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50 paintings and a baby in 55 days!

The Challenge

Sometime around the end of each year I, like many others, set a few goals for the upcoming year. I don't do the normal ones that everyone does and never follows through on, like going to the gym everyday or to give something up. Instead, I concentrated on specific goals for my art career, like promoting my newsletter, increasing my social media presence, and painting with and meeting other artists.  One of the more ambitious painting projects on my list was a 50 paintings in 50 days challenge, where for 50 days I would post a new painting, blog about it and post it on eBay for auction.

Balancing Act

While I generally paint every day anyway, I really wanted to test my stamina by producing and promoting a daily painting. On a personal note, my wife was also a few weeks pregnant with our second child when I set this goal, so it was important to be finished with the challenge before her arrival. Because of this, I thought limiting this to 50 days seemed reasonable. Once the baby was born, there would be no way I could expect to paint every day with a newborn and a toddler running around the house. As the year went on and I worked on some of the other goals I had set out for myself, I realized I was running out of time to do the 50 painting challenge. Our daughter was due August 13^th, so I subtracted a few days from her due date and counted backwards from there to see when I would have to start the challenge. If I started on June 20^th, then I would finish on August 8^th, which was almost a full week before she was due. This left about two weeks to get everything else ready. What is that old cliché about the best laid plans…? Naturally, our daughter arrived on full week early on August 6th!  I had no choice but to take a few days off, and help my wife welcome our newest daughter to the world. It was then I decided to rename the challenge to 50 Paintings and a Baby in 55 days. Yes, I know it takes longer than 55 days for make a baby, but you get the idea.

Supplies and Pre-Sales Promotion

Once I had set the dates, there was just two weeks to get everything ready, so I ordered my painting supplies. I didn't want to run out of anything during this time, so I stocked up on canvas panels and paints. Though I debated making the panels myself, ultimately I did all the paintings for this challenge on 6x6 inch RayMar panels. Then, I quickly designed some promotional postcards to send to everyone on my mailing list to build up a little momentum. Once they were ordered, I turned to social media to promote the challenge through my Facebook fan page. I knew I would need to increase my fans for this challenge to be successful. So, I posted an image along with an invitation to follow me on this painting challenge on other Facebook pages where I included a link back to my fan page so people could like my page easily. I also bought a onetime ad for $50 that ran for the two weeks before the challenge started and a week after it began. Between these two things, I was able to grow my fan page “likes” from 60 to 169, even after a few fans inevitably stopped liking my page. At first, the drops were a little discouraging, but in the end I realized I’d rather have fans that wanted to engage with me then have a lot of fans that never did. My newsletter subscribers increased by similar percentages, as did my Twitter followers.

The Daily Grind

Once June 20^th rolled around, I quickly realized just how busy these next 50 days were going to be. To try to ease some of this whenever I could I painted two paintings in one day or I’d try to get three done over two days. I wasn’t able to do this often, maybe three or four times though out the 50 days, but these little head starts came in really handy when time fell short or un-expected delays popped up. A typical painting day started around 9am after I dropped our older daughter off at day care. I’d come home and started setting up my still life or looking through photo reference for something to paint that day. I would paint most of the day and post progress pictures on Facebook. Around 5:30pm, I would pick up our daughter and spend the next few hours with her and my wife. After we put her to bed around 8pm, I could start on my blog post for the day and my eBay listing. My blog posts always took a little longer then I thought they would, since almost all of them where step-by-step descriptions of the painting process. I did get more efficient with practice, but, on average, they took me about an hour and a half each night.

One interesting thing I noticed when doing these blogs is that they really forced me to think about my painting approach and why I painted the way I did. This was a great revelation for me and allowed me to really refine my process even more. I honestly didn’t realize how much of my painting process was subconscious, but writing about it every day got me thinking about why I painted the way I did.

Social Media and Connecting with the Fans

 Before the challenge, I would post on Facebook about once a day, sometimes making an announcement or two, but I wasn’t really using it to its full potential. The challenge changed my approach, from using Facebook as a memo board to using it as a primary communication device to engage my fans.  This has made all the difference between success and failure. To keep my fans up to date, I would take progress pictures of my paintings and post them several times a day. Sometimes, I would tease the audience by asking what they thought today’s block-in would turn out to be. This was a great way to get the conversation going.  One of the most memorable threads started out very simply, and led to a serious discussion of subjects my fans would like to see me paint. The conversation was very good for me on two levels: 1.) I took some of the suggestions for subject matter, and 2.) this opened the door to questions about commission work for after the challenge. 

Perhaps most importantly, I would also post the link to my eBay auction for each painting and my blog is set to post on there as well thanks to the handy work of the FASO support team. I really think this helped engage my fans and I know it made a few of them want to bid on the paintings. Some of them going as far as to claim ownership of a painting before it was finished. I was also lucky enough to have a few of my fans regularly share my auction links with their friends, which lead to more than a few bids.

Taking the Leap on eBay

I’ve sold my paintings on eBay for the last 16 months before the painting challenge started. Based on an excellent article by Jack White on the FAV blog, I changed the way I listed my paintings on eBay. I followed Jack’s advice and listed all of these paintings with an opening bid of just one cent. This was a big chance to take, and I had many fears of paintings selling for a penny. Luckily, this never happened, and as of today, all the paintings sold have been bidded up to higher prices. These 55 days have attracted the highest number of page hits, watchers, and bids that I have ever had with eBay. Each auction was posted to my Facebook page, and I sent out newsletters every week or so that included all the paintings for the last week and links to the auctions. I also worked on the listing titles, again based on Jack White’s advice, to try to have more people find my auctions through the eBay search.  

What’s even more encouraging is that the summer months are usually the slowest time for me on eBay, so this result is a nice boost in spite of a few mistakes along the way. The worst one is that I didn’t pay attention to when my auctions would end, which wasn’t a big deal most of the time.  However, I had one end on the fourth of July and no one wants to be inside bidding on a painting when the fireworks are going off. That weekend, the paintings posted didn’t break $15, so no more auctions that end on holidays.

