Working On Unfinished Projects

By Elissa Rosenthal

Hello everyone! I hope you are having a good day today!

For this week in my journey of getting back on the artistic horse, I decided to work on a project of mine that I had put to the side for quite a while. It is a depiction of the goddess Aphrodite in oil paint.

At first I wanted to exaggerate the proportions of the head and eyes, and ended up deciding against it as I did some practice sketches. To me it did not seem to align with the goddesses image, so I decided to go a little more on the traditional proportion route. Though I may do a little bit of exaggerating with some features later on.

This is one of my first sketches for the face I was planning on using for the depiction of Aphrodite. 

In my original planning stages for the piece I wanted to have the depiction of Aphrodite crossing her legs, however, due to my gained knowledge on goddess since then, I've decided to have her be a mermaid. Plus, with painting in layers I can always start over or go over particular parts that aren't  pleasing to the eye.

The photo above are sketches of mine to try to see how I want the mermaid to be posed. 

From my own experience with painting, the main thing is to make sure the canvas will not be showing through, so at this particular stage I'm not too concerned with how the background looks. It was set up for the previously decided pose for the goddess which is why it is a bit off on placement. I'm thinking of maybe doing some geometric patterns or sea life around the edges to help with the balance of the painting. This is so the tail doesn't lead your eyes off the canvas.

Here, I've started to sketch the figure on the painting itself with a charcoal pencil.

In case you wish to know, the medium I used for the paint was just simple sesame oil. The original reason why I set this painting aside was because I needed the oil to have plenty of time to dry. Then it ended up being where I knew I needed to study more to feel comfortable doing the painting at all. I hope that I can do well with this painting in the coming weeks. 

For next week I will be showing my continued progress with this painting. Hopefully it goes well! And if not, well, there is always another canvas needing paint. 

Thank you so much for reading my blog, I really do appreciate it!

Want to keep up-to-date on my blog and other things I'm up to?

👉FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER @TheElissaPost: HERE

👉LIKE MY FACEBOOK FAN PAGE:HERE

👉FOLLOW BY EMAIL BY PUTTING YOUR EMAIL INTO THE FOLLOW BY EMAIL PLUGIN.

The Art of Eyes : Distortion and Shading Practice

By Elissa Rosenthal

Hi everyone! For this week I decided to keep up with practicing drawing the eye and while doing so I've learned some little tricks for helping to correct some errors. 

1) I found out how you can use photography to your advantage! 

This may not work in all settings since I'm drawing from a photograph, but what I found helps is while I'm drawing to take photos during some pauses in the process to see how I'm doing. This little tip helped me figure out the next one as well.

2)Try to look as straight on to your subject and your paper since, if you don't, it can end up becoming distorted. 

From my own experience this is because your eye is seeing your subject at a different angle, same as your paper. This can make it where you can end up drawing lines too long or too short, among other possible distortion issues.

I found out the distortion that was happening after I took my first photo (shown above). I saw that I had made the end of the eyelid- near the tear duct- too close to the tear duct and at a too drastic of an angle.

Then, once I took my next photo, I found out I had made the pupil a little too small to the right, so I fixed it as best as I could at the time. 

Once I had taken what I considered my last photo of this eye I had been working on, I remembered three more tricks I wanted to share. 

1) Drawing in the same direction the whole time makes the image look more natural and gives it less unnecessary texture. 

2) Blending with a paper napkin works better than blending with a piece of computer paper.

3) You can over blend.

In the picture shown above is my form study I did since I had enough time to do it this week. A way I found to help with not using guide lines in the shadow -since it's so light in value- is to lightly shade in the general area and erase what doesn't need to be there. 

Thank you for reading my blog! I really do appreciate it! If you want to ask me any questions directly related to this post you can comment in the comment section below and I will try my best to answer. 

DO YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT ELSE I'M DOING AS WELL AS KEEP UP WITH THIS BLOG?

👉FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER @TheElissaPost: HERE

👉LIKE MY FACEBOOK FAN PAGE:HERE

👉FOLLOW BY EMAIL BY PUTTING YOUR EMAIL INTO THE FOLLOW BY EMAIL PLUGIN.

Practicing the Eye

By Elissa Rosenthal

The eyes, in my opinion, are the focal point to a character or portrait. So, I decided this week to practice drawing some eyes. Particularly my eyes for studding the structure and proper placement since, if I need a new angle, I can take another photo of the same eyes. 

I decided to take a photo instead of studying in the mirror since it's pretty difficult to understand how large the iris needs to be when your eyes are looking at your eyes. Plus, I wear glasses and I wanted the study to be focused on my eyes, not the glasses, and be able to see. 

Here is my first attempt at drawing my eyes. With this one I did the left eye first, then the right. It's very clear I learned some proportion and how to shade during the first eye since the second eye does not look nearly as flat and improperly shaped. 

I found it really interesting how different the change was between the first and second attempt. Since this was my first time drawing the same thing more than once, I haven't experienced this type of progression before. I think I'm going to continue drawing this view of the eyes for a few more times to improve. 

The hardest part for me was the sizing and shape of the eye. It wasn't until this practice I noticed I'd been drawing my pupils in self portraits way too small.

