Gloria J Zucaro's "Valentine Memories"

Hello Paint Party Friday Friends,
I admit to not getting any projects finished!  But I have been working for weeks on Cold Wax & Oil Paintings.  They take many layers and need to set up or dry before adding too many more layers in one day, so I usually have a week in between.
So today I am showing some Valentines I have done in years past.  I hope you had a wonderful Valentines Day.  Gloria

6 x 6 Oil painting over old painting.

4 x 6 greeting card zentangle

4 x 6 greeting card zentangle 2

24 x 12 canvas with Scripto marker and Oil Paint

Gloria J Zucaro's "Workshop and Juried Show"

Tomorrow night I will be at the Art Centre 2015 32nd Annual Juried Art Show at the Elk Grove Village Library from 7-9 PM.

It is at 1001 Wellington Avenue in Elk Grove Village, Illinois.  I have three pastel paintings in the show.  It is a great opening, so come on out.  You can see the show each weekend up until November the eighth.

I am linking this post to Paint Party Friday.  Every week there are new pieces of art from over 100 artists in all media.

The Richard McKinley workshop was fabulous!  We were given so much wonderful information in the 5 days, that our heads were bursting.  It is a good thing I bought his book "100 Pastel Pointers" because much of the information is there to re-read.  I also have a few of his DVD's and I bought my favorite demonstration painting from him.

In the pictures below you see some first steps he suggested for whatever we paint.  Deciding on our composition, doing a line drawing with large shapes, a value sketch using lightest light, medium light, medium dark and darkest dark. and finally to do a Notan(black and white only) that combined the medium dark and dark into black and left the medium light and light all white..  Then he used washes of watercolors to set in the under painting in values and colors. Finally pastel is added on top for a completed painting.  The first picture is of one of his final pastel demos.  It is the one I bought! (:>)

Doing the prep work below

see

A line drawing

First watercolor wash

Second layer wash

Close-up of wash with all the interesting drips

Richard McKinley's Field box of pastels for Plein air painting.  He said because of all the ambient light outside, your darkest dark should never be darker than 6 1/2 on the value scale, so most of his color choices are quite light in value.

Next week I will show you my paintings from the workshop.

Have a good week,

Gloria

Gloria J Zucaro's "Moo"

My oil painting this week is self-explanatory.  It is the portrait of a cow. In the original reference I did for my barn and meadow painting two weeks ago, there was actually a cow in the field in front of the farm buildings.  I chose just to do a portrait this week rather than the whole cow.  I am posting to Paint Party Friday, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Google.

10" x 10" Oil on Canvas

Have a great week, and Thanks! for stopping by.

Gloria J Zucaro's " Doing the Marla"

Today I am sharing with you my first three landscapes in a series that I am calling "The Marla".  The reason for the name is the demo I went to at the International Association of Pastel Societies (IAPS) in Albuquerque a couple of weeks ago.  One of the six demos I attended was by Marla Baggetta who talked about her 100 Variations.  Over a six month period she completed 125 color variations of the same composition.  She used them as a warm-up exercise at the beginning of her day.  She then would go on to do her other studio work.  She said when she finished her hundredth painting she felt a loss, as they were very meditative for her.  So she has actually continued to do more now and then and has done almost 300 by now.  Most of them were in pastel.   She demonstrated two during our demo. They only took her about 15 minutes from start to finish!  Well, I decided I would like to try doing my own series, with no expectations except to do it.  In my first one, the reference picture I chose was too complicated.  So it changed by the second one.  Then today when I did it again, it also changed.  I am hoping to find my favorite one, or may choose a totally different picture.  Here are the three I have done so far.  As you can see in the first one I was quite stiff and traditional.  The second one is a little more fun, and today I was really getting into it.

               Pastel.  It is 11 by 8 because I tore a piece of Canson Mi-Teintes paper in half.

Pastel.  This one I cut down to 10 x 8

This one I measured out the 10 x 8 but left plenty around the edges for a mat.

Which one do you like better?

I am posting this to Paint Party Friday, boy, I have been away a long time!  Check out their site, lots of interesting artwork there.

Gloria J Zucaro's "Evening In Door County"

Well, I am happy to say that my son and his wife finally, after almost a year, sold their townhouse. I helped out a with packing up the smaller items that were used in the staging and taking them to their garage for a garage sale.  The movers took the furniture that was not bought by the buyers or friends in the neighborhood.

For Jenn's challenge this week at The Artist's Playroom-to "paint something you have been thinking about but haven't gotten around to"- I did this sunset from my photo taken while I was up in Door County Wisconsin one Fall.  

I am also entering it and the charcoal portrait below the sunset to Paint Party Friday hosted by Kristin and Eva.  Please try to visit some of these links to see what other artists are working on.

"Evening In Door County"

Original Oil on 10"H x 20"L stretched canvas

$225.00 plus S&H to your ZIP

Click on paintings to enlarge.

First weeks lesson in portrait class 

I have been looking forward to this class with friend and fellow artist Ann Feldman.  She does excellent portraits and says that they are her first love in painting.  But some of you might also know her from her entries into some of the Daily Paintworks challenges or her gallery on that site.  As you can see, the grid for sizing my portrait is still evident.  I think her right eye is a little wonky, but we will correct and then move on to another portrait next week.  Learning something new is the best!