Final Thoughts

Overall, I had a great time doing this painting challenge. While successful on many levels, the most gratifying is that I developed more contact with my fans and collectors. So many people took the time to write to me and let know they were enjoying the paintings or the step-by-step blogs. Some even wrote to wish my wife luck with the new baby, which thrilled us both. I had a few artists write and say they this challenge inspired them to try something similar. All of this really meant the world to me and kept me going when I needed it the most. So thanks to all of you who read this! What now? Well, I’ll still be painting and posting my paintings here and on eBay. I’m going to take a little bit of time to work on a few larger pieces and I have a couple of commissions I need to finish, but I’m already planning the next painting challenge, so stay tuned.

Painting 50 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Tools Of The Trade - by George De Chiara

Tools Of The Trade

Painting number 50! I can't believe it; I made it! For this last painting, it seemed appropriate to use some of the equipment I've used for the last 50+ days to make these paintings. One of the things that made this painting an interesting challenge is that the palette that everything is sitting on is the one I use every day, so I had to use a different palette while painting today. I didn't think this would matter, but it turns out I've developed a lot of muscle memory as to where each color is on my palette. Most of the time, I don't even think about where a color is, my brush just goes right to it. However, with this new palette I had to stop and think about where the color I wanted was before reaching for it. This made me think about my color mixtures more than usual, thus keeping me on my toes while painting.

Here's how the painting came to life today:

This is the end of my block-in. Everything at this point is roughed in with very thin color. The lighter areas are wiped out with a paper towel dipped in a little turpentine. While this stage looks rough and unrefined, all the important details are addressed in this pass, such as the placement of each object and where the lightest lights and darkest darks will be.

Once the first pass has had a few minutes to dry, I can start to refine my drawing and colors. I started with the brush cutting across the canvas, since this is the primary focus. This is also what I'm judging the size and placement of rest of the objects from. I'm using a combination of dry brush strokes and ones loaded with paint at this stage. For example, the brush is painted with thicker, wet paint, while the medium cup that it's sitting on is done almost entirely with dry brush stokes over what was already there.

I continue with the lower portion of the painting in the same way, using wet and dry brush strokes to develop it. The tubes of paint are painted with thicker wet paint, but for the palette, I try to use dry brushes so the color from the initial wash will show through. This helps gives the painting some depth and interest.

The finished painting.

Tools Of The Trade

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Painting 49 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Trails Edge - by George De Chiara

Trails Edge

 This painting is based on a photograph I took several years ago while out hiking with my wife on vacation. We were in Oklahoma at the time, following a trail in the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge when I noticed this little rock outcropping along the trail we were on. I was struck by the light-colored rocks against the dark background of the forest and snapped a few photographs to remember the scene by. I'm not sure what made me remember this images today, but I'm glad I did. Little landscape scenes like this are loads of fun to paint. Below is how the painting came to life:

This image was taken at the end of my rough block-in. There's still very little paint on the canvas at this point. I started by toning the whole canvas with a little Viridian and Yellow Ochre thinned with turpentine. While this was still a wet, I used a paper towel to wipe out the rocks. I then used slightly thicker paint to rough in the trees in the background. This is still very thin paint without any white paint at this point. I'll let this dry for a few minutes before continuing.

Now that the rough-in has had a few minutes to dry, I continue working on the whole painting at the same time with very dry brushes and paint mixtures. This allows me to build up layers of paint and color, along with lots of texture, which is just what these rocks need. By working on the whole painting at the same time, this painting came together faster than I thought it would. Since the painting flowed so well, this is the last image I took before it was done.

The finished painting.

Trails Edge

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Painting 48 of the 50 Day painting challenge - It's A Girl! - by George De Chiara

It's A Girl!

 Well, if you've been paying attention to this challenge, you'll know that I'm actually over the 50 days mark. I had to take a few days break when my wife went into labor with our second child this past weekend. Our due date was supposed to be about 5 days after the painting challenge was to end, but our little girl just couldn't wait any longer and made her début on Saturday afternoon. I'm only three paintings short of my goal, so I'm definitely going to finish it up over the next few days. I've thought about changing the name of the challenge to 50 paintings and a baby in 55 days. What do you think?

 Below is how today's painting came to life. Can you guess where my inspiration came from today?

I completely forgot to take a picture of my still life set up before I broke it down, so I'll start this step-by-step blog with my block-in. For this painting, I did a monotone block-in. This is done mostly by toning the whole canvas with a little Transparent Oxide Red mixed with a touch of Terra Rosa. This is thinned down with turpentine and wiped with a paper towel to smooth it out. I also use the paper towel to wipe out some of the lighter areas. I used the same mixture with less turpentine added to it to draw in a few darker lines and masses of the objects.

I give the block-in a few minutes to dry so that underlying color doesn't interfere with the paint I apply over it. I'm no longer thinning my paint with turpentine at this point. Now I'm concentrating on getting accurate color and drawing. I started with the Minnie Mouse rattle, since this area is my center of interest. I want to be able to compare everything else against this area in terms of color saturation, edges and contrast. My goal is to keep all the other parts of the painting just slightly less interesting than this area.

Although I don't want to detract from the center, the background is still important. These areas should lead the viewer's eye through the painting and back to the central focus so I'll give these areas just as much attention.

The finished painting.

It's A Girl!

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 47 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Little Brook - by George De Chiara

Little Brook

 After yesterday's painting of the river rapids I was still in the mood to paint more rushing water. I once again turned to my reference photos to find my inspiration for this painting. This is actually a location not far from our home. The water isn't always running through this little creek, but after a good rain it looks great. I was lucky enough to find this spot shortly after a rain so there was plenty of running water through it. I snapped a couple of images and today I finally got a chance to use them.

 Sorry I don't have any step-by-step images for this painting. The last few day's have been extremely busy around here as my wife and I prepare for the arrival of our new daughter. I'm lucky to find a few minutes to write this little bit on the blog. I'll try to have more later.

The finished painting.

