Danielle Calabro

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.

Watercolor Butterflies was created with watercolor, pen and white Copic Ink on 7" x 7" Watercolor paper. This is a sweet little piece of art that would complete any little girls room.  If you would like to contact me please email me @ dcalabro0318@gmail.com or fill out the "Contact Me" form on the side bar.

During my recovery time after surgery I am going a little stir crazy, so to keep me from truly going crazy I have invested my time into my art. I have been playing around with different things. On this one, I brought out the gouache paint and I must say the gouache scans very well. I can see why artist would use this medium. So this little guy was done with what one instructor would call the cloud technique (apparently there are a few types of "cloud" techniques), I will call it the scribble technique. When your have imagination issues, make "scribbles" all over the paper and see what you have. I have done this before on my tablet. Which, it is much easier to get rid of the unwanted scribbles. These both were done the same way I am not a huge fan of doing this on paper, only because you have to go back and erase the scribbles you don't need and depending on what medium you are using you may not be able to cover up the erased pencil. With my li...

I have never been a big reader, I hated reading until I picked up one book in particular. I had a friend tell me about a book that had been out for about 8 months at the time, "Fifty Shades of Grey." Yes I was one of those women that read them all, and I love Ellie Goulding song, "Love Me Like You Do," her newest album is great too. I will admit, I was not impressed by the movie, of course most book to movies rarely are as good as the book. So in one of my moments where I was having a block I played with some lettering and tangling, here is the finished result: I wanted to add a little color so I used watercolor pencils to add color to the word bubbles. I am very happy with the end results. I still find it amazing, you can finish one project and think it's just ok then go back to it a few days later and love it. 

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.

Staying true to what I love to draw I have yet another page of flowers.  Still doodling my way through life, after the kids are in bed and the hubby is off to work this is my way of shedding off the stress of the day. There was no planning to this, I went straight to paper with pen. This took about a week to draw out, and a few days to fill in with Copic Markers. I am trying to make sure I am creating everyday, in between work and life I am staying on track. there are days I only get in an hour but more often then not I am going at it for a few hours. I have learned a great deal of patients doing more pen sketches, and it has trickled over to outside of my art. I have said this before in other post, I am not a patient person by nature but over the last few months doing more tangles has taught me to slow down, evaluate then execute.

It has been a couple of weeks since my last post. We have been very busy, we finally found a house! After being in a contract for over 9 months with a short sale house we decided to step away from it and see if we would qualify for a new house, we did. So between the kids being back at school and getting all the necessary paperwork together for the house I have had very little time to blog. However, that does not mean I haven't made time to create. I have been doing a lot of artwork in my smaller sketchbook lately, It is much easier to carry around on the go, and we have been on the go. The flowers were drawn first then painted in with watercolors and sketched out the rest in pen.

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...

There is a place in Orlando, FL called Leu Gardens , it has been well over 10 years since I have been there but I remember it like it was last year. It is magnificent, I remember walking around there for hours. When I was younger I would go there to photograph the flowers. Sadly I have lost touch with it, talking about it makes me want to go again, take my kids to one of the movie nights they have there. Go during the day and photograph some of the flowers all while listening to my children tell me how hot and bored they are, it's great to torture your kids with a little fresh air. Honestly I'm not sure how they will act bit hopefully they would enjoy it. I sat down last weekend and started this sketch and I finished it up last night, it reminded me of the times I use to go to the garden. I sketched this out in pencil then went over the sketch with my Micron pens and color was added with Copic markers. I am sure you have heard me say this before and I am going to say ...

After spending a while on Tangles I have decided to focus on how to handle watercolors more besides just using them for the backgrounds. I have always been a little afraid of watercolors because the can be so unpredictable, however I am finding that to be the best thing about them.  I am not a patient person so practicing is pretty much out of the question, with me, it's do or die when it comes to art. So instead of taking a scrap of watercolor paper I dove right into my new watercolor journal and sketched out my little bugs world and went right to painting it today after my hubby went to work. Of course I had to take a few breaks but it is finished.  Still trying to get the blending down but I am happy with the way it turned out. It was painted in watercolors and outlined with Microns, the little bit of white you see was done with my Uni-ball broad white pen. Of course I still don't have the right lighting so the picture doesn't do it justice. 

