Copyright Elisha Dasenbrock 2010.

This is one of the 3 paintings I am currently working on. She is on a full sheet and she is from my Thailand series. I want to make most of her body look like a statue because statues are everywhere in Thailand. Buddha statues are all over the place.  Although I want most of her body to resemble that specific part of the culture I want her face and hands to be warmer and show the live and exuberance of such a precocious child.

The other two paintings are dog portraits. One is for Joe’s sister. I forget why, but I know it’s a “if you do this I will paint a picture of Redgy” deal. The second is a commissioned portrait for someone as a gift.

These are the very first sketches for a children’s book I am working on. More details to come, I just wanted to show what I have been up to besides working at a bookstore and getting ready to move.

I am not the best sketcher, but I think by the time the book is finished I will be much improved. I am also not an illustrator, luckily the author wants what I do instead of illustrations.

Sorry for the very poor photo quality. I am having an issue with my computer. I have to open everything up as an administrator and I can not open up my scanner that way. I had to take the photos with my cell phone. One day soon I will figure out what the problem is and have it fixed.

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This painting, along with my self portrait titled “This Too Shall Pass” will be my submission for this year’s Illinois Watercolor Society.  Any critique would be much appreciated.

I finally finished this painting. I am very happy to have it off my board because now I get to focus on my Thailand paintings. It did not turn out how I expected, the great thing about the unexpected though is that you learn a few new things. For instance, did you know hair makes an interesting resist? I did not until this week.  Joe loves this painting and keeps giving me the puppy dog eyes in hopes that I will cave and give it to him.

I am now offering 5 and 10 pks of postcards on my Etsy shop.  I uploaded this painting as well as one new abstract that I did not add on Monday.

In very exciting news: I found out that I am going to be featured next week at Empty Easel. I am thrilled that they picked my work. This week has been a little rough. Work was tough for me and left me with very little energy the last couple of days and that in turn allowed doubts and other things to creep in. The week started off very well though and I did get quite a bit accomplished. I mean, I did finally finish this painting.  The email I received from Lisa at Empty Easel was a perfect book end to this week.

Next week is going to be a bit hectic due to the holiday and my work schedule.

Gallery

Day By Day

Day 10: I realized that these stick figures are actually really helping me see the angles of the body in a different way. I must concentrate on the figure as a whole and think more about the abstract shapes that it makes as one.  Who knew you could learn from from stick figures?!

Day 11: Actually day 11 only consisted of the two figures on the left and the head oval. I became very frustrated after the bottom figure and decided to call it a day before I went to work.

Day 12: I came up with a happy medium between the stick figures and the more detailed drawings. I was planning on just doing a few more gestures today (Saturday, Day 14) and calling it a week, but last night I had the over-whelming urge to draw some gestures so I did.

Day 13: Technically these were done on day 14, but I am grouping them sort of, by 10s and just calling those days. Again I figured I would just sit down and do 10 for today and that’s it. I would confess my sins of playing Ninja Warrior on Facebook for an entire day. (Well technically I ended up sleeping 12 hours until 2 o’clock in the afternoon and only stayed up until about midnight, so not really an entire day and I blame my little brother. It’s so his fault.)  However…..

Day 14:  I ended up modifying the stick figures so that I would hopefully have something that could be done quickly as well as help me get the proportions a bit more accurate. I believe I did 15 of these as well as flip back to Day 11 and fill in the page for a total of 50 gestures. By a nose on this one…

I will also say that Ninja Warrior was not my only pit fall.

The last two weeks have been a bit crazy. However, from the craziness came good. I was able to spend some fantastic time with my best friends and I think we all needed it no matter it came about by the tragic loss of another friend. Sometimes it takes a tragedy to make you drop everything that “needs” to be done in order to focus on your real priorities, such as loved ones.  Danielle will be missed greatly by her friends and family, luckily, for us she made the world a better place while she was with us and her memory will live on for a very long time.