Little Brook

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 46 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Where the Water Runs Rapid - by George De Chiara

Where the Water Runs Rapid

 Today I painted one of my favorite subjects, white water rapids! It seems like it's been forever since I've done one. I'm not really sure why I've had the lapse, but today I put an end to it. I shuffled through my photo references of scenes like this till I found one that I wanted to paint. This scene is from Medicine Park, OK. My wife and spent a week there a few years ago and had a great time hiking around the trials and sight seeing. We took a hike called the 40 Foot Hole Trail, which follows a river for about a mile and a half and is full of scenery like this. Ultimately, the trails ends at a 40 foot hole at the bottom of the river, which is created from the waterfalls pounding down. Now, I'll be honest, I'm not sure if we ever found the hole or not. It's not very clearly marked which waterfall supposedly caused this, but with a digital card full of images like this one I really didn't care.

Below is how today's painting came to life. I don't have a lot of images for this one. I was short of time today and painted as fast as I could and often forgot to stop and take photographs. This was one of those paintings that fell off the brush and when you are there to just catch the paint, it's best not to stop.

This image is taken at the end of my rough block-in. The paint is not quite as thinned out as I normally use for a block-in, but it's not thick either. There isn't any white paint used up to this point. All of the lighter shades are either done with turpentine to thin the paint or a paper towel to wipe the paint off leaving just a stain of light color. When I paint from this point on, I want to try to preserve as much of this under painting as possible, because I think it will help give the rocks and water subtle layers of color and interest.

Now I've started to add white paint into my color mixtures and almost no turpentine. This makes the paint very dry, so when I drag it across the canvas, it leaves little spots where the background colors come through. The effect is most notable in the rocks as they progress. At this point, all I've worked on is the water. Once I'm happy with how the water looks, I'll move on to cleaning up the rocks, giving them more interest and color. I'll mix the colors for the rocks in the same dry fashion I did for the water. It's kind of ironic, but when painting very wet rushing water I like to use mostly dry slow brush strokes. Weird, huh?

The finished painting.

Where the Water Runs Rapid

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 45 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Pearl Necklace - by George De Chiara

Pearl Necklace

 Last night my wife came into the studio after I was done painting for the day and mentioned she had an idea for a still life painting. She then set down 3 or 4 bottles of perfume and a pearl necklace. At the time, I didn't really notice how they looked  since I was busy finishing up some other tasks. This morning, I went into the studio to get the day started and noticed the little pile of goodies she left in there. I was immediately drawn the way the bottles looked. I cleaned out my still life from the day before and set up this arrangement. I had never thought to paint these little bottles before even though I see them sitting on the vanity everyday. I suppose that this is a rather pointed reminder to look at the shapes of things, and not what they are when looking for subjects to paint.

Here's how today's painting came to life:

This image was taken at the end of my rough block-in. Rather than my normal block-in for this painting, I used more of a line drawing, which is mostly monochrome in color. I really didn't have any reason for doing it other than I just felt like mixing it up a little today.

I began this painting with the blue bottle since I'm using this one to judge the size of all the other objects in the painting. This bottle is a lot of fun to paint. It has just enough translucency so you can just see through it and a nice reflection to it. This combination makes it pretty easy to just squint at it and see simple, clear shapes.

I took this image at the point where I had pretty much finished up the top half of the painting and have a block-in on the lower half. Most of the background went pretty quickly, so I didn't take a lot of photographs in-between this photo and the previous one. For the necklace and little brush, I used a paper towel to wipe out the shapes after roughing in everything else first.

The finished painting.

Pearl Necklace

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 44 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Fresh Bales - by George De Chiara

Fresh Bales

 For today's painting, I turned to one of my old plein air sketches for reference. I know a lot of artists work up their plein air studies into larger studio works, but this is the first time I've tried this myself. One of the things it made me realize about my plein air paintings is it's more important, to me anyway, to record more accurate color notes. The drawing can be refined later, but the color can only be captured out there on location. The other thing I need to remember to do is to take a photograph of the scene I'm painting for future reference. Still, it was an interesting experience trying to work from my old sketch. It gave me the chance to address some of the things I wish I had done differently while out painting on location. Plus, I got to revisit a subject that I enjoy painting. I could still recall many of the details from the day I did the initial study, like the heat from the pavement I was standing on while painting and the smell of the horses nearby.

Here's how today's painting came to life (again):

This is the old plein air sketch I used to base today's painting on. I took a lot of liberties with it when I re-worked it today. First off, I lowered the tree line to give a little more room for the sky. Then, I also tried to give the trees a little more definition and interesting shape. I also rearranged the hale bales. Finally, I changed the lines in the field to run left to right across the canvas rather than vertically like they do here.

I did a little sketch before I began to paint to work out where things where going to be. Once I was happy with that I started with this rough block-in. Like most of my block-ins, this is done with paint thinned down with turpentine and a paper towel to wipe out lighter areas.

After a few minutes, the rough block-in is dry and I can start to paint over it without lifting any of that underlying color into my current paint mixtures. I started with the sky because I find it easier to paint the trees over the sky than it is to paint the sky around the trees. It also just seems to be the way I approach landscape paintings. I almost always start at the top of the canvas and work my way down.

Here, I'm continuing to work my way down the canvas. These are pretty early color choices, as I'm working out the final placement of the hay bales. Once I'm happy with where they are, I can begin to refine the colors in the field and the hay bales. While this isn't the way I'd plan to paint the field, what I did shortly after I took this photo is wipe off most of the paint with a dry paper towel. This produced some nice light color and dried the canvas a bit. From there, I went back over the field with a lot of dry brush strokes of color and slowly built it up again. I don't think I could have ever planned this method, but it  seemed to work in the end. I find I do this from time to time, when I've built up too much paint on the canvas too soon. How do I know it's too soon? Usually, if I attempting to lay in what I still consider base color and it's mixing with what's already on the canvas, then I have too much paint applied to the canvas. If it's a small area, I can just take a paper towel, lay it over that area and gently rub the paint off. On larger areas, I just wipe it off the canvas.

The finished painting.

