Page One of The Sketchbook Project "Kitten Dance"

Hello!  Thank you for all the comments that I did not reply to last week, I will try better this week..  This week I am starting in my 2019 "The Sketchbook Project" book.  My Theme is "Things I Love".  That can encompass a lot!  My first page is about loving dancing and kittens!  It is a mixed media.  I am posting to Paint Party Friday.  I hope you check the site to see the artwork from artists all over the world.

Click on image to enlarge.

Have a good week,

Gloria

Gloria J Zucaro's " Mystery Palette"

At Karen Margulis suggestion I did a painting using only a limited palette of fourteen pastels I received in the Terry Ludwig Mystery Box.  Once a year you can order the Mystery box, not knowing what you will receive.They are randomly packed with odds and ends from the vast Ludwig selection.  It is so much fun to see what you get each time.  Here is the box of colors I 

received.

I decided to try one of my series landscape paintings using only these colors.  It was a little difficult because the dark gray on the bottom right was the darkest value, which made it hard to make the lighter values look light enough.  Here is that painting.

To see more detail , click on the image to enlarge.

Thank you for visiting my blog, have a good weekend.

Gloria

Gloria J Zucaro's "Slightly-Off White House"

5"H x 7"W Original Pastel on pastel board

$65.00 unframed/$10.00 S&H

Framing Options, see tab above

This week, Carol Marine threw a curve ball!  Her prompt is to go to the link for interior rooms of the White House and pick a scene using any angle of the room you wish. Well, the phrase about using "any angle" is what intrigued me.  So I walked through the lovely, historical but very impersonal and cold,in feeling,rooms that are open to the public. I finally found a room with some colors I love,greens,rose and blue. I picked that room but couldn't decide how to paint it until I went at an odd angle. It included the rosy arm chair, the flower arrangement, a lamp with the light on and a carpet.  No political comment intended.  That's it!  I am way late for Paint Party Friday this week!  A lot of "stuff" going on today since 5AM!  All week for that matter!  I hope you all have a good weekend and check all the artists websites to see what they accomplished this week. Happy PPF!

Gloria J Zucaro's "Race For The Eggs!"

6"H x 6"W Original Oil Painting on canvas panel

Sold

Well, I am finally home and well enough to paint!  I had a wonderful 10 day trip to the pacific     Northwest to visit an old friend in Anacortes,Washington for 3 days then drove down Whidbey Island to the town of Langley.  The Whidbey Island Fine Art School operated by Cary Jurrians was hosting a Dreama Tolle Perry workshop for 5 days.  I was intrigued by Dreama's use of transparent oils in her paintings and her wonderful writings and paintings in her blog posts, so just forced myself to take a trip out to see her in person! LOL!  Any excuse!  I am so glad that I did because Dreama is a wonderful instructor and a fun and giving person.  I met lots of other artists from across the USA, too, and we hope to keep in touch.  Cary was an absolutely wonderful hostess with fresh fruit, coffee and homemade baked goods every morning.  Faye Castle , the class monitor was such a help with any questions about supplies, restaurants, and putting out all the goodies every day. Cary and her husband hosted us for dinner on Sunday with the most wonderful homemade breads, choices of pasta, salad and fresh berry cobbler for dessert.  I stayed at a lovely B & B called Country Cottage of Langley operated by Tom and Jacki Stewart.   A beautiful waterview room with delicious breakfasts every morning.  They were eager to arrange meal times and anything else you might need.  The last night I was there I came down with  "stay up all night" stomach issues.  They were so kind and brought crackers and gingerale, ginger tea, ginger chews to try to ease my upset.  I slept later than checkout and they gave me help with the suitcases to the car and insisted I take a banana to see if I could keep that down a little later.  That trip home was not the best I have ever experienced!  But all is well!

Now for the painting above...This is the weekly challenge from the Daily Paintworks site.  The theme is anything Easter.  So here is a still life of one of my Easter decorations.

Gloria J Zucaro's "Chocolate Birdsong"

8"H x 8"W Original Oil Painting on heavy textured under painting.

To see more detail click on photo to enlarge.

$50.00 unframed Email Me or go to Ebay.

The Daily Paintworks challenge for this week is to paint your sweet Valentine treats before you eat them!  Of course this meant that I had to go buy some fancy chocolates to paint, and while I was there at this really neat store that features all the seasonal holidays with food and home decorations, I had to buy this cute little bird and the pink plate, too!  Yippee!  Now I can eat them..or maybe I should wait until tomorrow?! (2/14)

Gloria J Zucaro's "Merry Christmas ATC's"

Tonight I am sharing my first set of Christmas ATC's for a trade party on Saturday.  I had a lot of fun making these cards.  I used advice from Mary C Nasser's blog post on Oct. 09 when she gave her steps for making her deck of cards for the Inspiration Card Swap hosted by Jessica Brogan.  Starting out with a deck of cards, I glued them to a map.  Then sanded the front of the cards & gessoed & painted the fronts red with Silks Acrylic Glaze and the backs green with the same paint.  I then stenciled the green backs with a second green and outlined the stencils with either red or gold pen.  On the front red side I placed vintage looking stickers or some stocking stickers.  I added torn tissue paper that I had mixed up with gloss medium.  Then coating the tissue with a dark rose Silk paint.  The entire surface was covered with medium and sprinkled with gold beads onto the raised tissue areas.  I stamped on the Doves & Merry Christmas  and added the dimensional snow flakes or Christmas Trees.  The only thing left to do is to add my name and blog information to the back.  I only made a dozen Christmas ATCs, so will use the other cards that are glued to the map and already gessoed for next months trade.   I plan on sending a couple of the cards to blog friends who have been so helpful and generous to me and am looking forward to finding out what our prompt will be for January.  

