Gloria J Zucaro's "Tracy & Her Demented Friends!"

Another surprise!  A package arrived from Tracy Delisle.  In it was an abundance of fun!  A wonderful "Nevermore" plaque.  I love ravens, crows and other blackbirds.  But especially Ravens for Halloween.  I think she thought that "Demented" was missing his other friends in Delisle Land so she sent along Mister Raven to keep him company.  There was a little easel to rest Mr. Raven upon and I quickly put him up by "Demented".  They are a happy pair.  Some other special additions to the package were candies of all types, two glow-in-the-dark skellies, and some Dracula teeth for me to use on my still-human friends!

On Wednesday morning I took a "Chalk Paint by Annie Sloan" class at "Tattered Tiques" in Barrington.  What a great welcome was given to all the class-takers!  A goodie bag with notepad, pen, paint brush, decorated clothespin clip, a paint chart, a postcard from the store telling about Fall specials, a detailed handout of instructions to help us after we got home.some peppermints, some script in French for adding to possible painted pieces a picture frame, and 4 other pieces of raw wood for practicing the Chalk Painting techniques on while in class. 

This was the frame I picked.  It was just your ordinary medium brown wooden frame.  But we did a two color process on it and then distressed it and waxed it.  

It looks so cool now, a little "beachy".

The orange piece also got  orange Chalk Paint and two different types of wax, clear and dark. You can see the difference above.

This piece was the typical traditional 1970"s or 80"s gilt frame with ornate carvings.  Since many people no longer like that style of picture frame anymore, we did a one-step plus wax process to tone it down.  Doesn't it look neat!?

The last piece of raw wood is oak.  Oak has a nice grain so we did a one step process called "liming".

As you can see, I started to write my name on the wrong side.

Below is my first attempt at paper collage from Karen Sako's class.  I really enjoyed adding all the paper pieces to my moon and crow.

Up close view of papers

The 6" x 6" whole

I am linking this to Paint Party Friday, and Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook.

Have a great week,

Gloria

Gloria J Zucaro's "Something Different"

This week's paintings are a "mixed bag" so to speak.  I have two very different Trees for my series, a painting that was originally done in oil, but I went over it with pastels and sprayed it with hair spray. And finally a pastel I had started and added to in this last week.  These will be posted to Paint Party Friday, my Facebook and Twitter pages, and to Pinterest.  I hope you enjoy them.

I have been making good progress cleaning out many pieces of old or infrequently worn or the wrong size clothing and donating them to Misericordia . Lots of home decor items, jewelry and books, tools and holiday items and I have also gone through drawers and thrown out years of pieces of paper with little notes or addresses now expired.  It feels so good!

My shoulders are no better, but my doctors appointment is coming up in a couple of weeks, so I will know if I need to put my life on hold for a few months of post surgery healing.

Here are this weeks paintings..............................

Number 17, I really like these colors

Number 18, now this is different!

This was an oil painting.  I didn't like it and decided it wouldn't bother me if I ruined it, so just started playing with the pastels.  Not much detail here at all.  After I finished, I sprayed it lightly twice with hairspray as an inexpensive fixative.  It got kind of crinkly looking, but sort of cool! 

I sent this to my sister for her birthday.  She had asked me for a painting for the Fall/Halloween season because they have none.  I sent her two others also of oil paintings of pumpkins and moons and cats.  I hope she enjoys them this Halloween!

And lastly, I added the confetti strings and dashes and dots to this mask pastel I had done before.  It just needed something!

Happy Paint Party Friday.  Go to the party, all are invited!

Gloria

Gloria J Zucaro's "Golden Opportunity"

This my entry for Paint Party Friday, a weekly display from about 85 artists from all over the globe.  The site is hosted by Kristin and Eva,  Thank you, Ladies!
My painting today has undergone many changes.  I first painted it about 4 years ago.  I had all cornstalks in the background, and a very dark black shadow under the crow and all strokes on the pumpkin going one way, and a stem bottom showing on the pumpkin towards the right side of the canvas.  On Monday of this week Susan Ploughe who is one of the instructors at Mainstreet Art Center (where I go to paint with my artists friends a couple of times a week) asked us to all bring in a couple of our "duds", the paintings that did not work out as planned.  So I took my crow and pumpkin.  It was predominately orange and yellow over the whole painting, the pumpkin, the ground, the background of cornstalks.  There was some green in the leaves and some of the cornstalks, but otherwise all orange & yellow!  Susan had a sneaky idea up her sleeve!  She had us trade our paintings with someone else and we were each to work on the other person's painting, so that the painting would be looked at with a new perspective.  Susan told us that if we didn't like what the other person did with our painting we could just wipe it off with turp, since all our paintings were dry long ago.  Well, I worked on Corrine's Napa Valley painting and she worked on my crow.  Corrine merged all the cornstalks together with some different background colors that were impressionistic, and the painting was so much better, but it was still oranges, yellows and greens.  After I went home, I thought about it and decided that blue might be good with the orange, since they are compliments.  So today I changed the shape of the pumpkin, changed the direction of the strokes on the pumpkin, lightened the really dark shadow, as suggested by Ann Feldman, added many different colors to the leaves, made the broken piece of pumpkin shell the right value, and got rid of all the orange in the background with sky blue.  Oh, what a relief it is! ( I am singing this part!) LOL!

11"H x 14"W Original Oil on Stretched Canvas

Gloria J Zucaro's "Shadow Cat"

6"H x 6"W Oil on Raymar Panel

$95.00 in Floater Frame
S&H to your ZIP
To Purchase, email me at gloria@gloriajzucaro.com

I love this little stack of a carved-look pumpkin, black cat and a crow.  It was sitting on my kitchen windowsill for the month of October.