Gloria J Zucaro's "Portraits and Landscapes"

I hope you all had a wonderful Spring break.  The past two weeks I have taken workshops or done studies with two fine instructors.
I enjoyed and learned a lot from Margaret Dyer in her 3-day workshop "The Figure in Pastel".
Then a switch to doing quick 30-minute landscape studies with Frankie Johnson.
A couple of the paintings from each are below.  I am linking to Paint Party Friday, the site for seeing many artist's weekly creations.  Have a wonderful week.

Gloria J Zucaro's "Day 4 of CJS 2017 with Pam Carriker"

Pam Carriker did a wonderful portrait demonstration using Pan Pastels, Mixed Media Adhesive, a stencil and stabilo pencils.  I didn't have the Pan Pastels or the adhesive or the stencil for the base of the face.  So I found a photo on Google images asking for "pretty girl with long curly hair"!  I thought the image I picked was perfect for our project.  I have a lot of pastel pencils and soft pastels, so I used what I had.

Day 4 of Creative Jumpstart 2017

Gloria J Zucaro's "Photo Snow"

This week I finished off some projects and started a couple new ones.
I finished my abstract landscape that looks like stained glass.  I corrected the portrait of the magazine model-her head shape was too square, I worked on an oil painting of a farmer feeding a young calf, and I did a pastel of a snow scene from a photo in our holiday projects class with Frankie Johnson at Mainstreet Art Centre in Lake Zurich.

Linking to Paint Party Friday

I may not be doing much art the next couple of weeks with all the shopping and shipping I need to do for family and friends.  Have a Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays for whatever your family celebrates.

PASTEL

OIL

OIL

I forgot this project- a card and ATC for a friend

I forgot this, too!  I cut Weight Watcher boxes into 5 x 7 card sizes and then (below) covered them with gesso to use as needed for custom collaged greeting cards.

Have a good week!

Gloria

Gloria j Zucaro's "Sun and Sky"

This week I have another pastel to share.  It is called "Sun  and Sky" and was painted from a photograph I took during a drive out near Harvard,IL.  I saw this scene out my car window and stopped to take a picture.  I love the reflections of the trees in the cloudy water and then the blue, blue sky reflection.

Below is a Fall street in the town of Palatine, IL

And one from my back yard

If you love art of all types please look at the website below where I am posting today.  

It is hosted by Kristin & Eva, thank you, Ladies! 

I am linking this post to Paint Party Friday

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 "Experimenting with Abstract"

Last weekend I had fun at Mainstreet Art Centre in a workshop with artist Debora Stewart.  Debora was originally a representational aristt but decided about 10 years ago that she loved abstract.  She has been experimenting and learning and achieving wonderful paintings in abstract form since then.  Her workshop was learning about under painting with compressed charcoal, acrylic or watercolor and smearing the charcoal with alcohol before applying more pastel or acrylic for your painting.  I was working with pastel.
In our first exercise we were to use photos of different subjects and a viewfinder to find an abstract area in the photo to paint.  I picked a cityscape. My first two paintings were very tight and not really very much fun.  See below-  Also they curled after I untaped them, hence the curved looking lines! They were done on UArt pastel paper that had a sanded surface for pastels.  I drew the design in charcoal and then added a light , medium and dark value of soft pastel.

Then I began to loosen up.

Below is one of my abstracts that "passed muster" with Debora.  It has a really good dark value to anchor it.

I did about 10 paintings in the three days, and about two were considered successful.  As a representational artist, I will be able to have an abstract background and then put my representational painting over it in a more relaxed version.  So for me a really great experience to learn about shapes and colors in their own right.

I am posting this to Paint Party Friday.

Gloria J Zucaro's "Taos Mourner"

I posted this on my Facebook page last week, but for those of you who missed it, I thought I would post it here for Paint Party Friday this week.
My older daughter Lucy and I took a 4 day trip to Sante Fe and Taos, New Mexico a few years ago.  We visited the Taos Adobe while we were there.  There is an area on one side where they have the cemetery. This woman was actually our guide.  She looked so wonderful with her umbrella/parasol and agreed to have her picture taken in front of the cemetery wall.

"Taos Mourner"

10" x 8" Pastel on watercolor paper with 2 coats of Pastel Ground

Be sure to visit the PPF blog and enjoy all the wonderful art.  Get to know the artists, too!  Have a great week and thanks for stopping by.

