Shading and Gesture

By Elissa Rosenthal

For this week I've mostly focused on my gesture drawings since I know it is one of the most important fundamentals. Plus, they really help you re-learn the proportions of the human body. I put some notes down with my self criticism, because this is my artistic journey, I know I have a long way to go. Then, even when I get to that point, I know I'll want to get even better.

I started off by doing the basic line structure to figure out positions for the body.

Then I looked at some references from searching on Google full body dramatic poses and did some slightly more elaborated gestures based on those references.

Along with the gesture drawings, I practiced some more shading on a basic shape. In this example a tub of lip balm. I'm going to try doing this type of exercise next week with my better quality pencils. I was disappointed with the lack consistency my mechanical pencil led had. Near the end it started to be more consistent because of wearing down the led on one side, however,  it would still make random harder marks on the paper if the mechanical pencil wasn't held just right.

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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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