Corona Art march April 2020

Here is my first Corona themed piece done on March 17.  I have tried to keep all my Corona artwork somewhat comical! 

Sharing with Paint Party Friday.  

Stay Home, Stay Safe, Save Lives!

This one is about juggling the virus!  I hope he washes his hands after juggling these Corona Balls!

This next one is called "Popcorn and Coffee".  Those are two of my favorite comfort foods. This was done intuitively, so I had to ask myself questions afterwards.  Why did I spill both of my comfort foods?  Why am I in "striped pajamas"? Why don't I have hair?

This next one was done in my altered book and was originally a teapot with a disagreeable cherub coming out the top. I kept the shape, relating it to my own expansion while in captivity, and to the 6 feet of distancing!

 The next one was published on Easter weekend. She was one of the portraits with earrings, but also the Face Mask!

This is my last one, so far!  This is what my hands feel and look like!  Wash Your Hands!!!

Earring and Portrait Series 1-8

Hello again after 6 weeks! 

I hope you are all well and staying safe. 

Or if you are a doctor, a nurse, health care worker, fireman, police, delivery person, grocery store worker, mailman THANK YOU SO MUCH!

I have stayed in isolation since March 15, so really appreciate all of you who are out there helping me.

I have been doing a series of contour drawings using the same reference photo but doing it from an upside down position and without looking while I am sketching. And a different pair of my earrings on each one.  I realized that I tend to wear the same earrings all the time, so thought I would have fun painting them  on this young lady who comes out so different looking each time, usually very wonky!

I am posting to Paint Party Friday

Sketching and Painting

Hello,
Where does the time go?!  This week I was preparing for book club at my house, as well as sketching and painting.

I am posting to a great weekly website called Paint Party Friday.

A few looks into this last week.

 This is the start of an upside-down-blind-contour sketch of a martini glass.

Here I added a couple of lines to complete the sketch after looking at it.

Both were along the right edge of the base and stem of the glass. The sketch is done with white school chalk.

I started painting the tabletop and the glass. I wanted to do streamers, like a celebration, but I changed it in the next step.

Here is stage 4. I still have some work to do on it. I want to change the values on the table top so that it doesn't look flat, and I want to add more paint in the same value as the background. It looks too skimpy right now.

Here is the black and white version of the original reference from my workshop with Ardith Goodwin called "Expressive Sketching for Painters"

Have a good week,

Gloria

January 7 Project with CJS 2020

January 7th's project is with Birgit Koopsen. Her SUPER POWER is Mixed Media Gelli Prints.  I was trying to do my first one and made a lot of mistakes!

I made the mistake of going back and forth watching the video and then going to do my gelli painting. So the paint was dry by the time I got the paper to print on.  

But not to get defeated I tried spraying cardstock with water and letting it be damp, with the Gelli resting on it.  That didn’t work.

Next I remembered that if you cover the surface with clear shipping tape, the kind that is about 2 inches wide, it totally cleans off your gelli plate. So I got some dry computer paper and I covered the surface of the gelli completely with tape. Then I carefully lifted the tape off and applied it in one piece to the clean dry paper. It worked! I have a tape print! My painting composition is too equally divided, but next time I will know how to do this and be more asymmetrical and interesting. What a neat technique! 

7" x 5"

Gloria J Zucaro "Triangles" Mixed Media Collage

Hello fellow PPF Friends, Facebook and Twitter Friends.
I have two mixed media collage pieces this week.  I did these for Karen Sako's Mixed Media Collage class taught at Mainstreet Art Center in Lake Zurich Illinois.   

The papers I used were given to me by a good artist friend. Our group sends envelopes of papers to each other and we are to use them in a collage.  These orange, blue and text papers were from Laura Anderson. On the envelope she had written a note to look at the dictionary because the definition of "gloria" was there!  I included her note as a white area in the design, as well as my name from the front of the envelope. The only thing I wish I had done was leave the definition exposed when I covered the dictionary with gesso.

