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?

One of my favorite sayings....... No matter how it is said it is easy to understand. Live every moment, live for the future, you learn from the past not relive it. Laugh as often as you can, laughter is truly an awesome medicine, not a permeant cure but it makes the rough time more bearable. Love as much as you can, beyond words, actions speak louder than words.

We are in that time of the year when it is holiday after holiday. No time to breath or recover, just full steam ahead. This year we are doing Thanksgiving since we finally have a house and I can't wait. Then it will be our daughters and my mother-in-laws birthday, an anniversary, Christmas and we finish it off with New Years. So basically we will be going, going, going until January. In between all of this I will be doing my best to keep posting as much as I can. This is my transition from Halloween into Thanksgiving Here's to the hustle and bustle of the Holidays

Just a quick   HAPPY HALLOWEEN   to everyone before we head out to get some candy, be safe and have fun.

This this is day 14 of #inktober2016 and I finally received my new grey markers and I absolutely love them. I am finding that the grey's do not scan to their true colors, in person the color is much better.  When I originally started I was going to go for spooky, you know for Halloween, but as you can see that did not happen. This was a mix between pen and marker. The sketch book that came with the art snacks bundle is not usable with anything that is liquid, honestly its not even good for markers, you can see in some areas were the marker bleed through. I went for Winsor & Newton Alcohol markers this time. Don't get me wrong, I love my copic markers but the was about a $30.00 price  difference between the both of them and they both work great.  Happy Inking my Friends!!!

Day 10 of #inktober2016 Zentangle, I never heard of this until about 2 years ago, had no clue what it was but I loved it.  Of course I wanted to find out more so I looked it up and found that it was created as a form of therapy. You are not to use an eraser, at first I thought, that is absolutely crazy, I have to have my eraser, what if I mess up? but what this teaches you is, don't throw out something you are working on just because the line goes in the wrong spot, work with it and make it work for you.  Happy Inking my Friends

I am a day behind on posting for Day 2 of Inktober but that is ok.  I went with the prompt on this one "Noisy," as much as I would have loved to draw my children it would have taken too long.  Personally I love music almost any type, but the one thing I can't seem to understand, is when your in your car and a car beside you has the bass so high that it rattles your brain. I myself have never sat in a car with bass that high for fear that my ears or head would explode so I don't know if you can even hear anything other than bass. So here is my questions, they are to help others understand the reason behind the bass. What is the point of having the bass up that high? Can you hear anything other than bass? Is it a status thing, the higher the bass the cooler you are? Does it do damage to you vehicle? with all that vibration it has to rattle something loose, right? Well at least I know I will have a few more years with out hearing aids than the ...

October 1st, 2016, this is my first year of participating in #Inktober. I received my goodies from art snacks but I will be honest, I was a little disappointed in the products for spending $99.00, I think I could have purchased the same products on Amazon for less and still been able to get more. Either way the money has been spent and I am not going to waste it. So this is day 1, todays prompt is "fast," and whats faster then a spaceship? I assumed I  should follow the prompts but I have seen others that have not, so I will be bouncing back and forth between prompts and my own ideas. I have a lot to learn when it comes to shading with ink and using brush pens but I am excited and ready to learn. Happy #inktober

As I am preparing to go back to work tomorrow (boo!), I am getting caught up with my posts. This watercolor painting is for day 3 of #worldwatercolormonth: This was done in watercolor and pen

Well I have finished 1 of 2 commissioned paintings This is the second commission I have done. I have sent to proof to the client and she is happy with it. This will be for a coffee themed kitchen. The client wanted something with bright colors and like one of the previous pieces I created, this took a little over 5 hours to complete from sketch to final. I am excited to get started on the 2nd one, a rough draft has been sketched so its time to get to work, again.  If you are interested in contacting please email me at: daniellecalabroart@gmail.com or use my contact me form. Have a Great Day!

Some of my favorite treats. Watercolor, pen and white ink Trying to find my style has been a long and expensive process but I am pretty positive I know what I would like to do with my art and what medium is my go to medium. I know I am still in my baby years of getting started but I know I can make this happen. Honestly this surgery was a blessing, I was able to teach myself to create pretty much everyday and post at least every couple of days. I have also decided that I am going to challenge myself. First, it is time to get all my social media up to date, I know I could be missing out on valuable opportunities and I have 1 full week to get this done before I have to go back to the regular 9-5. Second, I will be participating in  World Watercolor month  that starts in July and was created by our fellow artist and blogger  Charlie O'Shields  ( World Watercolor Month July 2016 Trailer ). Third, I will be  participating in  Inktober  t...

Another addition to the "coffee art" This was done with Ph Martin Radiant Concentrated Watercolors, Pen and White Ink. I was told by one person that the bottom portion of the background should be darker, let me know what you think, I am truly interested in other opinions. Have a great day and "Drink More Coffee"

A week before my surgery our nephew said he wanted me to draw up a fairly simple mock up tattoo that he could take to the tattoo artist. I was a little excited, a piece of my art work on someones body and someone I know, lets do this! So I asked him what he wanted, a heart with a banner going through it and roses at the top, like I said fairly simple. I drew it up a couple of time before I was happy and he was happy with the outcome. Original sketch I scanned the artwork and kept the original, I had other plans for this little creation. Anyway, I told him I wanted to see the tattoo once it was done, he was going to have the tattoo artist add wings. I get a text the next day with the picture, looked nothing like this, he said it would have cost him around $300 to get this one full color. I was a little disappointed but I still had this cute piece of art, so I went to work on it. added ink and designs I played around with it and liked it more then the original, so I went a st...

It takes some time to find the right idea, then it takes some time to get it just the way you want it. This is a little look at me coming up with some ideas and sketching them out in pen, a few I did with pencil first. I like to do a lot of my doodles in pen, that way if I make a mistake I have to find a way to work with it or around it.

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. 

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.