First Oil Painting Using Walnut Oil

By Elissa Rosenthal

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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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Chipped Painting and Dragon Wood Burning

By Elissa Rosenthal

Hello Everyone! Thank you for coming to read my blog! I do appreciate it! If you enjoy my writing and want to know more about what I am doing, including staying up to date on this blog, my social media links will be down below.

For this week in my art journey, something unfortunate happened. If you have been reading this blog you know I have been waiting for the first stage of my oil painting to dry. Well, it did finally get dry, however, one of the people I live with ended up "bumping" into it. So now all the paint layers are breaking off in chips and the whole painting is now done for. This as well happened to be the day I finally received my walnut oil.

The image on the left is from the center of the painting, the one on the right is from the side.

Now, not to be too discouraged because of this mishap, I decided to try out some wood burning. I have had this wood burning kit around for the past few years, and have done nothing with it until now, so I figured I would give it a go. I did one wood burning quite a few years ago and it did not turn out too bad, which is why I originally bought the kit. 

This kit however, I would not ,so far, recommend. It is a good wood burner for the amount of money I paid for it, but it is by no means the best. The temperature has some consistency problems, the cord is short enough between the wood burner handle and the dial for the temperature to where it is easily turned by accident, and the tip kept on trying to unscrew it'self from the handle, making it where I had to get pliers to re-screw the hot tip several times.

Mind you I do not have much experience with wood burning, so these may be normal issues, but I do remember the last wood burner I used at my High School being a lot easier to use. Though, that wood burner was a much higher quality one, and obviously more expensive. 

This wood burning took me around seven hours to complete. The wood burner I used is called the Creative Versa-Tool by Walnut Hollow. Though, remember I did get this wood burner quite a few years ago. So for all I know the issues I am facing have to do with the age of the device or it not being used for years. 

To create the head and body I used several circles of differing sizes, a picture of which is available on my new Instagram account, under the name theelissapost . I originally thought of having the dragon reading, but the size between the book and the flowers seemed too off for me. So, instead I decided on a dandelion seed. The scales I did with the side of the wood burning tip. During the whole wood burning I used the standard tip in the wood burning kit.  

While wood burning I recommend having a fan going, and taking breaks. As of right now my throat is scratchy and my allergies have been acting up from the smoke created from wood burning for hours yesterday. Take care of your body while creating art. I will only do wood burning now with a fan and for stretches no longer than, perhaps, two hours.  

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