Fresh Bales

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 43 of the 50 Day painting challenge - A Cluck Off The Old Block - by George De Chiara

A Cluck Off The Old Block

 While painting this today, I realized that the rooster in the background is probably the father of this younger chick. Ever since my wife's grandparents got a couple of roosters last year, their chicken count has really started to increase. In fact, the last time we were there, they had more pullets (young chickens) running around than anything else, including this one. Given the similar coloring and timing, I'd say it's a safe bet that he's the father. That's where the name comes from, rather than a chip off the old block, I changed it to Cluck. Get it? Hmm...maybe I'm spending too much time going over animal sounds with our 21 month old daughter.

Here's how the painting came to life today:

I took this photograph at the end of my rough block-in. This step is normally done fairly quickly, maybe 10 - 15 minutes of painting time. The paint is thinned down with turpentine so I can paint fast without needing to load up my brush again with paint. I also use a paper towel to wipe off areas for two purposes: first, I want some places to be lighter, and then to smear some of the paint to kill the white of the canvas. You can see this in the background streaks.

I let the rough block-in dry for a few minutes; that's really all it takes for the turpentine to evaporate and the canvas to dry. Then I begin painting with thicker paint. My goal now is to get more accurate drawing and color on the canvas. The rough block-in has laid out where everything is going to be, so I can now work slower and try to be more accurate.

So, I got the painting to this point and then took a break for lunch. After lunch, I wiped off the entire lower half of the painting. I wasn't happy with the little chicken's color and I felt the foreground was getting way too dark. Sometimes it's just easier to wipe things off than it is to try to paint over them. In fact, I've noticed lately that I tend to wipe or scrape off areas without even giving much thought these days. It's one of the greatest advantages of oil paints, so I might as well take use of it.

The finished painting.

A Cluck Off The Old Block

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 42 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Changing Lures - by George De Chiara

Changing Lures

 I've turned to my tackle box several times during this painting challenge for models to paint. For this set up, I once again called on it, but this time I used the whole tackle box. I wanted this to have the feeling of slightly spilled or unorganized, like the fisherman has tried out many different lures to see what interests the fish. Sometimes he puts them back in the box, sometimes just getting them close to the tackle box is good enough. Hmm... this is starting to sound like some of my fishing trips.

Here's how this painting came to life:

Here's a picture of the set up. I did take a few liberties with this while painting it. For instance, I didn't like the green and yellow tail on top of the edge of the tackle box, but I needed to have it there to keep the rest of the lure in place (that part that goes across the handle). Sometimes, even when painting from life with something I have complete control over, I still need to edit what I see. I prefer not to have to do that, but sometimes it's unavoidable.

This image was taken at the end of my rough block in. The block in is painted with very thin paint just to get the placement of the large shapes. I do this with a combination of a large brush to get the big masses and a smaller brush to get better drawing details. I also use a paper towel dipped in turpentine to wipe out lighter areas.

Once the rough block in is dry, I being to refine the painting. I now start using thicker color. I started with that little yellow lure hanging over the side. I choose this spot to start, since it would help define the values of the tackle box since on one side of the lure is the lightest color of it and on the other side is one of the darker values for the tackle box. By getting these two values so early in the process, defining the rest of them is pretty straightforward. I just compare the value to the two existing values to determine if it's lighter or darker.

Just about done now. Since I had a lot of color mixed already for the tackle box, getting to this point was pretty quick.  In fact, it seems like a lot of the colors I need are already mixed on my palette already. The silver spoon, for example, hanging in the front of the tackle box is reflecting colors that I've already mixed to paint other objects in the scene. The same is true for the other one that I haven't painted yet in the image. Even most of the yellow color of the lure in the foreground turned out to be a combination of the yellows that I've already mixed of some of the other lures.

The finished painting.

Changing Lures

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 41 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Golden Hour - by George De Chiara

Golden Hour

 I actually started off the day working on a still life painting while our daughter napped. Well, I should say while out daughter was supposed to nap. Less than an hour into nap time, she was up and running around again. Finally, my wife and I decided that we would go and run some errands since she wasn't sleeping. On the way to our first stop she fell asleep in the car. How predictable is that?! Since I wanted to make sure she got at least a little sleep today, I dropped my wife off at the store and took a drive with a sleeping baby girl. The best way I know to discover new places to paint is go out and explore, so that's exactly what I did while she slept in the back of the car. I found a few locations that I'd like to explore further when I can get our of the car and look around. One of them was this little spot. 

 It's difficult to paint in my studio while our daughter it awake. It's located just down the hall from her room, and she likes to follow me in there. Faced with the choice of waiting till she goes to bed to paint or pack up my gear and head out to one of the new locations I found today, I choose the latter since my wife said she'd could handle the little girl for rest of the evening. My wife is just days away from giving birth to our second daughter, so it's hard for her to wrangle the little girl on her own all the time. When she made the offer, I jumped on it. Tomorrow, I'll finish up my still life while our daughter naps...keep your fingers crossed that she will.

Please note, this image has some glare to it. I'll try to get a better image and update this.

The finished painting.

Golden Hour

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 40 of the 50 Day painting challenge - How'd Ya Get Up There - by George De Chiara

How'd Ya Get Up There

 I can't believe I'm down to the last 10 paintings for my 50 paintings in 50 days challenge. It makes me want to do a NASA style countdown for the last paintings. 10...9...8...Well, you get the idea.

 For today's painting, I again turned to some of the fruit I bought yesterday at our local farmer's market. It took some time to come up with an arrangement I was happy with. I initially started off with some tomatoes and onions, and nope, didn't like that. Next, I tried a few lemons and limes... but, no I just painted limes yesterday. Hmm... how about these peaches? They have lots of great color to them, I especially like the one with the yellow stripe across the top. And maybe a plum to go with them. Ah yes, after an hour or so I finally had something to paint. Now I just needed to paint it! Below is how the painting came to life today.

Like most of my step-by-step blogs, here's an image of what I'm looking at while I paint. You might also notice that I took a few liberties with the blue foreground. Rather than painting it like it looked, I used one blue color for all of it. Once I got into the painting, I realized I didn't really like the darker blue color so I make it all the same.

