Danielle Calabro

Yes, I did another one, I love doing these trees. When something is not coming to mind they are my perfect fix. I went on a website last week and saw what one of them would look like on a pillow, phone case and iPad case, even a t-shirt and it looked good, I have also thought about turning some of these into journal covers, again I am not sure where to start. I would like to take this a little further but I am confused about the whole copyright and licensing part of all of this. I think it is time to sit down and do a little more research and reading. If there is anyone out there that can help point me in the right direction I would greatly appreciate it. I feel I have finally found my niche, I love to tangle and I have fallen for watercolors and gouache, the are unpredictable, that is what I love the most about them. As I am typing out this post I am thinking of my next project. The thing with tangling is it is a process, it is time consuming. I can sit down and start work...

It was a very crazy weekend and week, Fathers day Sunday, my Huddy's birthday on Monday along with my kids Karate test, which I might add they did awesome. I also had to fix my computer, I wasn't paying attention to my son while he was trying to download a computer game and I got attacked by a crap load of malware, took me about a week and luckily only a $10.00 app to clean it out, so I was not able to dedicate myself completely with this one. I have still been experimenting with watercolors, I had fun with this one. I had left over paint left on my pallet so I added a bunch of water to my paper and to the paint. Then I just added paint and got the crazy effects by sprinkled it with rubbing alcohol. Once my paint was dry I outlined where the colors meet and made my tangle string. I am not crazy about this one but it was great practice. I would like to invite those of you that visit my blog to leave a comment, what you like or didn't like, an idea or two, new techniqu...

I really enjoyed creating the Zentangle™ inspired tree a couple of weeks ago so I decided to do another. This painting was created with watercolor, gouache, GellyRoll Pens and sharpie in a few areas. I am going to focus on the background for a little bit. I tried a couple of techniques I have read about and loved the way it came out. I stared with 140lb watercolor paper, I taped it down (which I believe they also call it stretching) so the paper would not buckle. I did things a little different this time, I did not draw outlines of what I was planing, I went straight to the backgound. I spread a layer of clean water across the paper, chose the colors I wanted to use and randomly painted the colors on the wet paper (wet-on-wet technique). Here is where it got interesting and fun, I took regular table salt and rubbing alcohol to the wet paint. The rubbing alcohol repealed the water and the salt absorbed the water, leaving what you see above, a pretty cool background. ...

I have been working more in watercolors lately and I am finding I am really starting to like them a lot more. I always thought watercolors were tougher to work with, with a little more practice I can see using them more and more. This little painting was done with mostly watercolor, I had to do the clouds in white gouache and of course the waves have tangles on them so I went over them with pen. I will be honest with you, there are a couple of things that I do not like about this painting. My birds ended up getting fatter when I tried to paint them and the tree looks to small to me or maybe it just needs more palms. I absolutely love the waves though, I had fun creating all the tangles on them and like the way they came out. Get involved, let me know what you think. I would love to get others opinions good or bad.

My estimation was correct, I finished by the end of this weekend, actually Saturday night. I have had a few large sheets of watercolor paper for a couple of months and I wanted to put them to good use. I also have a set of water colors that I purchased a couple of weeks ago and have only used them once and on a very small project. As I said before  there is no rhyme or reason to this painting. I brought two things of nature that  I love into one painting. This was first drawn out in pencil, I changed it a few times but went over what I knew I was going to keep with my Copic Multiliner 1.0, so if I had to erase I didn't have to worry about it. Once done with that step I did the background in watercolor and everything else with gouache paint and went over the lines again to finish it off. Here are pictures of the individual flowers. the daffodils are my favorite. I love how opaque the gouache paint is, I wasn't exactly careful when painting the background an...

Sometimes creating art takes a little longer then expected. I have been working on this for a few days and of course by the title and pictures you can tell I am still working on it. I drew out and erased a couple of times. I finally settled on a drawing. I went over it with a Copic Multiliner. Once that was done it was time to decide on a background, I used watercolor, I was not worried about the ink, it is water proof, also I wasn't worried about painting over the flowers or branches because I will be painting them with gouache. This part was done last night, I was able to get the background and branches painted before I had to call it a night. Still had to go to the J-O-B in the morning. I was actually a little pissed off this morning because I had to go to work when all I wanted to do is keep painting. So after my wonderful husband left for work and the kids were busy doing their thing, I went back to painting. Headphones on, good music playing and me in my own l...

Well it took me a little over a week and half but I have finally finished it. I wanted to put my tablet to good use for what I originally wanted it for, sketching. I was at a stand still, I have this huge piece of watercolor paper that I want to use for a large Zentangle™ project and I couldn't figure out what I wanted to do. I grabbed my tablet and just let it flow. I wanted to test out patterns and that is what I did.  I will admit, I think I would like this even more if I had added color. I am not advertising for Samsung, but I will say the Samsung Note Pro 12 is a great tablet. If you can not afford or just do not want to spend over a $1000 for an actual artist tablet (I am not talking about the once you use with your computer) then this is the next best thing in my eyes. I love traditional art, nothing is compares to it. There is so much in a piece of art that was created with a paint brush, pen, ink, etc. But the sad thing is a lot of things go digital. How long will...