Our group is hosted by Kimberly Butts who is an avid follower of ATCS FOR ALL and helps organize & attends their convention.  Kimberley's special cards are made of sheet metal in which she presses a design, or her wonderful felted birds.

This is my Paint Party Friday entry for this week.  Please go to the party and visit some of the many artist's sites to see what they have been creating this week.

Gloria J Zucaro's "Worry Bird"

3.5" Square Original Design In Watercolor and Ink

SOLD

The Daily Paintworks Challenge this week was offered by Jo Mackenzie with the prompt of "emotion".  I can definitely relate to the fact that however old your children are, you never cease to worry about them, right from the time of their cracking out of their shells and coming into this world!

Gloria J Zucaro's "Horse in Brush"

3.5" Square Ink Drawing with Watercolor on official Zentangle watercolor paper tile.

SOLD

This may be framed, see tab above.

Click on photo to see more detail.

The colors are off white, pale rose and pale blue/green

I had been yearning to do a horse, so I did!  Although this is not really a tangle design, I think that horses like to eat those thistles that can take over a field, so that is what gave me the idea for this design.  This is my weekly entry to Paint Party Friday hosted by Kristin and Eva.  Go on over and see what everyone else has been up to.  http://paintpartyfriday.blogspot.com/

Gloria J Zucaro's "Color My World"

OOPS!  If looking for Diva Challenge check further down the linky list, I put the wrong link!

4"H x 6"L Greeting Card done with Luminarte's Silks and Twinkling H20s, 

which are both luminescent acrylics.

$4.00 starting bid on Daily Paintworks auction

http://dailypaintworks.com/buy/auction/73666

darker version- click to enlarge to see the glimmer!

Lighter Version

Although I am still very much "coldey" and have to go to the Doc in the A.M. because of fevers, I wanted to get something in to Jenn's Artist Playroom this week.  Jenn's prompt was paint something in your favorite color.  Well, picking one would be impossible!  I find I usually use an array of colors from the warm side of the color wheel and a few from the cooler side.  I tend not to like earth tones or very muted colors.  I am most happy with orange, yellows, roses, aqua, lime green, and emerald green. I also love sparkles!  I just got new paints listed above and they are a wonderful pigment filled with mica.  The originator of these fabulous paints is Leslie Ohnstad and the paints can be found here, LuminArte.  The picture doesn't do the card justice as far as the richness and sheen of the paint.  You can see it better in the darker version but the lighter version is more true to the brightness.

Gloria J Zucaro's "Lavender Wash"

6 1/2 " Circle.  Original Ink Design on Medium Weight Vellum.

Watercolor wash in lavender, rose and a bit of blue.

Click on photo to enlarge to see detail.

I am entering this in the Inspiration Avenue Zentangle Challenge prompt from Jennifer Mclean.  I also entered my Rainbow Mandala from an earlier post.  This was an experiment, and I am not really happy with it.  I drew all the design with a Micron #1 pen.  Then I decided to try a watercolor wash on it.  I didn't want to go too dark or you wouldn't be able to see the ink design.  So with a 2" wash brush I wet the whole surface.  Then I splattered on a rose color, then a blue.  But I thought they were too concentrated, so I started tilting the paper in different directions.  Of course then I got a lavender mix.  It was subtle and kind of pretty, but some more colorful spots remained.  I dried it and then the lavender was very subtle, almost a pale gray, still with splotches of the rose.  So next time I will watercolor a paper first to see if I like it, then do the pen and ink design over that.  I will also leave the colors in their individual areas instead of mixing them totally.

Gloria J Zucaro's "Abstract Favorites"

20"H x 10"W Original Oil on Stretched Canvas

$145.00 Framed in black floater frame.See frame at bottom of this listing.
S&H to your ZIP
To Purchase, email me at gloria@gloriajzucaro.com

 I am proud to say that I had four paintings accepted into the Randy Higbee 6 Inch Squared National Juried show in Costa Mesa, Ca.

I tried something a little different here.  As I sat watching television, I drew on my canvas different things I like or enjoy.  A heart, fish(in a pond!), a cup of coffee, the telephone,my green tile kitchen counter,trees with the leaves drawn in house shapes, a rose, the wind, a rainbow and the star with various triangle and circles.  As I drew each one, I turned the canvas 1/4 of the way around to the right.  I hope you enjoy some of these things, too.  This can be hung either vertically or horizontally.  See below.  This is in the black frame,against my natural oak floor.  The colors in this bottom pix don't seem as accurate, I think I took this picture in a different place and at a different time of day.

Gloria J Zucaro's "Rose Botanical"

Original Drawing on 20"H x 10"W 

Canvas decoupaged with white tissue and embellished with metallic paint pens.

                                        To see a larger picture, just click on the photo above.

I really enjoyed this new project.  I had done a drawing with permanent marker on a different canvas before and found that I thought I would like a textured surface over the canvas.  I decoupaged the 20"H x 10"W canvas with white tissue paper, then did my intuitive drawing in black marker.  I then had to decide whether to color the roses or the background.  In this instance I decided to use paint markers to color the roses, their stems and leaves., and leave the background in black and white.  Do not be fooled by the date.  i have to put an old past date to separate out my tangles from my regular oil paintings on my blog.  You can go to "All My Tangles" at the top menu bar.  I also am posting this to Jenn's Artist's Playroom for the week of June 3, even though i did this a while ago.