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:

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Art Process Experiments 1 - 3

Recently, I've been trying new ways to work for a variety of reasons including keeping my work Fresh. My usual process is to sketch, ink, paint, scan, Photoshop. Elements are created separately and then put together and further digitally messed with until I'm satisfied. Here's a link to a recent process post.

Experiment No. 1 - Old English Sheepdog:  Reversed my process and No sketch.
Results: It felt daring working backwards. However, I can't imagine doing a whole piece this way. It does open up more possibilities.  I like the less outlined look. I also like that I used less black lines and feel the gray lines give it a softer look.

Painted basic shapes with watercolors. Scan

Added more shadows  and lines with my Wacom tablet and Photoshop. 

Experiment No. 2 - Owl flying in a Pine Forest:  The OWL only - Digital. NO sketch.

Results: Fun and a bit challenging to just draw paint with the Wacom. It has a certain appeal. A sketch would have helped.

The owl is drawn and painted using only the Wacom tablet and added to the Forest. A few Pine trees were hand inked*, scanned than digitally colored and put together for the forest. *I had originally created the pine trees for a different project and before I had the Tablet.  

Experiment No. 3 - Squirrel:  Oil Pastels. NO sketch.

Results: Felt like I was drawing with trees... Doubt if a sketch would've helped. I'd have to do this MUCH BIGGER. Never mind years of practicing. Similar to my Wacom experience but without being able to undo and all the other advantages of digital.

I haven't used oil pastels since high school! Rediscovered why I stopped using them.

Sharing more art process experiments soon.

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

Happy 4th of July weekend everyone!

Ice Cream Soda
© Diana Ting Delosh
watercolor

Hope you're all having a lovely summer weekend.

Personally, I'll be doing the family, running around bit - seeing everyone and wishing there was more time and I had more energy. At any rate - I hope to be coming back from all the family fun refreshed and ready to create anew. Sometimes I feel like all the family stuff just bogs down my creative flow and then I realize that without my family, life would be so dull. Sure I might get more done but would the art be as rich without the life to inform it?

You can read about the Ice Cream Soda Art Process HERE.

The Ice Cream Soda Giclée is available at my Print Shop, wingedrabbit.imagekind.com
Unframed Prints come in various sizes and paper selections. Custom framing is also available.  

Hoppy Easter!

Bunny Wishes © Diana Ting Delosh
Prismacolor pencil & watercolor  WIP experiment
for #colour_collective #emeraldgreen

Bunny wishes everyone a very 

Hoppy Easter!

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.

MATS - JULY - Beverage, Personal Art

I confess I couldn't wait for the assignment -maybe than we could share like usual. But the assignment was Personal Beverage Art.  And we were asked to continue not sharing so we could arrive at our personal art pieces without undue influence from fellow mates. No sharing until the July Gallery went live on July 22, 2014. Hint hint I'm on page 2.

BUT what is personal art to me? I have used the term Personal art/illo/project to refer to uncomissioned work. Self-started art created with the end purpose of submitting to editors/art directors or pumping up my portfolio or making into product/content for my POD shops. Nothing wrong with all that but was that really personal??? Yes personal  as there is only my self-imposed deadline but not really personal as I'm still hoping someone other than moi likes it.  In it's purest form I believe it should mean - art that I do just for me. Could be experimental - something I might hang up on my wall or not. Something I rarely do - but now I have this assignment... And Now for something Totally Different!

ICE CREAM SODA © 2014 Diana Ting Delosh
watercolor

Look Mom no lines! Yup - decided to be bold and daring - no sketch -no ink line - just start painting fast and furiously. Originally I had intended to do ink on an overlay and than combine with the painting in photoshop But I decided I liked it as is. Do you? I really wanted to ask my Camp mates their opinion.

I decided on ice  cream soda because it was 90º and it had the most color potential of all my 7 beverage warm -up art. And also because Ice cream sodas remind me of my mom.  See previous post, MATS - July Warm up - Beverages to see my 7 warm-ups for his assignment.

Brush Strokes on Squidoo!

I'm currently a featured artist on Sherry Holden's Squidoo Lens. How exciting! Moi and 2 other artists will be featured for about a month. So if you have a chance please take a gander at: www.squidoo.com/ArtistsAtImagekind.