Danielle Calabro

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.     

It was a very crazy weekend and week, Fathers day Sunday, my Huddy's birthday on Monday along with my kids Karate test, which I might add they did awesome. I also had to fix my computer, I wasn't paying attention to my son while he was trying to download a computer game and I got attacked by a crap load of malware, took me about a week and luckily only a $10.00 app to clean it out, so I was not able to dedicate myself completely with this one. I have still been experimenting with watercolors, I had fun with this one. I had left over paint left on my pallet so I added a bunch of water to my paper and to the paint. Then I just added paint and got the crazy effects by sprinkled it with rubbing alcohol. Once my paint was dry I outlined where the colors meet and made my tangle string. I am not crazy about this one but it was great practice. I would like to invite those of you that visit my blog to leave a comment, what you like or didn't like, an idea or two, new techniqu...

I really enjoyed creating the Zentangle™ inspired tree a couple of weeks ago so I decided to do another. This painting was created with watercolor, gouache, GellyRoll Pens and sharpie in a few areas. I am going to focus on the background for a little bit. I tried a couple of techniques I have read about and loved the way it came out. I stared with 140lb watercolor paper, I taped it down (which I believe they also call it stretching) so the paper would not buckle. I did things a little different this time, I did not draw outlines of what I was planing, I went straight to the backgound. I spread a layer of clean water across the paper, chose the colors I wanted to use and randomly painted the colors on the wet paper (wet-on-wet technique). Here is where it got interesting and fun, I took regular table salt and rubbing alcohol to the wet paint. The rubbing alcohol repealed the water and the salt absorbed the water, leaving what you see above, a pretty cool background. ...