Gloria J Zucaro's "What's Done is Done Again"

For a couple of years I was doing pen and ink drawings with doodles.  I was posting them here and on my page on Facebook Gloria J Zucaro in Pen & Ink especially for those drawings. On Instagram recently I saw Tori Weyers was doing daily drawings inspired by a prompt(word) each day of January. I decided to try it when I could fit it in my schedule. Here is my first one. I truly don't know where these crazy ideas come from! The January 17 prompt was "Boat".

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 "Mission San Xavier del Bac"

I finally finished my Mission Church that my friend Judy G. and I went to visit a couple of times when we went to Tuscan for plein air painting workshops. The Mission is being cleaned and repaired so this is not the usual front view of San Xavier del Bac. We walked around the sides and back and got some gorgeous sunlight hitting the Mission. In my painting you can see some of the tarps on the left side.

 

Oil on Canvas  

11' x 14"

Here is my original block-in below.  

I left some of the warm under-painting peeking through.

Last Sunday I my daughter Lucy and I attended another collage workshop given by Karen Sako at the Mainstreet Art Center in Lake Zurich, IL.  I wasn't really "feeling it" that day for some reason, so my efforts came out with very dark and very light areas instead of a nice mix of values.  This time I did three landscapes from the same reference(believe it or not!) and one bird on a 6" square board.

This one reminds me of Disney!

Lots of layers of paper and pastel and paint and ink!  

But just too darn dark!

I like this one the best.  I like the colors and the stamping and tangling.

These next drawings are from a live model session at the Elk Grove Library with the Artist Association of Elk Grove Village.  They were 1, 2, 5, and 20 minute poses.  I notice that I got darker and darker!

Thanks for looking.  I am sharing this with Paint Party Friday, although I am two days late!  Have a good week,         

                                                                     Gloria

Gloria J Zucaro's "First Drawing for Sketchbook Skool"

After a hectic weekend and being up all night with a stomach ache, I took it easier today.  

I had planned on doing my first "Beginnings " lesson early in the day from Sketchbook Skool, but kept procrastinating with household jobs and trying to fix a problem with my computer.  

Finally after returning home at 6:15 from watching my grandson's soccer practice, I ate dinner and opened a gessoed notebook page and put down some watercolor paint.  I dried it with a heat gun then put down a layer of acrylic heavy-bodied paint.  But to my surprise it was transparent!  So after some sketching, I added more paint.  The first sketch was a little "sketchy", but I went over it with a darker pen. 

It is not really in good proportion but I like it anyway.  It wasn't as bad as I feared!  This is my New Balance sneaker.  

My sneakers are my most comfortable shoes and whenever I am at home or for flea markets and other casual long-days of walking I wear them.  (my orthotics and magnets fit into them!)

First layer over gessoed page.  The gesso made the rather thin paper very lumpy when it dried, but I like the texture.

In the next step we were to make a general outline of the object we were painting.  As you can see I made the end of the shoe shape going off the page.

Here is my final drawing after a second coat of ink with a bigger nib.

I used an 01 Sakura Pigma pen first then an 05

With all my lights on in the family room I also got some shadows in the picture!

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

OOPS!  There is more Below, My first page of journaling, and my desk top in my family room.

I have started to journal very amateurishly!  Yesterday my day got away from me as usual, not being in the habit of having what I need with me.  So I journaled it today, just drawing little pictures of things that caught my attention yesterday.  I went shopping at Costco for a new blender.  Then spent several hours with my daughter-in-law and my grandson, who is 6, at Goebberts Pumpkin Farm.  It had suddenly dropped in temperature and was extremely windy.  So we kept on the move to see the pumpkin eating dinosaur, the three tents with animals(chickens running free).  There were all sorts of exotic animals including the big cats that I especially love. Three baby tigers, and leopards and a couple of Linx.  There were various deer type animals & goats, pigs, a cow, ostrich, Alpaca, Parrots, etc.  Then we ran to the corn box, which is filled with shucked kernels, then to the maze that was inside a structure and the piled hay/straw made it seem warmer.  We hid from each other and ran in opposite directions for about 1/2 hour.  Then it was time to checkout and get some Kettle Corn!  On to dinner at Portillo's( for me) it was a chicken sandwich and onion rings.  I got home about 7 and fell asleep on the sofa!

The last questions that Danny asked about our feelings on the class at the end of the week and my answers.  You can probably figure out some of the questions.  

I feel better now that I am into it a little more.  I think it is a good idea to journal, because as has been said, we forget the minutia that is really what makes up our lives.  I really like that I don't have to be perfect in my drawings and can just put down my impressions.  What scares me is doing it on the spot in a public space.  !. I don't sit down in an area like that ever!  2.I always need some other supply.  Today at home I had pen, paper and watercolors, but decided to use my Derwent watercolor pencils and then wet everything afterward.  I would not normally have that.  I also needed the cardboard box the blender came in to draw a facsimile of it for my journal.  I needed some scissors too!  And paper towels.  And my camera!!!

