SH-h-h-h -Feeling most mysterious!

It's all Hush hush and mysterious
 -just like my
feline super sleuth character,
Audrey Hepcat.
© DianaTing Delosh

Wow it's been awhile since my last post, but I have 2 good excuses:

1 -  I've been busy with illustration gigs. YAY! Unfortunately they have been mad rush jobs. BOO! Admittedly this is partially due to my own scheduling as everything: personal and professional seems to happen at once and I don't want to miss anything.

2 - Two of the jobs I'm currently working on are confidential. Which means no blogging about them. Drats! One of them is a bread and butter type jobs, so no problems keeping mum about it. However the other project is one that I want to show off some of the illos from so it's hard to be hush hush about it. The only thing I can say is that it's an E-book project and the illustrations are almost all done. Needless to say - I can't wait until it's finished and I can finally burst out with the news.

The only other thing I can say is that the E-book company found me via my web presence. So all this frenzied web activity does do something other than bring you more followers on Twitter and Linked-in. Keep on blogging my creative friends.

The Fox and The Crow - Process

THE FOX AND THE CROW

© Diana Ting Delosh

Ink, watercolor and Photoshop

Decisions, questions and hopefully solutions are a part of my illustration process. As the above illo was my entry for a fun group project, CBIG AESOP'S FABLE Illustration Catalog, the first questions was which Fable. Easy enough something that featured things I like: animals, food, nature. Sure I could've also used this as a challenge to draw things I don't like but as I was already in the midst of juggling other deadlines why stress. I did say this was for fun.

Decisions: the angle perspective of art - lot's of doodling. Decided to keep it simple as I wanted to show the goody falling from the crows mouth  as well as her "OOPs" expression and the triumphant glee in the fox's face and body. Also needed to decide on whether I was going the traditional route and illustrate cheese as the coveted food item. Some of the versions did not specify cheese so I thought I'd have some fun with it and do one of my favorite yummies, the rainbow cookie. Now that's a treat worthy of some cunning.  Ink in the foreground, main characters and paint.

Background Quandaries: Keep it simple or do the whole forest. Usually I'm not this indecisive but this time, who knows, maybe it was the August heat. Couldn't decide and went back and forth during the sketch phase. Decided on simple and then second guessed myself by adding in the forest after I had painted the foreground. OOPS! Painted out the forest with Gouache. Just could not stop myself as I impulsively added just a few trees over to the extreme right.  Muddled it up again! My only excuse for this lapse in judgement was that I was juggling multiple projects and clearly muddle brained myself. Forgot a major rule in illustration: Keep what is important to the story in focus. Thank goodness for Photoshop. Deleted the offending background and replaced it with a sky I had painted for another project. Sigh!

And there you have it the story behind the illustration.

My Fox and Crow illustration is my entry for this years CBIG group project the CBIG AESOP'S FABLE Illustration Catalog. The pdf catalog may be viewed on the CBIG website and all 26 illustrations are showing on the CBIG blogzine from September 1st through October 31st, 2011. See my FOX AND THE CROW  - CBIG Blogzine - September 23, 2011.

CBIG - The Children's Book Illustrators Group: AESOP'S FABLES Illustration Catalog

Wow it's been awhile since I posted on this blog. I've had a busy busy summer with assorted projects. Here, finally, for your viewing pleasure is one of them... the CBIG Aesop's Fables Illustration Catalog.  I'm also happy to be 1 of the 26 illustrators that participated in the CBIG second annual illustration catalog as well as the designer of this group effort. Please hop on over to the CBIG blogzine during the months of September and October 2011 where I'll be posting the illustrations from the catalog.

CBIG - The Children's Book Illustrators Group: AESOP'S FABLES Illustration Catalog: CBIG is proud to show off our 2011 Illustration Catalog, AESOP'S FABLES . Featuring the talents of 26 participating members, listed below in...

2011 Summer Postcard -Cupcake Cat

Here's my Summer 2011 self-promo postcard. As the main focus of my personal art this spring/summer has been my Cupcake dummy and I thought the cover art was bold and yummy looking - decided it would be a natural for the front of my postcard image. I was contemplating doing a larger size but I just wasn't sure if the added expense of printing and postage would equal any benefit in positive responses. One would hope it did but then one could hope for a lot of things.

Went to VistaPrint.com to see if they were running any sales and they were -YAY. Decided to go with my usual standard size but since they were having a sale I added a color illustration to the back. The design above for the back of the card is actually turned sideways but I'm showing it horizontally so you can have a better sense of it. Yes I measured my address label size to make sure I wouldn't be covering up any of my back illo with it. While I'm not sure if postcard size would matter - I think 2 illos maybe better than 1 to get the targeted art director or editor to look at my website.

The cards have been designed & ordered. They should arrive within 3 weeks. Which gives me time to update my mailing list. Maybe this year I'll actually do 3 postcard mailings as I'm always threatening to do.