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 "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.

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 "Bake"

I will be taking another wonderful workshop next week with nationally known artist and instructor Richard McKinley. This workshop is through The Chicago Pastel Painters and is "en Plein Air" 

En plein air is a French expression which means "in the open air".

I don't do Plein air painting very often, because of having to carry all the necessary supplies and my arthritis.  But this is a huge opportunity for learning and what fun!

Today I am sharing another Taos inspired piece called "Bake". 

It is a 9"x 12"Pastel Painting on sanded La Carte paper. 

I picked the title because of the dessert heat in the summer, the baked earth Adobe buildings and the adobe oven on the far right side in the painting.  

I am linking to Paint Party Friday, so pay them a visit.

Have a wonderful week, I love Fall!  And thanks for stopping by! :>)

Gloria J Zucaro's "The Palette Knife & The Weather"

I loved a palette knife floral that Ann Feldman did a couple of months ago and asked her when she would be teaching another class for palette knife. She didn't have any until Spring she said, but would do a special one if I could get enough people.  So I rounded up artist friends and all nine of us had a great day with Ann. 

Ann did a landscape demo first thing in the morning and gave us a photo as a reference for our painting after the demo.

This week I touched up my two oil paintings I had done with Ann in her workshop.

Below is my landscape using the reference.  We drew a rough outline in paint with a small brush first, then started our painting with the palette knife.

10" x 8" on canvas sheet.

After lunch, Ann and I set-up three still life florals for the artists to choose from.  I had brought all the vases and flowers to use for the still life.  Ann did another demo and then we started painting our own florals from whichever set-up we chose.

My choice to paint.

10" x 8" on Canvas sheet.

As far as the weather...considering the dilemma in Buffalo, New York we are extremely lucky in Chicago.  Here are a couple of photos of our first little dusting of snow.  One at night when it was first falling, and one the nest day from my kitchen window.

The back yard (click on photo to see more clearly)

And finally here is my new fish tank on the chalk painted(and loaded with three coats of hand-applied wax!)table.

Real plants and two fish.  A Fancy-Tail Goldfish and a small Koi.

Did you know you should only put one inch of fish for each gallon of water?  So I have about 6" of fish in a ten gallon tank.  In a year I will need a 20 gallon tank!

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

Gloria J Zucaro's "Door County Trip"

On July 14, my friend Judy and I left for Ellison Bay in Door County Wisconsin.  We were going for a five-day workshop at The Clearing Folk School.  It is about a six hour drive from our area in Illinois, but the traffic was light, the weather was sunny and we arrived ahead of schedule. We checked in at the lodge to pick up our information packet with our name tags, room numbers and Clearing general info.  Some of our friends were already there, so all were greeted with big hugs and lots of enthusiasm.  Our first meeting of the whole group of 15 artists signed up for our workshop, the group of ten poets, and the group making marbleized papers and boxes was at supper at 6 PM in the lodge.
                   
There was also a gentleman there with his wife, (who was a painter).  He was doing "Individual Studies", which means he worked on his own without instruction.  
After dinner there was a slide show of the origin and history of The Clearing which was originally the summer home of Jens Jensen the landscape architect. Here is a quote from The Clearing website.

"The Clearing was founded in 1935 by Jens Jensen, a Danish-born landscape architect. Many consider him to be the most important American landscape architect and The Clearing his "great work."
Before founding The Clearing, Jensen achieved international recognition for designing many of Chicago's parks, along with the private estates of Armour, Florsheim, Henry and Edsel Ford and many other important Midwestern industrialists. " 

After the slide show all the guests sat in a large circle and introduced themselves, told where they were from and what workshop they were taking.  Judy and I were taking...

Oil Painting & Pastel: Creating Painterly Impressions From Your Photos Or From Life

Frankie Johnson

 We had all our classes in "The Schoolhouse" which actually has more the feel of a church.

Below is an interior picture of one of the cabins, although not ours.  But they are all similar with two beds, two desks/night tables, two closets & drawer sets, and a bathroom with a shower. The exterior view is of a cabin that now has a computer hook-up in the shed off to the side which is now enclosed. This is called Mertha's Cabin. She was the caretaker before and after Jensens' death. We were in cabin #8 and there is also a dormitory that has 5 beds, two bathrooms and an extra sink and mirror.  Each person has their own closet & drawers, too.  I had stayed there several times before rooming with Judy.

       

Some photos of some of the 128 acres.                                                                              

Here is the "class" photo from last year, this years' hasn't been put on the website yet.  This is when  Judy and I took Plein Air from Bonnie Paruch.  But a lot of the same people that attended Frankie's class this year are in this class also.  I am the blonde in red in the center back row right.

My friend Judy is the fourth person in from the right in the blue shirt.

          Tomorrow I will start posting some of my pastel paintings I did while at The Clearing.