Looking At Progress

By Elissa Rosenthal

Hello, Everyone! For this week in my artistic journey I decided to redo one of my old sketches, as well as brush up a bit on drawing hands.

The image on the left is one I did in 2016. I remember not being satisfied with the way it turned out, because I wanted it to be a bit more on the creepy side and not just weird. At the time I did not know much of anything about perspective, so there is not even a sense of trying to get the angle of the brickwork correct. Plus, to me the "ghost" on this one looks a little too friendly.

The image on the right is the redone version of the other image and I personally enjoy it a lot more. It has the creepiness I originally wanted in the previous sketch, and the brickwork looks a lot better.

Where I took inspiration for this idea was by looking on YouTube. I was seeing a lot of people redoing their old artwork and I thought it was a really good idea! When you are focused on how you are drawing now, it is sometimes really hard to see any improvement, but with this exercise your improvement is easier to see.

I as well worked a little on drawing hands. Hands, at least to me, are one of the hardest things to draw. Hands and feet. It must have to be because of all the little parts that are effected by the other little parts, and how they brush, push and pull against each other in so little amount of space. At least, this is my theory.

The way I draw hands has some set backs, as I have been seeing recently. I have a tendency of drawing hands by doing the finger I see the most of first and then the rest of the hand. I am starting to think, maybe I should try boxing the outer shape of the hand first, and then worry about the details. This would maybe fix the problem of sometimes the hand being bigger than I expected, like with the fist on the bottom left. With this hand I thought I would have room, and then I did not have enough room for the thumb.

I hope that you enjoy my art and these postings!

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Mandalas and Watercolor

By Elissa Rosenthal

Hello, Everyone! For this week in my artistic journey I went back to two types of art: pen and pen with watercolor. In the past I have dabbled with these supplies, but I did not stick with them nearly long enough to make great progress. I find great enjoyment in using these supplies, so it surprised me how long I have stayed away from them.

If you have been following me on Instagram, you have seen this image before. It is currently my highest liked image on Instagram with sixty-six likes.

I have found out from this, that there are quite a few people on Instagram who are fans of mandalas, like myself. Plus, there are some people on there who are excellent at creating mandalas. One of these people goes under the name "tak_mist". I follow them, and they make spectacular mandalas! tak_mist has inspired me to work more on my detailing and proportions with my mandalas.

As far as pen with watercolor, this is the watercolor painting I shared on Instagram of a cherry blossom tree. The original photo I took, which I used as reference, was a white cherry blossom tree, but I wanted to use the color pink in this particular painting. I wanted to have this one be a little more impressionistic, which I hope came across.

The previous image however, was not my first time going back to watercolor. I had done one painting before that one which is right here.

I know in this post I have mentioned Instagram quite a lot, but I do want you, my readers to get something out of these postings. So, even if I do post some stuff on Instagram that I do not mention here, it will go the same way for those on Instagram. This way there is a reason for you, my readers, to keep returning to these postings.

As far as my experience with watercolor, I quite enjoyed the experience and I want to work more with the medium. With watercolor it dries a lot quicker than other painting mediums and you can layer over old paint with little issue, as long as you let the previous layer dry completely. This is what I did as the last step for the watercolor painting of the girl shown above. After painting all of the background and detailing I let the whole piece dry completely and went over the whole thing with a light blue wash. My decision to do so was based on me wanting to convey as clearly as possible that she was underwater.

I hope that you enjoy my art and these postings!

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Fun With Acrylics: Needed Some Rainbows

By Elissa Rosenthal

Hello Everyone! Thank you for coming to read my blog, I really appreciate it! If you enjoy what I post and/ or want to follow up on what I do outside of this blog, my social media links can be found at the end of this post.

Little life update and PSA is in the next paragraph. If you wish to skip, please go to the paragraph after the next, thank you.