This image was taken at the end of my rough block-in. Lately, I've been doing this with two brushes. The first pass is done with a large brush to get rough mass of the objects. Then, I go back over everything with a smaller, finer brush to refine the drawing a bit more. Since these paintings are relatively small (6x6 inches), even a small brush can cover a lot of canvas quickly, especially when the paint is thinned with turpentine. It's almost like painting with watercolors during this stage.

Once the rough block-in dries for a few minutes, I can begin to paint with thicker paint. This is also the first time I'll add white to my color mixtures. I started with the peaches mostly for one reason - I wanted to make sure I had a good handle on them before getting too far into the painting, just in case I need to scrape them off and try them again. I was a little worried about getting that fuzzy peach color on the first try.

Once I had the peaches under control, I could start to expand out to the other pieces of fruit. The plum is one of my favorite pieces of fruit to paint. If you really look at them they have very rich colors and the skin has a bit of shine to it, which picks up the colors around it. For this one, I used mixtures of Alizarin Crimson with Viridian and Ultramarine Blue.

The finished painting.

How'd Ya Get Up There

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 39 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Citrus Party - by George De Chiara

Citrus Party

 Today I found a new source for my models. It's a little farmer's market just around the corner from our house. They opened a few weeks ago, and I finally had a chance today to go and see it for myself. It's a tiny store, run by a very kind older gentlemen who showed my around the place and talked at great length about his produce. After looking around for a little while, I bought a few oranges, tomatoes, lemons, limes, plums, peaches, and a cantaloupe and even a mango. When I got home I was very excited to set a still life with my new models and go right to work. This arrangement came together pretty quickly, as it just needed a few adjustments and away I went.

 Here's how today's painting came to life:

Here's a photograph of about what I'm looking at while I was painting today.

This picture was taken at the end of my rough block-in. This process usually only takes a few minutes to get to. I'm working with paint thinned down with turpentine. My goal here is to get a good feeling of where all the objects are going to be and to make sure I have room for it all. I use a paper towel to wipe out lighter areas and to blend some of the paint together. For this one, I took a smaller dry brush and painted in some of the shadow areas, like in the limes and orange in the foreground.

Now that the rough block in is done, I can begin to refine the painting and start to add in color with thicker paint. For me, thicker paint doesn't necessarily mean thick paint; it's just paint that isn't thinned down with turpentine anymore. I started with the orange, since that's my center of interest. This is also the area that's going to have the strongest color, so by starting here I can better judge the rest of the painting's colors and values.

Once I was happy with the area that the orange is in, I must decide where to go next. I choose to paint the area above the orange because of the plate in the background. It's very close in color and value to the vase, and I wanted to make sure I could distinguish between the two. I find it easier to do this by starting with one of the objects and then stepping the values and or temperature up or down for the other object. The other reason for my choice was simply that I'd have about a third of the painting more or less done by completing this section.

Once the plate was done, it just made sense to work on the vase next. I still have the colors for the plate on my palette in case I need to do any touch ups on it. Plus this leaves the bottom of the canvas clean and dry, so if I need a place to rest my hand while painting I don't have to worry about putting it in wet paint. It was at this stage that I started to work on the bottom left corner of the painting. Once it was done, I went back over any areas that needed adjusting and added in any remaining details, like the blue  design on the vase.

The finished painting.

Citrus Party

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 38 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Texas Sunflowers - by George De Chiara

Texas Sunflowers

  We've been in a severe drought here in Texas this year. It's been hot and dry for weeks now. Even though I can't recall the last time we had a good rain (it's had to have been at least 6 weeks ago), somehow, just down the road from us, there's a field of wild sunflowers growing and blooming like it's Spring. I have no idea how these flowers are surviving this heat, but there they are, going strong for several acres. Yesterday, I went down and cut a few of the flowers to paint. As soon as I got them home, I gave them a good drink of water and they perked right up. I just knew they would make good models to paint so I set up a still life with them and got to painting.

 Then a funny thing happened. About an hour into my painting, I realized I was heading for a bad place so I wiped my canvas clean and started again. Another two or three hours of painting passes, and the only thing I had to show for it was another wiped down canvas. Hmm... somethings wrong, but what? So I thought, I'll change the arrangement of my still life. Okay, good, now back to painting. Another hour or two, and, again, the only thing I've accomplished is wiping down my canvas. Finally, I just took a break. I did everything I could think of to get rid of the heebie jeebies that were killing my painting attempts. I let a few hours go by to try to forget about the day's missteps and then went back to painting. This time I could feel things were different.

 I was painting a little slower and paying closer attention to what I was doing. Slowly, a painting I was happy with started to develop on my canvas. Eureka! I remembered how to paint again! Late into the night I worked with my new-found joy until I had finished this painting. It was too late to post it last night, so I'm making up for that today. I don't have any step-by-step pictures for this one. To be honest, I wasn't ever sure I'd get a painting and I was getting tired of taking pictures of paintings that kept getting scraped off.

Texas Sunflowers

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 37 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Jump Up - by George De Chiara

Jump Up

 For today's painting, I wanted to work on reflections, so I put a piece of glass on the bottom of my still life box. The reflections help give the foreground more interest without the need for additional objects. Plus, there just fun to paint! Now I just needed to find something to paint, so I went to my favorite source, the veggie drawer in the kitchen fridge. I quickly found these two apples and stacked them on top of each other to carry. As soon as I did, I knew that's how they needed to be painted, so I brought them to the studio and set up my still life. Still, I thought it needed something else, so back to the kitchen I went to grab a cherry. I liked the difference in sizes between the cherry and apples and how the cherry has a very long stem, while the apple has a very short one. I forgot to take a picture of the still life before I broke it down, so you'll just have to take my word that I was looking at two apples stacked on top of each other with a cherry next to them. Below is how the painting came to life:

This is the end of my rough block in, which I did this in several passes. On the first pass, I blocked in where the apples would go with very rough loose color. Then, I took a paper towel and wiped the wet paint, which is how I got all of those color streaks in the background and foreground. This pretty much removed the initial block in, so I again roughed in the shapes of the apples and cherry.

