Danielle Calabro

Well its that time of year again, and I already have the hiding spot for the candy. No, this is not to punish my children, this is to regulate how much candy they are eating. We have one kid in braces and the other one soon to be in braces, I am not taking any chances. So in the spirit of Halloween I have an accidental monster man. I was playing with some gouache paint and watered it down like watercolor and did a wet on wet, I wanted to see if it would react the same as regular watercolor. So I let it dry and just kept looking at it and had no idea what I was going to do with it. My daughter came over and said, "Mom, that looks like a nose and head." and thats where it started. I followed the edge of the yellow and went to town. I used acrylic ink for the hair and back. HAPPY HALLOWEEN!! Only a few days left

Playing with a watercolor technique with the background and Gouache silhouette of trees.  The background did not come out as dark as I would have liked, still have to keep playing with the water and paint mixture. Either way, I am very happy with the way this came out. This is my favorite tree between the two of them Of course we all know, no two trees are the same. I find it relaxing painting a bare tree, sitting there with a brush and doing each individual branch. The thick and thin lines are teaching me 2 things: 1. Patients - Something I lack most of the time 2. Better brush control - I tend to have a heavy hand

Every now and then I like to check out what " Skillshare " has to offer for a traditional artist. They don't have a lot but they do have a few. One I chose was " Modern Watercolor Techniques " It was a fun little class and not hard to follow at all. This is where I got my "Spacey picture side from, it was the last assignment. My favorite part was the Jelly fish though, I had a tough time with the first one I did so I tried it a second time, here is the fist and second one. This was the fist try, she had us mixing different mediums with watercolors. I was using watercolors, acrylic ink and gouache. I liked the colors of the right jelly and the bottom jelly the most.  This was Jelly number 2. I felt like I was getting a little more control with the smaller brush. I also added that thing in the middle that I saw on most jelly fish. I can't say I will start painting jelly fish or sea creatures but it was nice to learn a new way to le

I remember as a young child I loved everything about space and I am still in awe by Galaxy pictures, they are so beautiful.  Playing with Watercolor technique, stars added with white Gouache     I love when we go to an area outside the city limits where you can look out and see every star in the sky, it truly is a beautiful sight. The other day we were driving home from my Grandfathers house and the roads we took had no bothersome lights. I happen to look out my window and noticed how well we could see the stars. It was late but my son was still awake so I had him look out his window and he was in awe.  As adults I think we forget to take a look around us, we forget how small we are in this massive universe. My sons reaction made me realize that they have not experienced nature enough. They have their heads stuck in a tablet, computer or video games. I can gladly say where our new house is being built we will be able to enjoy the night sky, it may not be so great for goin

Watercolor and Gouache A Lot of people I know have a pet or two or more, we have one 14yr old cat. His name is Jasper, I found him at work as a kitten roaming the parking lot, and he is a sweet cat, especially now that he is older. There are however a couple family members on both sides that do not feel that way about Jasper, he is a cat that knows what he does and does not want and if you are petting him wrong or he is done, he will let you know, of course he doesn't do that to us. He has put our kids in their place a few times, so now they are cautious around him. Jasper He use to be sneaky though, if my Hubby was aggravating him, Jasper would rub against my husbands legs really sweet like and then when he least expected it Jasper would turn and bite the back of my husbands ankle. I found it pretty funny and I always warn him that it was going to happen. When Jasper was younger I could get him to jump at least 3 feet in the air, he would run around the house all

This would be a great place to be when everything seems to be going wrong Watercolor Think about when you were a kid, how much you enjoyed running to the swings, trying to be the first kid there. Trying to go as high as you can, pretending you were fly off into space. Maybe even laying on your tummy pretending you were superman or in my case superwoman. I remember have contests with my friends, we would swing as high as we could then jump of to see who could land the farthest.   Those were the days, now a days I wish for a moment like that. Maybe it should be mediatory for jobs to have a swing in the office. Have a difficult customer, take a swing and fly away for a little while. Pain in the ass co-worker, go for a swing, kids driving you crazy, go for a swing. Where are all the playgrounds for adults?  The older we act, the faster life is sucking us dry. We need to take time out to be a kid again, let the stress of a bad day wash away with a little bit of fun. I am

This is one of my most recent oops, Originally this started as a tree in watercolors. As you can see this looks nothing like a tree I do not like to waste paper, and right now I am really trying to save, this mama got a little credit card happy and any extra money needs to go towards those before we get into our new house. So as you can see, for me wasting paper is not an option.  Instead of trashing the page I decided to cover the entire thing with jet black gouache, knowing that gouache reacts to water much like watercolors do, I chose a dry media to use over it. I also wanted to change it up from the white pens so I used Prismacolor™ colored pencils. They didn't cover as well as I would have liked but I liked the way it came out and it wasn't a wasted page.