LYSA FLOWER’S DAILY DESIGNER DIARY

ILLUSTRATING Find the Calm in the Chaos : : Day 1

Today I’m trying something new. I’m going to start posting about what I work on everyday and here’s why:

My friend Hana, when she was diagnosed cancer, started going outside everyday. A love of gardening was something we shared, although she was much more enthusiastic about raking leaves than I ever was. Everything about someone getting sick is heartbreaking. When she got really sick, she’d say, when I get better, we’ll get together. All I could do was send her texts, telling her she was in my thoughts and I was sending her love, along with photos of my garden. Knowing she was going outside each day, I decided I would go outside each day too. It was my only way of feeling close to her. I would think of her each morning, knowing she’d be so pleased to see things budding or how busy the bees were on the dahlias.

In November, when Hana passed away, I kept going out every morning, comforted with my thoughts of her while I dug a little over here and I clipped a little over there. I went out with no plan, just what ever felt good to work on that day. I’m out there first thing every morning, rain or shine, anywhere from 10-30 mins every morning. We both live(d) on acreages and there’s always a lot to be done, to the point of being overwhelmed… but now instead of resenting it or feeling like it’s a chore, I crave my time outside. What a wonderful gift of a daily ritual Hana left me.

Then I thought, what if I applied this daily ritual to my personal work. Usually I get a deadline and dive head first in and I don’t come back up for air until I’m done. I do love a good deadline but this way of working has left me depleted in the past and what I’ve been craving is consistency. So here we go, an experiment! Every morning I’ll work on new work, a little drawing here, a little painting there! Here we go!

Okay, here we go:

Today I’m starting a new illustration for the Goin’ Surfin’ collection. It will be called “Find the Calm in the Chaos”. Job one is working on the lettering. I’m taking my LET GO letters and converting them into the letters I need. Which means making eight new letters by making a/an:

 

Here is the playlist I listened to whilst working away : April 15th, 2024 Ha! Whilst! It’s such a funny word!

 

This Much Fun Can NOT Be Legal.

Wow! January. It's like I blinked and it's over. Now we're half way through February! How does that happen? I guess time flies when your having fun! Which I had during Make it in Design's Winter school first week (which started in early January). 

We were given two briefs and two creative exercises over this four week course. Our first brief was to create a pattern around these key words: Boho Glam 70's Rock. Yes please!!! Happily I found more than enough inspiration and realized I had oodles of content for three mood-boards. The first board was about shapes. The second was about the subject matter, in this case crochet patterns. The third board was all about colour. And as you can see I love ALL the colour!

I created myself a Boho playlist and settled into drawing. Interestingly enough I didn't even use these detailed drawings. Once I started blocking shapes in I knew they'd just become colouring pages. You never know sometimes. Anyways I was super thrilled with my design and I plan on creating a whole collection around it shortly!