This practice helped me notice how detailed the eyes are, even when at rest. Eyes can bring the character out in a portrait and make the viewer more interested. This is similar to how the expressions of characters in stories help the reader understand them. It is possible my mind was a bit primed for drawing the personality behind the eyes because of me working on my character development for a story I'm working on. Or, perhaps that's a bit of a reach.

DO YOU LIKE WHAT I DO ON MY BLOG?👊

👉FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER @TheElissaPost: HERE

👉LIKE MY FACEBOOK FAN PAGE: HERE

👉FOLLOW BY EMAIL BY PUTTING YOUR EMAIL INTO THE FOLLOW BY EMAIL PLUGIN.

Staying With Grayscale

By Elissa Rosenthal

Hello my butterflies! I'm sorry about the late upload. I usually schedule my posts to come up automatically in the morning on Saturday. This past week, however, I've been dealing with a cold. So, instead of writing my post last night and scheduling it to come up early today as I usually do, I ended up falling asleep. I am sorry. 

Anyway, here is the post for the week! I've found this one artist who does YouTube videos and, though her work mostly goes around Photoshop, I have been finding some of her videos quite interesting and they have sparked more of a desire in me to draw. Though I will say, the particular video I was watching was a bit out of my current league. Her YouTube channel is called Istebrak, and I was watching her video on how to color skin. 

Now, though I had seen a previous video of hers' where there was a warning about going to colors too quickly, I did it anyway. At least until I realized she was right. As you can see below I chose the colors I thought would work for my particular situation with using colored pencils. They are Shuttle Art brand colored pencils if you are wondering. They are from their 136 color set. These are cheaper colored pencils, so I don't particularly recommend them, though they are better than the kind you would use in Elementary School. 

Istebrak was right. Since I had not practiced grayscale for a long time, I had a particularly hard time with colors and distinguishing their value. I tried to take some of the tips from her drawing in Photoshop and translate them into colored pencils. It particularly did not help that I was going off of no references. As you can see the nose has, as Istebrak refers to them, baby nostrils. If this nose was on an adult they would have some serious breathing problems. The second image is supposed to be the skin that would be around the eye, however, it looks a bit too almond shaped. Not to mention both have very yellow skin, to where it looks almost neon. 

So, I went back to grayscale. I took out my favorite pencil, a Faber-Castell 6B, and started drawing a nose. I decided to take the time to go through some images of people's faces for this one though. I first blocked out the nose, finding where the curve where the tear ducts of the eyes would end, then from there finding the placement of the nostrils. What I found interesting, and what helped me to stay away from the problem of baby nostrils, is to divide the opening of the nose into three equal sections. Two for the nostrils, one for the septum. Plus, I tried my best to hold my pencil as far away from the tip as I could in order to start with large shaded areas, first making the whole area of the nose a mid-tone. I used another piece of computer paper to smudge the pencil, since smudging the medium with your figure puts your oils onto the paper, therefore making any mistakes harder to erase. I personally think this one is a lot better than I expected, particularly since this my first grayscale nose I've done in around a year or two. Though I will always want to be better and I am going to try my best to be better. 

DO YOU LIKE WHAT I DO ON MY BLOG?

FOLLOW BY EMAIL BY PUTTING YOUR EMAIL INTO THE FOLLOW BY EMAIL PLUGIN.

FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER @TheElissaPost : HERE

LIKE MY FACEBOOK FAN PAGE : HERE

Thank you for reading my blog! 

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.

DO YOU LIKE WHAT I DO ON MY BLOG?

FOLLOW BY EMAIL BY PUTTING YOUR EMAIL INTO THE FOLLOW BY EMAIL PLUGIN.

FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER @TheElissaPost : HERE

LIKE MY FACEBOOK FAN PAGE : HERE

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. 

DO YOU LIKE WHAT I DO?

LIKE MY FACEBOOK FAN PAGE : HERE 

FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER @TheElissaPost : HERE

YOU CAN ALSO PUT YOUR EMAIL INTO THE FOLLOW BY EMAIL PLUGIN.

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!

Going Artsy With This Blog- This Blog's Future

By Elissa Rosenthal

Hi everyone! I've been thinking for a while on how this blog doesn't have a narrow focus, and has been a melting pot of randomness. This has been the case because, to be honest, with this being my very first blog, I had no idea what I selectively wanted to write about. The major proponent of this decision has been that I've been writing on here on a weekly basis and I wanted to make sure I didn't feel drained by the topic of choice.

However, as I said, I've been thinking and I believe the best decision is for me to try my best sticking to two subjects. The subjects I'll be going for is art and celiac disease. The main topic of this blog will be my artistic journey, and if I do come across something new to share with the celiac community I will do that as well for that week.

It has been a while since I've practiced by art skills, and I do love creating. So, you all will be seeing me pretty much on the level I used to be a very long while back. This is because as with most skills, if you don't practice drawing your ability degrades over time. If I find any good technique's for practicing I will let you know in the article for that week, as well as my experiences with it and any new art medium I've tried.  

I hope to see all your views and comments in the future of this blog! May your day be merry and fulfilling! Till next time my butterflies!

ENJOY MY WRITING?

FOLLOW THIS BLOG BY PUTTING YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS INTO THE FOLLOW PLUGIN!

LIKE MY FACEBOOK FAN PAGE

FOLLOW ME ON TWITTER @TheElissaPost