Elfling Creations

I'm Meri Greenleaf, an artist, author, and spoonie. Elfling Creations will combine these things into a personal journey through art. Here you'll find projects that I'm working on, along with a little about my life as a creator with chronic illness. You can find my main/writing blog at MeriGreenleaf

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Painted this from a tutorial last night. I'm having a blast learning acrylics, but I'm finding it's still more difficult to paint on acrylic paper verses canvas. (I'm using paper because I don't have space for storing canvases, even the thin panels. Plus Amazon sent me a four pack instead of one pad twice so I have so much paper.) Even after two coats of gesso, which helped, the paint keeps soaking into the paper and drying very fast. Next time I'm going to try more gesso and also mix in something to keep the paints wetter longer.

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I'm not completely happy with this drawing I did yesterday. It turned out fatter than the tutorial example so it doesn't quite have a horse head shape. But considering I don't think I've ever drawn a horse before, I'll consider it a success!

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I'm less impressed by this painting I did today, but that's okay! I'm still very much a beginner painter, so any painting is a step in the right direction. I couldn't resist a tutorial that was a black cat since I had a beloved black cat who passed away a few years ago. She'll always have a place in my heart. 💙

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Today I colored the giraffe drawing I started the other day. I don't have a lot of experience drawing animals so this turned out better than I expected! (The tutorial book I'm using only tells you vaguely where to put the colors, not how to draw it.)

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Today I did another acrylic painting tutorial and I love the colors! It's so much easier to paint sky and ocean with acrylic verses watercolor. (Which yeah, obvious, but I've only done a handful of acrylic paintings so far lol.) It still dries fast, same problem I have with watercolor, but I think that's because I'm painting on canvas paper rather than actual canvas and it's soaking up the paint. Using a bit more water seems to help.

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I've been itching to do another acrylic painting and this tutorial called to me. Jellyfish are so much fun to paint! I'll get back to watercolor at some point soon, but I think doing acrylics for a while will help. I'm so new to painting in general and acrylic is so much easier to control.

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It's been about three weeks since I did any art and I was missing it so much! (Nothing bad going on, just even lower energy than usual.) So I decided to do another lesson in the colored pencil tutorial book since that's less spoons than painting and I can do it over the course of several days because it's a dry medium. This one was a learning experience because I hadn't tried doing transparency before, but I'm really pleased with how the ice cubes turned out.

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Started working with acrylic paint today! I'm so happy with how this turned out, considering it's only my third try ever at an acrylic painting and I didn't have the second blue to blend into the middle. A few of my paints went bad in the years I've been unable to use them. RIP ultramarine blue, I'll be replacing you soon.

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I'm really happy with this sky. That's the best blending I've ever done! No streaking at all! The bottom half looks like I painted it with my feet. 😂 I've wondered how I can draw realistically but struggle so bad with painting, and I think I figured it out. It's because when I draw, it's precise- what I put down on the paper is an exact replica. Like it starts out sketchy, but turns into a solid whole as detail gets added. To my perfectionist, ocd brain, that makes sense. With watercolor, it's loose lines and brush strokes that when looked at as a whole, look like the thing, but aren't the thing. If that makes any sense. I guess the more paintings I do, though, the more I'll understand how to use the brush and also think more loosely.

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I'm not exactly sure why my colored pencils decided to ignore all the layers of brown and blend into mostly the bottom layer of yellow. I wasn't going to try fixing the color, though, not when I was super happy with how the shading turned out and didn't want to mess that up. One of my friends called it a golden turtle figurine and I'm going to go with that and pretend the color is intentional lol

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Not gonna lie, I wanted to trash this a few times as I was painting. I hate how watercolor always washes off my paper and goes all streaky. (I know it's my paper. Someday I'll be able to get the good stuff.) I didn't want to waste the pencils, though, so I kept going. I'm glad I did because it turned out okay once I added the trees and stars. Next time I'll try something smaller and see if I can get the colors to stay darker and lift off the paper less.

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Yesterday I did a second watercolor and I like this one a lot! I think this was my first time drawing a rose. I used Arteza pencils and I gotta say, I'm impressed! They work wonderfully and are inexpensive, which is a rare combo with art supplies.

I feel like I cheated, though, because using the watercolor pencils this way is basically the same as drawing with regular colored pencils. Just using water to blend instead of the blending pencil. Which, yeah, I love because I love working with colored pencils, but isn't really teaching me watercolor. I guess it is teaching me other ways to work with colored pencils, though, so there's that lol

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Here's a try with watercolor pencils to paint what I hope looks like a beach lol. The pencils are much easier than regular watercolor, but dang is it a struggle to learn how to paint. I'm having fun, though, and that's what matters. :-)

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Back to working on faces tonight. I'm really loving this series of tutorial books. I think I'm starting to get a feel for proportions and stuff!

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Today I did a painted version of the colored pencil drawing from yesterday. This time I used watercolor pencils. This was my first time doing any kind of detailed picture (shading and everything!) with watercolor or watercolor pencils and I'm really happy with the result. It's definitely a ton easier to use watercolor pencils than regular watercolor! I love working with regular colored pencils, so I can see this becoming a thing I do regularly as I try to learn watercolor. Except I didn't swatch the colors before I started so what was supposed to be lilac was more like a pink. 😅

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These watercolor pencils were on an Amazon deal, so I snatched them up. They're not the best ones out there, but for the price I got them and the good reviews, I'm willing to try them out. Hopefully they work well.🤞I really should get a picture of my colored pencil collection at some point because somehow this became my favorite medium and I have so many! I love them because they're so easy to use on low spoon days, last a while, and even the good ones are fairly affordable. (I've been gradually collecting prismacolors individually after I got a deal on a set years ago.)

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Today I did a lesson on negative space. I get what the tutorial was trying to teach, but I think this would have been much easier if it had said to outline in blue first. I kept losing track of where the shadows on the petals went when everything was just white. Note to self, do the background first next time.

(The whole background was supposed to be blue but there was no way I had the patience for that. 😅)