I originally started this garden with the intentions to do tangles on it and as you can see I changed my mind. I started with a watercolor background and used salt to add some little effects. Once the background was dry I drew out my little garden. I then painted it in with gouache, outlined and added some details to the plants and rocks. After staring at it for about 30 minutes I figured out what I was missing....some depth. To be honest I have been staying up so late lately that the last thing I wanted to do is get the paint out and then have to clean up a mess but I wanted to finish. I grabbed my copic markers and figured what the hell, lets see if they will work on top go the gouache and they did. All of the shading was done with Copic markers.

My art has changed over that year since I have started. I started with acrylics and have moved to smaller more detailed art. I still like playing around with the acrylics but I am still trying to find myself as an artist. I love doodling, I love watercolors and I love mixing them. I also love working with my Copic markers. I purchased a new compass last week and I wanted to put it to the test. I am not sure if any of you remember from an earlier post I had started a page with just the rectangle and had a bunch of white left. I decided to add to the page and this is what I came up with. I used Copic and Micron multiliner pens and filled the tangles in with Copic Sketch markers. I am not sure if this type of doodling will get me anywhere but it is defiantly a way to keep my creative mind flowing.  What do you do to keep your creative mind flowing?

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...

I decided to give a full page Zentangle™ a try this weekend. This time I did it with no planning what so ever, no string line, I just let it flow. There are some parts of this page I really wish I had not added but then there are also a lot that I really do like. I think for my next one I will try to do a little more planning. I used my Micron and Copic pens to draw out everything, with a few I did use pencil first. Once I knew the ink was dry I added a little color with watercolors. I am still a little rusty with the watercolors but I wanted to add a little shading. After a little more practice should be no problem. These are a couple of close-ups of the page I really liked the way the two larger flowers came out and the look of the simpler tangles. I took a chance on a couple of more complicated tangles and think I could probably benefit from practicing them. All in all, I am happy with the way this came out, especially since it took a total of about 5-6 hours to comp...

Zentangle™ Blooms Gouache and ink So What is Zentangle™? Zentangle™ is an art form that requires a pencil, pen and paper (no eraser). A focus on creating basic repeating patterns. There is no expectation and no mistakes, you let your imagination flow. You can find a lot of information online about Zentangle ™, there are a lot of resources available for someone that would like to learn.  I came across Zentagle™ about 8 months ago, I saw a book at one of the art stores I frequent and decided to give it a try. I can honestly say that I do really enjoy it, it can be very relaxing and gets you out of the creative block that you may be having. I have also found a lot of patterns on Pintrest. Just be careful that you don't mistake a doodle for a Zentangle™, Zentangle are structured patterns.  I do not follow all the rules to Zentangling, I do use an eraser some times, of course my design will sometimes change once I apply the ink. I did things a little different on t...

I consider myself a traditional artist, pencil, paper, paintbrush, cavas, markers, pastels you name it, I want to use it all. I have done some graphics design on the side and I always had a tough time drawing on photoshop, I always had to hand draw what I wanted and scan it in to illustrator and have it trace it. I could never get that stupid pen tool to work for me. I even tried getting a mid grade drawing tablet, still I just couldn't get it to work for me. Technology has and still is changing the way art is created and I love me some technology. I wanted something I could use when I was having painters block, maybe even do a rough Draft before putting it on canvas, something that I can take with me when I have idea that I need to draw before I forget it. I did a lot of research, I wanted to find something that wouldn't break me or my husband.There are a lot of awesome drawing tablets out there, and trust me when I say if I had and extra $2500.00 I would have got one of ...

"Sunflower" This paint was created on a 24" x 36" x 1 1/2" Gallery wrapped canvas. I have a bad habit of becoming a perfectionist when it comes to my paintings, I had originally started with an idea and it wasn't working for me, I was trying too hard for what I was looking to create. So I started over and with a small idea of what I wanted I put paint on the canvas and created the background. Once the background was done, I stepped back and this is what I saw.  This painting is available for purchase in my Etsy store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/AcrylicsbyDanielle  

This is a 12" x 24" acrylic painting, I was playing with a new technique for the background a new type of blending. 

Keeping true to myself, I kept up with my painting. As all artist know, canvas is not cheap so this was done on a canvas board. This is the point we're it was time to invest money on the proper materials to let myself grow more. Needless to say, I think I went again little crazy but hey, you can never have too many paint brushes and paint. Cala Lily painted in acrylic paint