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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Starting The Creative Process And Anxiety Relief

By Elissa Rosenthal

When I went back to drawing this week, with this being the first time in a long time, I found myself having a hard time trying to find my creativity and inspiration. So, I defaulted to trying out some shading exercises, particularly because I know I will need to practice shading again.

For this week I did it with a basic, number two led, mechanical pencil since I didn't want to break out my nicer pencils until I practice a bit more. The one with the balls on top of each other was obviously more difficult since I needed to remember to have the reflection coming off the bottom ball onto the bottom of the top one. Plus, this is type of practice is always good for practicing highlights and values. 

Now, since today with the inauguration and everything my anxiety started acting up a little so I decided to draw some rainbow mandalas. Drawing mandalas always helps my mind calm down and get more into the creative mind set. However, I kinda got a bit carried away and did quite a few of them. At the very least these can help with bringing back the muscle memory of straight lines and even curves. As you see these mandalas are far from perfect. Though that was not my intent with this particular exercise it does help me notice which types of lines I could need help with. 

If you get anxious like I do I highly recommend trying out drawing mandalas. They do not need to be a particular design and you can look them up online for design inspiration. 

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Thank you so much for taking time out of your day for looking at my blog and following me on my social media! Till need time my butterflies!