I waited a few minutes for my rough block in to dry. It dries quickly since there's very little paint on the canvas because it's mostly turpentine with little color added. I started with the green apple, since it's the medium shape. Getting this correct will help me judge the size of the other objects more easily. I'm also trying to let some of the initial wash come through in the background and foreground. I think I've mentioned before that I like the feeling this gives a painting, if I'm able to do it.

Once I'm happy with the size and shape of the first apple, putting in the second one goes pretty quickly. I make sure to use the colors from the green apple in the red one wherever I can. I also make sure to use the colors from both apples in the background and vice versa. This helps unify the painting by not having any one color in just one spot. I will also use these same colors, with a lot of white added to them, for the foreground when it comes time to paint it.

The finished painting.

Jump Up

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 32 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Almost Ripe - by George De Chiara

Almost Ripe

I've waited a day or two for these bananas to ripen a little before painting them. If you live in a part of the country that's getting the same kind of heat we are here in Texas, then you know if doesn't take long for them to go from green to ripe to needing to make banana bread. I could almost see them ripening before my eyes. I even changed the lights I use in my still life box to ones that don't get as warm so they wouldn't brown as I painted.

 I find placing bananas in a still life very challenging. First off, they are very long, so in a small painting like this they can cut the picture in half, if I'm not careful. My eye always wants to follow the curve of the banana so I also need to be careful to not have that be too distracting. After playing around with a few different possibilities, I finally came up with this set up, which is in the still life box, placed almost on the floor. I like it because I think it solves both of the issues I usually run into. By viewing my set up from the top down, I took out most of the curve issue with them. I also used the single banana to lead the eye from the edge of the canvas back towards the center of interest. What do you think, does that work?

By the way, if you need a good banana bread recipe, let me know, my wife makes a great one! 

Here's how the painting came to life today:

My very loose block in. Originally, I was hoping to let a lot of this wash come through in the final painting, but you'll notice I got a little thick with the paint as I went along. I was able to achieve some of this in the background towards the upper right corner and a little in the blue area to the left of the bananas. Next time, I'll have to be more careful to have more of it come through to the end painting.

Well, where else could I have started if not for the bananas? With them being so large in the picture and the center of interest, if they come out well, none of the other painting really matters. At this stage, I'm still blocking them in and working out the colors and drawing.

I'm just about done at this point. Once the bananas were finished, the rest of the painting went pretty quickly, which is why there aren't any images of it progressing. Notice how I was able to leave a little bit of that background wash showing through it the background. I think it helps give those areas a sense of airiness. It's a challenge to be able to leave little areas like that for me. I've got to remember to paint with a slightly drier brush so I don't cover everything up.

The finished painting.

Almost Ripe

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 31 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Papa's Pin Cushion - by George De Chiara

Papa's Pin Cushion

When setting up yesterday's still life, Lost Buttons, I pulled out this pin cushion, but it just didn't fit in with the set up I had so I put it aside for today. My wife's grandfather (Papa) built this in his work shop a few years ago. He's quite the wood worker and loves to share the things he builds with everyone in the family, and, of course, we love to get them. Almost every room in our house has something he has built, like wooden puzzles and night lights for our little girl's room, wooden bowls in the dinning room, candle holders, and even our Christmas tree is decked out in custom hand-made ornaments every year thanks to him. Now, let's get on with the painting!

 Here's an image of my still life set up so you can see what I'm painting. I didn't think about it at the time, but a lot of the things I choose to put in this still life are very similar in color and value. Normally I do a better job of mixing it up, but somehow that thought escaped me today. While this isn't really an issue, it did prove to be very challenging to paint.

 This is my block in for today's painting. It's a little different then my normal approach in that it's almost more of a value sketch and drawing outline. I was a little concerned with everything fitting on such a small canvas, and I had hoped the line drawing would help me with this issue. 

Once the placement for everything is worked out, I begin laying in some color. In this image, you can see I've started to experiment with how I'm going to paint the background. I don't really have any interest in painting the pattern that's there because it's just way too busy and I'd spend the day just painting it. Instead, I want to use what's there to make a little more abstract, soft background.

If you look closely, you might notice that the little bit of the background I'd previously painted is gone now. I felt the colors had become a little too gray, so I scraped it off and re-painted it. This is about the point that I'm starting to realize how close in color and value my still life is. Getting those wooden spools on top of the wooden pin cushion to work out has really been a struggle.

Here you can see that I've scraped off some of the paint where the background spools are going to be. I actually did this for the blue threaded spool and buttons, as well. It's just easier than trying to paint over what's already there.

The finished painting.

Papa's Pin Cushion

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 30 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Lost Buttons - by George De Chiara

Lost Buttons

 I have to admit, I know very little about sewing. I know you have to put the thread through the needle, but that's about it. The few times I've had to sew on missing buttons, I almost always had to have my wife fix them for me. She and my mother-in-law are the sewers in the family. Since my wife and I share our studio space, I see a lot of sewing equipment all the time. I just love these little wooden spools of thread she has. I like to think of them as stringy tubes of paint with irresistible color. Every now and again, I like to take out some of them and use them in my still life paintings. They are a treat to paint since I hardly ever run into these colors in anything else. Below is how today's painting came to life. 

Here's an image of what I'm looking at while painting. One of the things I'm really noticing the more I take these photographs is just how off the colors are in the image compared to what I'm seeing in real life, especially in with the reds. I always knew this was the case with photography, but I never really studied it before. I guess that's another one of those unexpected things I've learned during this painting challenge.

This image was taken right after I completed my rough block-in. For me, the purpose of this stage is get the placement of all my objects nailed down. I'm (obviously) not concerned with drawing or color yet. I just want to know everything fits on the canvas and that there aren't any major compositional problems. Most of the painting at this point is done with just a bit of paint thinned with turpentine and a paper towel to wipe out lighter areas.