Gloria

Gloria J Zucaro's "Storm Brewing"

Wow!  I can't believe how long I have been out of the loop!  Well, I have enjoyed some gardening, some travel, some movies and restaurants.  But I have been painting ,too.  

This painting came out exactly as I envisioned it, so I am very happy with it. It is from a reference photo I took out West.
I am not sure whether it is in Arizona or New Mexico.  I love both the areas around Tucson and Taos.  I also posted a pastel I did of a woman at the Taos Adobe on my FaceBook page today.
Have a wonderful week.

"Storm Brewing"

Pastel 9" x 12"

This will be posted to Paint Party Friday which showcases about 100 artists and their weekly projects.  Stop by and enjoy some really creative work.

For purchase information, email me at gloria@gloriajzucaro.com

Gloria J Zucaro's "Pastel Llama"

I enjoyed my vacation with my son, his wife and son Enzo who is seven. Enzo and I had a lot of fun on the trip to LA and San Diego.  When my son and his wife were looking at houses, we played double solitaire, and I taught him the card game Crazy Nines.  He caught on so quickly he was consistently beating me!!  It was great to see him peak into my motel  room each morning to see if I was awake yet.  I would have my cup of coffee sitting on the bed while he played on his I-Pad, then we would start our game of cards.  We played until Mom and Dad were ready to go for breakfast.

I painted this pastel of a Llama before our trip.  It is from a National Geographic cover photo by Anthony Smallwood and was taken in Cusco, Peru.

10" x 8" on Pastel Board

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

Have a great week.

Gloria

Gloria J Zucaro's "Some Catching Up"

I have been tending to other life matters aside from my art, so haven't posted in a couple of weeks or visited other's blogs either.  I had a little time today so thought I would show you some tangles and swap gifts received from other artists and some collage done a couple of weeks ago.

I did this drawing in February on a greeting card.

This was done about two weeks ago 

This Card was drawn yesterday.  

All of these cards were drawn from prompts suggested by Laura Harms at http://iamthedivaczt.blogspot.com/  The one above uses two different but similar patterns called Flux Maria and Flux Rick.  Maria and Rick are the originators of the Zentangle  craze.

I was intrigued by this shadow all away across my yard and driveway in front of the house this morning.  It first came to my attention when two Robins were hopping along and then for some reason began to fight!  I guess they are territorial!  Notice how different the shadow shape is from the actual tree shape.  It (the shadow)makes the tree base much thinner and the limbs closest to me much larger.

This is a wonderful March Swap I received from Lisa Crail all the way from Australia.  She not only sent me these two paintings done with some collaged papers in back of the portrait but the painted and charcoal drawing of a bird, and a decorated envelope and small ink drawing of a figure.  See Lisa's Facebook page at, Lisa Crail-Painting From the Heart. These swaps were through Community Thrive.

Many of you may have seen my collage work on Facebook.  I really enjoyed a workshop led by Karen Sako a couple of weekends ago.  

We got 4 pieces accomplished.

They are below with a little explanation of the process.

Three birds from the same reference, different size and shape of paper. Then a house/landscape collage from a reference. All from Karen Sako's most fun Mixed Media Workshop. 

Number three Bird-just let loose! Different shape and feather arrangement!

Bird #2- stencils,ink,clear gesso, collaged paper, paint and pastel. — at Mainstreet Art Center, Lake Zurich, IL.

Number one Bird. More Traditional, drawing,stencil,paper prepared from magazine page, clear gesso, paint, pastel.

Hopperesque! Paper handmade sky, paper house, paper shadow on house, paper foreground. Painted smaller shadows and sheets on the line. Marker outlines, and dog.

Well, that's it, Folks!

I am posting today, early for Paint Party Friday, and somewhat late for I Am The Diva!

Have a Good Week,

Gloria

Gloria J. Zucaro's "Wonderful Swap From Carmen Jones"

Today I would like to show you the wonderful hand painted greeting cards I received from my February Swap Partner from Community Thrive. Carmen Jones lives in Bermuda and really outdid herself making these gorgeous cards! 

Carmen's theme choice was "Bold" and using a brayer and stencils then over-painting figures or adding 3-dimensional flowers onto the stenciled backgrounds. So well done! Thank you Carmen, I love them.

During this last week I did some small changes to a pastel I had done earlier. I changed the rather larger leaf that was in front of the apples and added more variation of color to the leaves and apples.

