Danielle Calabro

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 a mother of two, a wife and a full time job, creating can end up being put off until the end of the day. Staying up until 12am in the morning just to get a little practice in then waking up at 6am to go to work is all apart of the sacrifices we as artist make to do what we love. Being in the baby stages of making a dream come true seems like a never-ending quest, sometime unreachable. Getting discouraged and ready to give up is always in the back of your mind, but there is always that little voice, that little spark of inspiration that tells you not to give up, never let go of your dreams. Try something new, go bak to the old, mix the both of them. A busy life can sometimes take over and you briefly forget what you are trying to accomplish, then it hits you, the reason you were working so hard to begin with.  Ask yourself, What are your dreams? What do you want to accomplish? How do you get there? Are you holding yourself back or is someone else? Are you afraid to step ou...

This was the second background I was playing with, I wanted to change it up a little. Since the background was so dark I used white gouache to paint a tree. When I started I figured it would pull some of the watercolor into the white paint, which it did. I figured I would just give it another coat or two to get it pure white...... Well about 4 coats later and still have blue paint bleeding into the gouache. I even tried to paint it as dry as I could but it still came through. Not a big deal just a lesson learned, I am pretty sure it would have done this with the white ink also, I still like the way the background came out.

This started off as practice, since I went back to work my creativity has been lacking a lot. It is amazing how stress can wear you out.  I have been going back and forth with ideas and finally settled with playing around with backgrounds. I ended up with this nice night blue background and figured it would make a great background for a moon. So this is my full moon done in white ink and the background in watercolors.

I remember as a young child I loved everything about space and I am still in awe by Galaxy pictures, they are so beautiful.  Playing with Watercolor technique, stars added with white Gouache     I love when we go to an area outside the city limits where you can look out and see every star in the sky, it truly is a beautiful sight. The other day we were driving home from my Grandfathers house and the roads we took had no bothersome lights. I happen to look out my window and noticed how well we could see the stars. It was late but my son was still awake so I had him look out his window and he was in awe.  As adults I think we forget to take a look around us, we forget how small we are in this massive universe. My sons reaction made me realize that they have not experienced nature enough. They have their heads stuck in a tablet, computer or video games. I can gladly say where our new house is being built we will be able to enjoy the night sky, it may not b...