Danielle Calabro

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

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 said I was done doing trees for a while but I picked up this really cool handmade watercolor journal from hand-book journal Co from Hobby Lobby. The pages  have deckled edges, Love it! I wanted something to go across the first two pages and what better then a big tangled tree. As you can tell by this painting I really like Blue and green together and I added a touch of yellow. I also wanted to test some new white pens, which I have been on the hunt for forever and after a very intense search for the perfect white pen I stumbled across a few reviews on Uni-ball Singo Broad. I had never seen these in the store here so I ordered them off Amazon and I can say I absolutely love these. They have a nice thick line and have a great opaque white pigment. I didn't have a problem with them pulling up the black gouache, only one minor  problem, I went though the whole pen with this one tree. I also picked up the Uni-ball Angelic, it is great for the thinner lines but it doe...