The other paper I added was a cutout of a head from a fashion magazine, when I saw an area that looked like a woman's top with one arm extended.  I had previously painted that page with black gesso as a background. When I tore and placed my papers, I noticed that some areas formed a triangle, so I tried to make as many as I could follow that shape.  I used a glue stick to stick things down. Then I painted over the dark blue pieces of crepe paper with Stewart Gill's Byzantia Jewel Tone Metallic in Aegean and I had already put a thin layer of gesso very the text and white envelope pieces. I painted several areas that were white or text in Liquitex Acrylic Artist color in Fluorescent Orange to balance the large orange paper on the upper left corner and some orange smudges on the musical piece.  Then I added the black, white and orange dots with Posca Pens. There are two flaps that I can add a secret message under!

The second piece was a 10 minutes "grab a random magazine page and create a collage to show a feeling of INTIMIDATION".

Have a good week!

Gloria J Zucaro's "Moving Forward with Mixed Media"

Sunday March 12, I enjoyed another mixed media workshop with Karen Sako at Mainstreet Art Center in Lake Zurich, IL .

Each table had a pod of people(either 3 or 4) and supplies to share for the pod. Each pod was given a limited palette to work with. Our table got lime green, and turquoise blue as well as black and white. ’

The first thing we all did was apply gesso to a piece of watercolor paper that was 12 x 6, a smaller 6 x 6 piece and a piece of illustration board that was 9 x 12. Those three pieces would be the basis for our three finished projects so they had to have time to dry while we were making more papers.

Next was to do 3 minute drawings(paintings with our colors and India Ink). We did two large, about 20 x 24 in size and one smaller about 9 x 12.  

Another fun project was using long wooden dowels with leaves, strings and rubber bands attached to the ends. Each stick had a different thing attached. We got three more pieces of paper and a plate of very liquid paint to dip into and scribble around on our papers.  Every couple of minutes we had to pass our stick to the person on the left so that we could try out each type of texture on our papers. 

After all the prep we began to assemble our pieces by ripping our papers up and gluing them on our three gessoed papers.  We could add acrylic paint, pastel pencils, pastel sticks, ink, and pan pastels.  There were stencils to use and we tried some transfers.  

It was a great day!  Here are my three original finished projects after I added some marks and lines when I got home and everything had dried.

Happy Paint Party Friday, and have a great week.

Gloria J Zucaro's " Saturday Workshop with Laura-Lein Svencner".

This past Saturday an artist friend and I enjoyed a one-day workshop with Laura-lein Svencner and 8 other artists. Laura makes beautiful abstract collages that include handmade papers, thread, beads, and organic matter. But the focus for this workshop was abstract landscape collage.  It was so wonderfully organized!  All we brought was our lunch!  Laura had all the supplies for making our own papers and then designing our landscapes from them and heat-tacking them together on watercolor paper.

We each received a large zip-lock bag that held all the papers we would transform with paint, templates and polymer, each picking our own palette and two pieces of watercolor paper to attach our landscapes to. We had taped the edges so that when we removed the tape we had a wonderfully clean white mat effect.

Below are my two finished abstract landscape collages.

I am linking with Paint Party Friday.  Have a great week.~gloria

                    

                     Number One                          Number Two

Gloria J Zucaro's " Trying Some Intuitive Abstract"

This week I switched gears like I often do and have a work in process. I used black and white acrylic paint and a couple of colorful inks. I did some stamping and small pieces of collage. I don't like it yet. Too busy and too colorful all over. I plan on adding some black and white text pieces, some more stenciling and stamping and some gesso cover-up. Then I hope to see areas that really appeal to me to make into my focal points.  I did have fun so far though!  I am linking to Paint Party Friday.
Have a peek at that site and have a good week.
Oh yes, I have a question and would appreciate your help.
I now have some beautiful stamps from Nathalie Kalbach and from Darkroom Door.  I don't seem to understand how to use them!  I never get a good imprint with all the details.  I don't know if my inks are not good, or should I roll on some paint?  What is the best way to proceed?  Thanks so much!