I let the block-in dry for a few minutes and then I began painting with thicker paint. Since the block in is dry, I don't have to worry about that color being picked up in this stage. I started with a very traditional oil painting approach here by painting back to front. This means that I started with the very back most objects and work my way to the foreground. The reason I choose this approach is because it's almost always easier to paint a color on top of another color then it is to paint around another color. For example, I wanted to be pretty free with how I painted the dark blue cloth in the background and not worry about messing up the pin cushion. If I had painted the pin cushion first I would have had to make all of my brush stokes go around it rather than just letting them go through it. When I was ready to paint the pin cushion I used my palette knife to scrape off some of the blue paint that was in the area of the cushion first. I did the same thing when it was time to paint the spools of thread in front of the pin cushion.

Here I'm continuing the painting just like I started, by painting the objects in the back first and then the objects in front of them. You may notice that I didn't do this with the spool of blue thread behind the pin cushion.  Of course this way of doing things is not a perfect science; rather, it's just a general approach to painting. Sometimes, I'll miss something and have to paint it in afterwards.

The finished painting.

Lost Buttons

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 29 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Sunset At Pappy Elkins Park - by George De Chiara

Sunset At Pappy Elkins Park

I really enjoy getting out and painting sunsets from life. For me, they are one of the most challenging scenes to paint because of the speed in which they change. I've got to paint quickly since there is less than an hour to get all the information I need. For this painting, this hour timeframe worked out well since that was about all the time I could spend looking at sun before my eyes hurt. When the skies are only partly cloudy, the sun is very intense and hard on the eyes. This is a serious issue so when I set up to paint, I chose a spot a little behind a tree that I would use to block the intensity of the sun while painting. I did the initial study on Saturday and then spent a few hours today adjusting it based on the color notes and information I gathered while painting this from life. Because of the limited painting time I wasn't able to do step-by-step photograph, but I can you show you the before and after images.

Here's a photograph of my painting as it was when I finished painting outdoors. It may look pretty rough at this point, but I should have all the information I need to complete this back in the studio.

The finished painting. I think the feel is still pretty close to what I did outdoors; it's just more refined at this point. I started by taking my palette knife and gently knocking down any thick paint I had so I could paint over it a little easier. The paint was a little tacky, but not too bad. If I had waited another day, I would have needed to spray some re-touch varnish on it first, but generally I don't like doing this.

Sunset At Pappy Elkins Park

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 28 of the 50 Day painting challenge - What's That? - by George De Chiara

What's That?

 On one of our trips to the Texas Gulf Coast, my wife and I stopped by a small dock that offers chartered fishing trips just to nose around.  We were looking for some pelicans to take pictures of and this spot had a few. While I was busy photographing them, one of the charter boats came in and was followed very intently by a pod of pelicans and flocks of seagulls. At first I wasn't sure why these birds followed the fishing boat back into harbor, but then they started cleaning the day's catch and it all made sense. The birds knew that fishermen would throw the fish inners into the water for them where they would swoop into the water after the easy meal. It was a sight to be seen, and I quickly snapped off picture after picture. At one point, I glanced up at the top of the little cleaning shack and noticed the entire roof line was covered in gulls. I was struck by the way they all looked lined up wing to wing, and how they seemed to lean over the edge to watch the fishermen as they worked.

This is my block in today, which is little different then my usual block in. For today's painting, I started by giving the canvas a wash of Transparent Oxide Red with a little Terra Rosa last night. Then this morning I started by taking a paper towel dipped in a little turpentine and wiped out the lighter areas you see in this image.

Since the background color is dry from the night before, I can start to paint over it with thicker paint. Once I have the first seagull worked out a bit, I can start to make better decisions with the other two. You can see in this image how I've made a few indications where the other two will be. I've also drawn in a few important lines in the structure they are standing on. I wanted to make sure I had some of that detail worked out too before getting too far along on the painting.

I continued to work out from the first seagull towards the edge of the canvas, trying to tighten up the placement of my shapes, colors and edges.  I wanted to keep the edges of the gulls loose to mimic the wind going through their feathers. I'm hoping this will help give the painting some movement in the end.

At the time this image was taken, I was just about done the the seagulls. I'll make a some small adjustments to their beaks, but I have mostly completed them and need to concentrate on getting the rest of the painting finished up. The background needs a lot of work at this stage, so that's where I spent my time working.

The finished painting.

What's That?

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 27 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Morning Shadows - by George De Chiara

Morning Shadows

This morning, I went to the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens to paint with a group of other painters. This was the first time I've painted there, so I spent part of my morning walking around looking at different locations to paint. There are a lot to choose from, but I finally settled on this view of the trellis that ran though part of the rose garden. I really liked the contrast in horizontal and vertical shapes and the light against the shadow. Since we where there early in the morning, I was able to paint without much interference from people walking through. As the day went on though, more and more people started walking through here and taking pictures. It seems to have been a pretty popular spot. The trellis is a bit of a hike from the parking lot, so I had to make a choice about what to carry with me. Between my easel, paints and a backpack full of all the other supplies needed, I didn't have room for my camera, so it had to stay in the car. Unfortunately, this means I wasn't able to take any step-by-step photographs for this painting. Hopefully, I'll be able to do that with tomorrow's painting, since so many people seem to be enjoying them.

The finished painting.

Morning Shadows

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 26 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Book Worm - by George De Chiara

Book Worm

I didn't realize it at the time, but we have a Christmas ornament that looks almost just like this still life arrangement. My wife is a teacher, and somewhere along the line someone gave it to her. Every year when we decorate the tree, I always seem to notice this one more than any other ornaments. I'm not sure what me think of it today when I was setting this up. I know it wasn't intentional and I didn't even realize it until I added the apple to the still life. Then it hit me, it's the ornament! I was just trying to make an interesting arrangement with these books, and it's funny how the subconscious works sometimes. In an attempt to show you as accurately as possible my painting process, I'm including two images from about the first hour of painting. You'll notice that they are different then the final painting. After I got the apple mostly finished up and started blocking in the books, I realized I had the scale of the whole scene way, way off for the view I was trying to capture. It was then that I came to the realization that I had two choices. I could either go with what I had (and not paint what I intended) or start over. I choose to start over.