This week in my artistic journey I have been having a bit of motivational issues, which is why this post is coming out so late in the day, and for that I am deeply sorry. It has not so much been not wanting to create, as the fear to create. I have generalized anxiety, and I did one thing which put me on edge, I read an article about how this one gal had her artwork copied by a copy-cat "artist" in Mexico. Link to article HERE .This, plus reading all the comments about how other artists have had similar issues started to bring up my anxiety a bit. Though now I have started to calm down, possibly due to the act of creating, as well as the knowledge that I should not let my fear control me. I know I could legally copy-right everything I have ever created, but as a college student I do not have the funds to do that, nor do I believe my stuff is currently good enough to steal. I may in the future, but not right now. However, this does not mean I would take theft lightly. As a way of calming down my anxiety I have decided to let all of you, my readers, know that everything I post on here, as far as art, is my original artwork. As for the posts I did before I started to share my art, I gave proper credit, as far as I understand, to all creators. I encourage you all to do the same. If you share a piece of art you enjoy, give the artist credit, maybe even give a link to where you found the image. As for my artwork, you may share it if you wish as long as you give proper credit to me. I do not give anyone permission, however, to make money off of my artwork. I ask you all to please be courteous of my rights as the original artwork creator, and thank you for reading my little life update.

This is the artwork I decided to create today as my anxiety was acting up a bit. So please, excuse me for it not being the best. In hindsight I probably should have made the sky a bit lighter. I may try in the future to correct that error, as I have no more time to do that today as the day is coming to a close and I need to post before the day is up.

The time was not wasted though, I found out some little tricks when it comes to acrylic paints. One is to do the farthest back layer first. In this artwork that was the sky. You do this first, because one of the few luxuries of acrylic paint is it will dry quite quickly, meaning you can paint over the layer you put down previously. This brings me to the second trick I found out, which is layering. Each part of this painting I went over at least three times, to make sure it was opaque, since this was the look I was going for. If you are finding your paint is looking more transparent than you want it to be, try letting it dry a little and put another layer of the same paint on top of the previous layer. This trick on its own is the main reason why this painting has so far taken me a little over seven hours to plan and paint.

I hope all of you are doing well today! Creating is a great way to settle the nerves!

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Oil Paint Drying and Trying Acrylics Again

By Elissa Rosenthal

Hello Everyone! Welcome to my blog! If you enjoy my work and want to keep being updated on what is going on with this blog, as well as other creative ventures of mine, the links to my social media are below this post.

For this week in my artistic journey, I decided to let my oil painting dry a bit more, since some parts I need to fix are still quite wet. Most of the painting is becoming dry however, so I should be able to work on it by next week. To help quicken the drying time I have put the painting in a spare room where I have placed a temperature controlled heater to warm the room up and create some air flow.

As for works I have done this week, I decided to try painting with acrylics again for the fun of it. For this painting I could say it is supposed to have some sort of deeper meaning behind it, how it captures how liberal youth feel tided down, or something of the like. But in truth, this painting was just a bit of fun for me. Put a few abstract heads here, a few lines there, and done.

I enjoy creating art for fun sometimes, not knowing where the painting or drawing is going to go. Every piece of art you create does not have to have some kind of deeper meaning to it. I mean, if someone else puts meaning to this painting, and for some reason they are moved by that meaning, then great! But as a creator of art, I have no obligation to anyone to need a deeper meaning for each creation.

Thank you for reading my blog! Have any questions or comments please leave them in the comment section down below! Let us have a conversation!

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First Oil Painting Using Walnut Oil

By Elissa Rosenthal

Hello Everyone! Welcome to my blog! If you are interested in this blog and other things I am up to, you can find the links to my social media below this post.

Well, in all honesty, this week has been a bit of a trial because of being sick. When I mean sick, I mean hardly-got-any-sleep-because-of-coughing-fits sick. Thank you though, to those who showed support. I am starting to feel a little bit better. *knocks on wood*

For this week I decided to try out my walnut oil that arrived in a new oil painting. I figured a good place to start would be to try doing a landscape painting. For this one I have been pulling from several references to create this scene.

I have not painted that much in comparison to other forms of media, so I think it is starting to turn out well for my skill level. This image you see above is my first layer of this painting. I decided to let it dry a little and come back to even out the skyline and add some more detailing to the water.

For the water I mixed some Rembrandt: Cobalt Blue Light and Rembrandt: Phthalo Green Yellow. Plus, I took some of my Winsor & Newton Artists' Oil Color: Burnt Sienna and my Winsor & Newton Artists' Oil Color: Titanium White to even out the rock formations in the distance.

For now, I am deciding to leave the painting as is until it dries. Then I can go over it with more paint. I want to play up the colors a bit more, particularly in the water and the closer rock formations. The walnut oil sees so far to be a very slow drying medium, so I will see how long it takes for the painting to dry at this stage in my climate. I live in Seattle, so that should give you some idea of what the temperature and humidity is like here.

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