Gloria J Zucaro's "CJS 2017 with Birgit Koopsen"

I missed posting yesterday because I had some dental surgery and then some pain meds and didn't feel like doing much at all!  So today I did the project with Birgit Koopsen, and later did today's assignment. Birgit did a wonderful re-purposing of a very plain wooden stool. Her technique is so simple with wonderful effect. First she made her own deli papers decorated with acrylic paint, stencils and stamps. She also collected some printed materials with text. After ripping the papers into small pieces she applied them to the stool. She also used a complimentary paint color to make a design on top of the collaged papers.  Then she did doodles over the painted areas.

Really beautiful!
With time being short, and nothing to repurpose, I did a page in my journal to use her techniques and try her supplies.

Stage One, making papers

Stage Two, Collage

Stage Three, Adding Paint

Stage Four, Add Doodles

Have a nice day tomorrow.  I would love it if you would leave a comment below.

Thanks so much!

Gloria

Gloria J Zucaro's "Lately"

Today I have some paintings that I have done in the time I have been absent. Posting to Paint Party Friday where you can see many beautiful projects done by artists around the world. Hosted,"thank you!" by Kristine and Eva, for our benefit.  
The following paintings are from the Joan Fullerton workshop I took at Mainstreet Art Center in Lake Zurich, IL the first weekend in November.  Joan was excellent at making new territory so much fun!  I am normally not a very intuitive or an abstract thinker.  But she gave us some guidelines that could be applied anywhere on our paper or canvas.  

This was done with acrylic paint, silver leaf that I stained with blue paint, a tree stencil in the sky area with clear gel that made a neat texture when dry.

Acrylic paint-black and buff, gesso,text magazine pieces, stencils, pen marks, music score.  We all used our own materials but were to use only black and white paint.   

This one has a theme of linking land masses with bridges to that say we are all connected.

This one has layers of paper and stencils.  I used a mask of a crow photo to expose what I had covered with the paint.  I then added the tree stencil.

This was the first one we did.  It is acrylics on watercolor paper.

I think I need to do some more work on this one.  But it reminds me of tornadoes, so maybe I will develop that with a landscape and an angry sky?

Below are some pictures I took at The Pearl District in San Antonio, TX while visiting my mother.  This is part of a beautiful hotel that has been done in a refurbished factory.  I love the sort of steam-punk feel!

Have a great week! 

 Happy PPF.

"Picasso, Scanlon and Tulips!"

Tonight I am posting my project from the demo by Catherine Scanlon, with Creative Jumpstart 2016. Catherine did a watercolor floral inspired by Picasso. I thought I would do watercolor, but ended up using my acrylics and inks again as well as some Silks on the flower petals.

The final painting below.

Steps 1 and 2

Starting to fill in

Hope to see you for my next Picasso creation!

Gloria

Gloria J Zucaro's, "Frida Herself".

Tonight I have my portrait of Frida herself, not of me playing Frida.

This project was led by Mystele Kirkeeng for the Creative Jumpstart 2016.
Mystele started with a stucco applied surface.  I didn't have stucco so used modeling paste by Golden that I applied then rolled with a brayer. It made a very interesting tree-bark-like surface.  I let it dry overnight. The next step was to collage on some papers.  I had two with leaves and two with text from an old dictionary.  We were then to draw our outlines with pencil for Frida's head and face.  I also found some paper I wanted to use for her shirt/top, which I glued in place after drawing her head and shoulders.  The rest of the painting was done in layers of paint with ink and gesso in layers.  I used pearlized paint for part of her headdress.

And the final

Have a great day tomorrow, and leave a comment if you are so inclined.

Gloria