Today I shopped for ingredients to make cornbread to eat tomorrow night with chili that my son is making.  We will have dinner together after my grandson goes trick or treating.  I measured all the ingredients out into bowls and cups.  Then I took a picture to use as my sketchbook journal page for today.  After the cornbread muffins and sticks were baked, I took a photo so you could see how delicious they look!

Gloria J Zucaro's "Cadent Floral"

Original Pen & Ink Drawing on Official Zentangle watercolor Tile

3.5" Square

$3.00 plus $1.00 Shipping.

May be framed, see tab above.

This is my challenge entry for the www.iamthedivaczt.blogspot.com   The challenge Diva Laura gave us this week is called "Tanglation Nation: Cadent"  A tanglation is when you take a recognized pattern and change it's design by adding another design to it, or distort its shape.

Gloria J Zucaro's " Eccentric Circles"

Original Pen & Ink Drawing on 3.5" Square Official Zentangle Tile

(Watercolor Paper)

$3.00  $1.00 S&H

Well, I am finally back doing a little artwork, after a week of coughing-like-crazy and Pink Eye and an allergic reaction to the pink eye drops!  But all is well, now, so let's have fun!  This is my creation for the  http://iamthedivaczt.blogspot.com/  challenge of the week which was to draw a string of circles that were not quite circles but were defined as eccentric circles, which means not quite centered!  Sounds like some people I know...thankfully, because they make life more interesting.

Gloria J Zucaro's" Learning Something New"

3 1/2" Square, Ink on Zentangle  paper.

On Friday I was invited to a Christmas luncheon by an artist friend.  She had not only planned for great food and wonderful companionship with other artists, but had a project for us to do.  We sat at her kitchen table with the supplies she had set out for us to introduce us to an art form called Zentangles. We each had one official Zentangle paper square, a pencil, and two pens with different line thicknesses.

First we were to put dots a little inside of each corner, then connect the dots.  I went wrong right away, by making my connection "bumpy" on two of the sides instead of making it look like a "pillow shape".  But she said it is okay, just have fun!  Then we were to put dots on the edges of the pillow in pencil, then connect the dots across the pillow with our fine point pen so as to divide the pillow into sections.  The first section was filled with lines running parallel to our section line.  See my upper left and lower right bumps.  Then in the same section to go across those lines to make diamond shapes.  Then fill in every other line of diamonds with our thicker point pen.  Next we picked another area and made dots in parallel lines as if you were going to play that connect- the-dots game to complete squares.  See my area in the upper middle.  After that we connected our dots with an "S" line, then connected the opposite sides with the same "S", which resulted in a curvy shape.  Some of us then put squares in the middle of our curvy squares.  And we darkened the little circles that had been the substructure for the design.  Next we were to make scallops across one section.  I got that all mixed up!  I was to make the same scallop shape one on top of the other and then darken with the thick point, every other row.  I went around my perimeter by mistake with the scallops, which did not keep their "scallopy" shape.  So when it came time to darken alternating rows, I ran into areas where two white scallops or dark scallops met.  That meant I started randomly darkening areas and so it looks like Indian Corn instead of a reoccurring pattern which I think is one of the main ideas of Zentangle. See two "bumps" top and bottom.

Next section we were to draw a set of parallel lines in a slight curve across that section.  Then continue with sets of lines but never going over that top set.  We continued to fill that section with parallel lines.  Then we filled in the open areas with"bubbles" or small circles.  See lower middle section.  After that everyone else was done but I had areas that were still open, so I just followed the lines of the open areas to make a maze effect. The other artists were adding some pencil to have more values.  So I started to fill in, with pencil, some of my maze lines.  Again I ran into the problem of having a darkened area meet another already darkened area that would lessen the effect of contrast!

This was a lot of fun and took us about an hour to do.  After I got home, I researched Zentangles on Google.  The originators of the craze are Richard Roberts and Maria Thomas.  The website if you want to find out all about it is http://www.zentangle.com   

Since I would like to do more of these and do them properly, I will need to take a lesson from a Certified ZT teacher.  There are two in the area where I live.  Also, there are many patterns which have specific names and their creators name are listed with them.  There are also challenges just like on the Daily Paintworks site.

"Zentangle" is a registered trademark of Zentangle, Inc. Our square red logo, "Anything is possible one stroke at a time", "Certified Zentangle Teacher", "CZT", and "Zentomology" are trademarks of Zentangle, Inc.