Peanut Head

By Elissa Rosenthal

Hello, Everyone! This week is the start of hopefully a bit of a busy future for me so, I did something a little simple for this week's post. I will still be doing projects that take longer to make, however, depending on how detailed they are, they may take a few weeks to complete and show you guys. So look forward to more detailed projects in the future, once in a while, and little characters and other creations in the meantime. 

I love you all and thank you for staying with my blog!

For this week, we have a character I will like to call Peanut Head. This character I did with a very quick exercise where you need to come up with a character sketch in thirty minutes or less. 

 I imagine he is a very enthusiastic character with confidence that everyone envies, even a little bit. Peanut Head puts on odd and brightly colored clothing, makes over dramatic expressions of affection, and wears huge sunglasses to stand out the way he wants to, to draw fellow beings away from his head. The reason he is so self-conscious has nothing to do with his lack of hair, but the shape of his head. When he was younger, it was the main subject for unoriginal bullies of his to tease him. This is why now, whenever his head shape is brought up, he makes it a joke for everyone so others cannot make a joke about it first.

Peanut Head

By Elissa Rosenthal 

My head you understand, so shapely mine,

Came into contact with a ball of twine.

Brown, scratchy, string wrapped around my large head,

The small prickly began to embed.

"Why? Please no!", I cried, "Why do you embed?"

"Because,...", said The Twine, "I want your large head.

I want it to be a peanut instead."

It hurt quite a bit, with a short, slight tug,

Now I look cuter than a little pug.

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New Moon Meditation

By Elissa Rosenthal

Hello Everyone! This week I based my art around the new moon, which occurred on the 25th. I have always enjoyed the different moon cycles, and with being pagan, I base some of my spiritual practices around them. 

I originally tried doing a drawing of a gal looking down while the full moon was behind her, but that one did not turn out so well. The reason was mostly because I started coloring it in with colored pencils, and did them too hard too quickly. So, the sketch quickly started turning into a pile of blue pigment, so I stopped coloring it in, so I would still have a reference to go from if I want to do the idea again. 

For this sketch I really wanted to still go with the same theme however, so instead of doing a moon behind her I did a mandala with the phases of the moon within the mandala. Plus, instead of coloring in the image with colored pencil, I went with a pen outline. I may in the future copy the image and color it in, but for now this is what it looks like. 

I imagine that she is a girl named Neila, who is meditating during the night, calming herself before needing to go to sleep. She normally sees the moon outside of her window, casting a glow within the room, and chasing away the shadows. This is why on the nights of the new moon she becomes scared and tense, in need of some relief. So she sits and reminds herself how the moon is still there and will appear again soon.  

New Moon Meditation Poem

By Elissa Rosenthal

Absent, distant, dark beauty from a far,

Hidden, concealed, from your love, the star.

The sky is dark, only small specks of dust,

Of far away planets, we now entrust.

Meditating, thoughts grow dark and weary,

Luna, love, light the sky, make us merry.

We all miss your beauty, your love, your light,

Please, give us all hope you will be alright.

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Ultramarine: A Poem Inspired By Watercolor Landscape

By Elissa Rosenthal

Hello Everyone! This week I started to delve deeper into watercolor, having now bought proper watercolor paper. The difference I have found is great in the lack of the paper buckling and creating pools where the color wanted to go. Now the surface is much more even when I paint, making it easier to distribute the color.

Anyway, since the character and poem was so popular last week, in comparison to my other kinds of posts on average, I have decided to provide you with another poem. This one is inspired by the landscape painting I did below. I was practicing on painting with no prior planning, just letting the paint tell me what to do with it. 

Ultramarine 

By Elissa Rosenthal

Crisp oxygen filtered through new pollen.

Thundering movement kisses the mountain.

Storming pools welcome you to sit and wait,

To be pulled from safety to waterfall.

They may call you to seal your own fate,

I beg of you to not answer the call.

I have seen too many who follow death.

Think they own this place and are not a guest.

The pools may look safe to those who not know,

How ultramarine whispers pull you in.

Current may seem stagnant and slow,

They will prove to you how lazy you swim. 

Feel free to leave a comment in the comment section below! Let us have a conversation!

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Mire The Zucchini

By Elissa Rosenthal

Hello, Everyone! I hope you all are having a good day. For a little while now I have been thinking about doing characters with background stories, and possibly a few comics on here. Please let me know in the comments if you have any thoughts about this idea.

The reason for this idea is because I realized, when I was doing the post last week, I quite enjoyed writing about the character I created. I found it exciting and fun to show you guys, gals, and everything in-between, my voice for story telling. Most of what I have shown on here has been my informative writing, not so much story telling, so, I am thinking of diving a bit deeper into that way of writing.

Now, do not fret if you like the tips and tricks I give sometimes, those I am sure will still be there. Along with telling you short background stories of my characters, and who knows, if  I or others like them enough, I may make full stories or poems.

To start off, let me introduce you to this little guy, I found in my minds' eye while looking at some plants on my window sill. I decided to draw him in a style in-between modified contour and continuous contour after doing some sketching of him. The ground I decided to not do in full detail because I thought it would become a bit messy, particularly since I have not practiced contour drawing recently.

This little guys' name is Mire. His body is made from roots that spindle and curl around each other, and taper off at the ends. Upon his head is the same type of baby plant around him, since he originated from one of the seeds. He is a caregiver for these zucchini, making sure they look and feel dry when they need water, and helping to guide their leaves to the light source.

Mire will have a longer life than some of his relatives, for example those who take care of carrots, if the humans who feed off his plants take good care of them. For his kind only last until the last plant under their care is consumed or ripped up. But do not fret, more of his kind will come, as long as the cycle of life and death provides.

Nothing in this world is permanent, as his kind know. They live everyday understanding that their roots can be ripped up and their leaves shredded at any given time. They bathe in the sun, soaking up its energy and warmth, happy to be alive at all, sending out whispers to passersby containing wondrous words of wisdom about impermanence.


Poem of Mire
By Elissa Rosenthal

Take care of those you wish to keep and hold,
For the future can be not warm but cold.

Let your eyes gaze up towards the warm sun rays,
Maybe your eyes will burn while laughter plays.

Look back down upon my barren dry roots,
If you do water them there will be fruit.

Take care of those you wish to keep and hold,
For the future can be not warm but cold.

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Creating Sketches From Dreams

By Elissa Rosenthal

Hello, Everyone! This week was interesting, yet not as productive as I wished it to be. As far, as art goes, the only things I have created this week have been the image you can view on my Twitter @TheElissaPost , and Instagram: theelissapost ,as well as the one below.

Maybe it is because I have been trying to work on a book I have been wanting to write for quite a while, or because I did not have much inspiration until last night.

What most of you do not know, is when I have dreams they are, more often than not, realistically vivid and strange, even in the realm of dreams. The sketch above is of one of the characters that was in my dream. She was all a periwinkle blue, with a flower bud as the top of her head, going down to a razor sharp jawline. Her face looked beautiful and withheld danger in her onyx eyes. She whispered in my ear that I have forgotten about her, and then, she nearly slashed at my face with her long blade-like figures. Only because she wanted me to remember her, not for her harming me, but for her dangerous beauty.

It was quite an interesting dream filled with other characters, just as vivid as the periwinkle fairy. I may draw more of them, if my mind allows me to remember those parts of the dream.

Have you ever used dreams for inspiration?

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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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