Danielle Calabro

In between everyday life and learning to use the Silhouette I have still been doodling away. Usually watching Destination America, I am a sucker for ghost stories, on occasion they will have a real scary one that freaks me out a little but what can I say, that is my go to channel.  When I am not sure what I want to draw I will plop down on the couch, grab a blanket and a pillow to put on my lap with my sketch book and pens in hand along with my favorite channel. Sometimes I start and erase 4 or 5 times, other times I know exactly what I want to do. Here is a small collection of 3 couch sessions. Of course if I have something important to work on I will be at either my computer desk or art desk. I am curious to know who else has a go to place when you are just trying to stay creative? Do you have background noise like a radio or TV? What are some of the things you create when you doodle?

Just a little doodle I have been adding to over the past couple of weeks. Started with the mandala colored in with colored pencil. Of course I had a bunch of negative space and I can have that so I filled it in with bubbles that were filled in with watercolors and gold paint pen, left over negative space filled in with black paint pen.

I found this Quote and added it to my little painting. Art is my outlet, it relaxes me and helps me to forget about things that make me worry.  Life does beat you down but it's up to you on weather or not you are going to just stand there and take it or fight back. Life is like a road and just like every road there are detours, traffic, pot holes and hills, of course there are roads that are nice and smooth and flows, the ones we all want to be on.  The question is, are you willing to keep driving on those horrible roads to get the the one you want to be on, or stop and pull off because it gets too bumpy. When life beats you down, stand up, dust yourself off and get ready for a fight.

This is my last Watercolor for #worldwatercolormonth. A Madala drawn out and partially painted in watercolors, I got some awesome metallic paints and had a chance to use them on this. I was not able to do a painting everyday but I can say I was able to be apart of it. During this time I have seen a lot of watercolor artist that do the same type of paintings, like landscapes and still life, I did not see too many watercolor illustrators but the ones I did see were great. Techniques were different, there were all levels of artist and it was nice seeing that no matter what level the artist was at there was no negative comments. I even saw people giving advice. I think it is great they will be keeping it going, if you are interested check out  worldwatercolorgroup.com . I will keep up on the watercolor challenges for the month of August and September but my next will be Inktoberfest. Really looking forward to getting my Inktober package from Artsnacks.

Starting off the new year with a new post. I have been so caught up with the holidays that most, if not all of my art lately has been holiday related. Last week  I made time to work on something different. I found some insperation and wanted to try it out, though the one I did is not as elegant as I would have liked, I do like the way it came out in the end.  This has a watercolor background, measured out Mandalas done in gold paint pens. I have 2 New Years resolutions, first, take my art to the next level, post more, get my stuff out there and stop being afraid to try new things. Second is to be more positive. I need to make sure I am not beating myself up over every little thing that goes wrong and try to find a solution to problems that may occure in the new year. Here's to getting what we need, working hard for what we want and making 2016 a year of new beginnings. HAPPY NEW YEAR - 2016

I started this 2 page Mandala a few weeks ago and decided to finish it up. Done in watercolors, gouache and white pen. I left the black circles blank because they were too small for the pens I was using and I hit a block. On one of the mandalas I tried using a black Copic marker but it was absorbed into the white ink so it now looks gray.  The large one is my favorite, probably because I had more room.  This was defiantly a test of patients for me, that why it took a few weeks to finish, I had to go back to it when I wasn't completely stressed out.     

I have wanted to do one of these for a while, I always see these really beautiful Mandala's on Pintrest so I figured I would give it a shot. The one thing I learned with these is a compass, ruler and protract are a necessity. I am not a patient person so the first part was the most painful for me. Finding the center of the page, marking it then using the protractor to set my ruler lines. After that drawing out the lines I grabbed the compass and drew the circles. Once complete I got to work.  I was a little afraid of putting color on it, I didn't want to use too many and mess it up. I tried to reuse colors through out the whole thing. I started this bad boy on Sunday, and I have to say I am very happy with the way it came out. Here are some close ups of the detail: Unfortunately I will have to put my art off for a few days, we have to finish a summer time school project that apparently will be graded (and yes, I did say Summer time project). We get to make a t...