Danielle Calabro

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.

I know I have been away for about a week, I have been working on a few things. I got over my little grumble about the business license and I am moving forward. As I said in one of my last post I am making my christmas cards this year, so I have started my first one. The background is done, all I need to work on is the lettering. I have not decided if I will do the lettering myself or have a hi-res scan of the painting and just use a font. I think I will do a couple of more then go from there. The background was done in watercolor, I used a watercolor mask for the stars. While the background was still wet I sprinkled table salt on it and got a nice speckled effect. The tress were painted with gouache, I wanted a nice opaque cover, along with a gold paint pen, this added a nice little shine to it. Of course I doubt I will be able to get that effect on a printed card and if I can I may end up paying more, something to think about, I then tangled the trees.

I have finished my final Zentree, as I have mentioned before I have decided to have prints made of my ZenTree Collection. There will be 4 of each for know. The first three I should have in a couple of weeks. They will be on cold press watercolor paper and printed with archival inks. I have made sure I have picked a high qualityArt printshop, I also did a walk through and I was very impressed. Needless to say I am very excited and proud of myself making this step. I know it will be an investment well made. My Etsy shop will be going through a name change and facelift over the next few days also. Watercolor, gouache and pen I let my daughter pick the colors for this one and in observation of the 4th of July she picked Red, White and Blue.  So it is on tho the next project, I have decided I am actually going to follow through with something I keep saying I am going to do. I will be creating my own Christmas cards this year. I know its a little early but I have had a habit...

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...

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...

My goal today was to do a nice little Mothers Day painting with gouache. We had a busy day planned so I got started on it this morning before we went anywhere. I didn't draw it out, I wanted to go free brush. Part of me went into this thinking, "OK, I can do this", this other part of me said "you need more practice with the faces and the gouache."I figured what the hell, lets give it a try and see how it comes out, the only way we learn is through our mistakes, right? So this is what I started with before we started our day: I though, "Not a bad start, I can defiantly work with this", unfortunately, It was time to head out so I found a stoping point and we went about our day. Got home and went right back to work, and I can honestly say I am not happy with the end result. I am still trying to get past this learning curve with the blending of gouache. Sometimes I can get it to blend ok and other times I want to throw my paint brush across the ...

As I said before I really like to Zentangle®, it is definitely a good outlet. It really does helps with freeing your mind. Now, I will be very honest with you, I do not follow the directions of Zentangle®, I do use an eraser and sometimes I will fix my mistakes. This is just my way, if I do not like the way something looks I will fix it.  I started this about a week ago, I worked on it between work, play and sleep. I am still working on drawing faces, I can see myself getting better and I see were I could improve, but I was pretty darn impressed with myself on this face.  I also wanted to play with some new pens I just purchased (white Gelly roll pens).  I drew out the face and the Zentangle® hair then painted the background with jet black gouache. I then set out with a ruler and white gelly roll pen and this is what I came up with. It looks a little yellow because I had to use a camera instead of my scanner to get it on my computer.  I have finall...

Gouache and ink on paper As of October 2013, I stopped smoking real cigarettes and started using an e-cig. This was in attempt to start working out. My dad had talked me into signing my two kids up for karate (best choice I made) and they had a fitness class called "Cage Fitness." I had already decided I was going to stop but had not made the final decision, this made it for me. I knew there was no way I could do an intense work-out like this and still smoke. My sweet hubby is not a smoker, so me smelling like ciggy smoke kind of grossed him out, I can't blame him, even as a smoker I hated that stale smoke smell too. I am in no way saying that the e-cig is any better, I have heard it is just as bad. Where does that leave me? I now have two new addictions, one being my e-cig and the other my new found love of Starbucks® Coffee. Both, probably not the best for me, one is still full of nicotine and the other is full of caffeine and calories. Honestly I will probably ...

As a Mother I try to encourage my children to do what they love to do. Sometimes I will, of course make them try something even if they are too scared to give it a chance. Sometime they love and other times it's a flop. So what is my point? As a parent, sometimes we scared to push our kids a little or a lot in some cases. My two children are so different in so many ways. Since I have started painting again both of my children have slowly become more interested in what I am doing, sometimes it is a pain in the neck, most of the time it makes me so happy. I do not push art on them, however I think any type of art (music, dance, painting or drawing) is important for children to learn. Both of my children assumed its so easy to paint or draw but when they can't get a drawing to come out like they want they get so pissed off. I try to explain to them it takes time and they have to practice, and I try to show them a different or new way of doing something. As my husband always says...

"Palm Trees at Sunset" 16" x 20" Acrylic on Gallery wrapped canvas painted be me One of my favorite places to go is the beach, it is so relaxing listening to the waves break and taking a nice night walk and letting the wind blow in your hair. We live in Central Florida so we have our pick from the East or West coast. I have put together my favorites. My Top Florida East Coast Beaches: These are the beaches  that we go to for a day trip nothing to far away Cocoa Beach Cocoa Beach - Very close only about 30 - 45min away, No parking on the beach. You have Ron Jon Surf Shop and they have a great little Pizza joint too, you can actually get a 26" pizza it was huge. Best parking in my opinion is across from the Air Force Base, there are no life guards so you need to be careful. Not as many people either, so you don't have to walk another half mile to find the perfect spot because if you are like us, we bring the lunches, towel, cano...

"Mountain Sunrise" This painting is on a 10" x 20" x 1 1/2" gallery wrapped canvas This is proof that sometimes out of pure frustration and painters block, good things can happen.  This small painting took me about 2 days to do, I would start one thing only to cover it because I didn't like the way it looked. In the end I dropped the paint brush and just used my hands and let it take me away.  This painting is available for purchase at my Etsy store: https://www.etsy.com/shop/AcrylicsbyDanielle

This painting was done with pages from an old book then covered with a thin layer of acrylic paint mixed with an airbrush medium to thin it out.  I then used Pebeo Fantasy paint then covered with resin.  Mixing the Vitrail and the Fantasy moon gave the tree its bark look. Then I used the Fantasy Prisme and moon to the foliage. Looking forward to see what I can do next with this medium.

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