I am happier with it now, but not sure if it is done.

I am linking this to Community Thrive and Paint Party Friday

Gloria J Zucaro's "Composition Gauguin"

I decided to do another in the floral series using an "Old Master" painter's work as a reference.  I picked a Gauguin floral still life this week.  I researched his color palette and a little about his technique.

These were the colors mentioned.  They are oil colors.  I am currently using pastels.  Since an oil painter can make many combinations from these colors, I started with these basic pastels but added to them to get the colors I needed.

• Prussian blue
• Cobalt blue
• Emerald green
• Viridian
• Cadmium yellow
• Chrome yellow
• Red ochre
• Cobalt violet
• Lead white
• Zinc white
• The basic colors mention in the article on Painting.about.com
  
• Typically Gauguin painted outlines of the subject directly onto the canvas in diluted Prussian blue. These were then filled in with opaque colours (rather than building colour up through glazes). The dark outline heightens the intensity of the other colours. 

Here is that original photo of my set-up

The first thing I did was draw my original floral on the canvas in pencil.  I then added some new parts to the composition to mimic Gauguin's composition.  He had put a Japanese woodcut into the background and had a very South Seas looking jug.  Since I had neither, I made up an abstract in the background and added a jug-like vase in the area where he placed his.  I then outlined everything in "Prussian Blue" as the article mention.  Gauguin's painting seemed very flat with no real light source.  He also had some stray leaves pointing up at his still life, so I did the same.  I used many of his colors rather than the Fall colors of my original reference.

Below is my first step

Next starting to color in the background.

.

Then I totally forgot to take pictures until I was finished!

Here is my reference from Gauguin

Here is my final "Composition Gauguin"

8" x 10" Soft Pastel on Sanded Paper Unframed.

Contact me with questions.

gloria@gloriajzucaro.com

I hope you enjoy my paintings :>)  Gloria

I was invited by Valerie & Susi after posting, to join in to Art Journal Journey.  Their site is featuring each artist's version of a "Master" painter that they like, so my current theme series fits right in.  Thank you ladies.  Pop-in to see each artists' rendition of their favorites painter.

I was also invited to share my work on "The Queen of Creativity" by Kate. Thanks so much!

Linking to Paint Party Friday, Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest

Gloria J Zucaro's "The Reference As A Starting Point"

This past week I experimented with using a reference as a jumping off point for two different styles of painting.  The reference is from a photograph I took of one of the set-ups that I furnished for the palette knife workshop with Ann Feldman.

The Reference

The first painting was done with pastel in an impressionistic manner. Different colors and parts of the reference were left out.  I struggled with it, trying to get the colors and values what I wanted.

Impressionistic Version # 1

The second one came more easily because I "dreamed/thought"about it during the night, so I knew what I wanted to do when I got to the studio. It is a one-direction diagonal style pastel with lots of black interlaced.  I really like it.

Diagonal Version # 2

Both paintings may be enlarged to see more detail by clicking on the image.  After the holidays are over I may try some other styles modeled after the "Masters".          Any suggestions?  

Please contact me for purchase information.

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

Have a good week and thanks for taking a look.

Gloria

Gloria J Zucaro's "Four Mediums"

Today I am posting a pastel, titled"Texas Meadow".  It is from a photo shared with me by my friend Jeanne Dale.  It may need some minor touches.  But I think it is  pretty much saying what I wanted to say.  I love the viewpoint. and the barbed wire.

12" x 9" Pastel on LaCarte Sanded Paper

Next is a watercolor.  The watercolor was one of my efforts in the Frank Francese workshop at Mainstreet Art Center.

"Homestead"   16" x 20" on 300 LB Wallis

   

The oil, "Siberia in May",  is from a photograph I took out of the window of the Trans-Siberian Railway on a trip from Moscow to Vladivostok in 2004 with my mother. 

 "Siberia in May"  14" x 11" Oil on Canvas

  

Such a beautiful and interesting country Russia!  The Western areas are European, then as we traveled across Siberia we entered the more Asian areas.  We ended in the very cultural city of Vladivostok.

Lastly is an acrylic still life I am doing in Sharron Boxenbaum's class.  It is not finished, as I would like to emphasize more light on the left, change the handle that fights with the edge, make the background more interesting and change the edgework on the top of the bowl.

"Fluted"  Acrylic on Canvas

16" x 12".

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