo 2012 - better late then never

YUP I'm a PIBOIDMO-er again. 30 picture book Ideas in the 30 days of November. As this is my third year doing this challenge begun by Tara Lazar I had been looking forward to it since October. In fact I signed-up for it almost as soon as you could this year. And then didn't do much about it assuming I had time to gather my index cards and write a blog post on it etc. Then Sandy hit on monday, Oct 29th and I lost power for 13 days which taught me a few things about my creative process.

Ok OK  - I know you don't need electricity to think or write down your ideas on index cards etc. And sure I even got to read an inspirational post or 2 on PIBOIDMO when I was at a lucky friend 's home with a generator. So why couldn't I even gather my index cards and a pen and just begin? I mean I wasn't one of the unfortunates that was totally displaced. I was just inconvenienced and uncomfortable for 13 days.

Apparently my muse decided to go on vacation to a more convenient and warmer locale. It seems I needed to not be worried to be creative. Whether it be about my cat's meds going bad along with the food Or if I could gas up so I could get to my friend's. We won't even get into my fear of not meeting deadlines. There was also the shortage of available daylight hours.  Showed me how much my strategy for getting things done depended on electricity. This is not to say I got nothing done. I was able to do the traditional watercoloring part of an illustration job and a new piece from sketch to finished art for an upcoming group show.  However the difference is that both these concepts had been thought out before and PIBOIDMO was challenging me to come up with concepts. Apparently until I got my power back, I couldn't relax enough to let my mind wander off and come back with good or bad ideas. I was stuck in the here and now with no time leftover for daydreaming.

Glad to report that on the last and 30th day of PIBOIDMO I finally caught up and completed the challenge. YAY - I have 31 ideas and who knows how many more I'll have before the day is up. True most of them are plain silly but they all still count. By the way, I'm already looking forward to next year.