Here's how today's painting came to life:

Here's a picture of what I'm looking at while painting today. This is about the composition I'm looking to reproduce. The angle of this photo is a little higher than where I'm painting from, but it's close enough. 

This is my original rough block in. If I was really paying attention when I did this, I would have realized that the drawing is off. If you look at what I roughed in for the top green book its way too short on the right side and way too long on the left. Most of everything below this book is based on the size of it, so everything is wrong. I also made the apple too large, but I thought I'd fix this while working on the painting. Big mistake! If I had corrected it here I might have noticed how off the rest of the painting was before I started it. A lesson for next time!

This is how far I got before I started over. I really struggled with the apple while painting this, perhaps because it's the wrong size. I'm not really sure, but I wiped off what I had twice and re-painted the apple. I finally got it to a point where I thought I might be able to work it out and wanted to get some of the other parts of the painting blocked in. That's when I realized I had completely messed up the initial block in. When I corrected the drawing, I wasn't at all happy with my composition any longer. The books where going to create stripes of colors that ran from side to side. Faced with this boring composition, I spent some time studying the painting to see where things went wrong. Once I had a pretty good idea of where I went wrong, I put a new canvas on my easel and started over.

Okay, now I'm at about the same point as I was in the earlier photo. Things are going much better for me so far. I got to this point faster than my earlier attempt. I'm much happier with my composition, and I think my color choices are better. Now, let's see if I can though the rest of the painting without any major issues...

Here I'm continuing my block in. I'm being careful to not get into too much detail at this stage. I just really want to make sure I get everything placed correctly. Then, I'll go back over everything to add in details and adjust the values and edges of my drawing.

This image was taken at what I consider the end of my block-in stage. Everything is defined at this point. The drawing is just about there, and the color for each object is well established, although it still needs some work. From this point to the final painting, I go over ever inch of the painting adjusting the colors, edges and adding in the details I want to include. I don't bother painting all the titles exactly as they appear  in real life. It's not what I'm interested in. I'd rather paint the impression of the lettering and create an interesting design than reproduce it exactly as it appeared.

The finished painting.

Book Worm

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 25 of the 50 Day painting challenge - White Pelican - by George De Chiara

White Pelican

Day 25, I can't believe I'm half way through this painting challenge! It's been a great time so far and I've really enjoyed hearing from so many of you. Now it's time to buckle down and get through the next 25 days.

 The inspiration for today's painting came from one of the many trips my wife and I have taken over the years. We usually try to go to a bird sanctuary or wildlife refuge for a day or two on each trip. We spotted this white pelican while we where in Corpus Christi last year at a great bird refuge. It was hard to choose between this white pelican and the roseate spoon bills, herons, seagulls and ducks of all kinds. I must have taken a hundred photographs while we were there. I settled on this shot because of the way the light was striking the pelican and just loved the way it fell across his beak and neck. For this painting, I videotaped myself painting. This is the first time I've tried this, so bear with me. I'm still experimenting with where to put the camera and how fast to speed the video up. Below are the links to each video. I stopped the video when ever I needed a break or wanted to spend some time just studying the painting.

Click on the image or here to see the video of how I started today's painting. It's a short video of just the block in. I start with a wash of Ultramarine Blue with a little Viridian and Transparent Oxide Red mixed in. The paint is thinned with turpentine. To get the rough placement of the pelican, I use a paper towel dipped in turpentine to wipe out the paint.

Click on the image or here to see this video. This next video is a little longer. Here, I'm working on getting the drawing worked out and some basic color laid in. If you look closely around the 30 second mark, you'll notice that I scrape off the head and neck I started with. It just wasn't going the way I wanted it, and I had built up enough paint to where I started to fight it. Sometimes it's just easier to start again than to fight.

Click on the image or here to see this video. In this video, I just about finish up the painting. You may notice that the pace of the painting starts to change in this movie. As I get closer to finishing the painting, I need to spend more time looking at and deciding what needs to be adjusted. To do this, I have to stand back and compare each section of the painting to each other. 

Click on the image or here to see this video. The painting is just about done in this video. You'll notice I actually sign it, which usually is the last thing I do to a painting, but in this case after looking at the painting for a few minutes I decided it needed a little more work.

Click on the image or here to see the final video. This is just a few last tweaks to add a little more detail to the feathers.

The finished painting.

White Pelican

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 24 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Sunset on Lake Arlington - by George De Chiara

Sunset on Lake Arlington

I love painting outdoors when I can. While I can handle heat most of the time, I do have my limits. Here in Texas it's been 100+ degrees everyday now for more day's than I care to count. The last time I went out in that kind of heat, I was literally wiping the sweat from my eyes every other brush stroke. For a good sunset though, I'll put up with these conditions. Unfortunately, we don't always get very exciting sunsets. For most of the summer, the clouds burn off before the sun sets, leaving us with a blinding, mostly colorless sunset. So when the mood hits to paint one, I have to spend days watching the clouds for one that I think will be good. Many times it looks promising right before dinner, so I quickly eat, pack up my painting supplies, kiss my wife and little girl goodnight, and dash off to try to catch the last light of the day. Sometimes I get out the door and take one look at the sky and know the clouds have burned off; other times it looks more promising, so I head out. I have three or four spots that I like to go to for these types of paintings. All of them involve water since I like to catch the reflection while I'm at it. When I headed out for this painting, I thought we where going to have some good clouds with lots of color, but as soon as I got to my spot on Lake Arlington and took a look, I was staring into a blinding sun with almost no clouds.  There was nothing to catch any color or block the sun. I figured I had two choices - I could go home without a painting or stay where I was and make the best of it. I choose the latter, and while it was hard on the eyes trying to look out on the lake long enough to paint it, I'm happy I stuck with it. In order to paint this, I had to glance at the horizon for just a second or two and then look away. Otherwise I would see sun spots when I tried to mix my colors and paint. With the setting sun, I don't have a lot of time to work so I didn't have time to take any step-by-step pictures. Hopefully, tomorrow I'll be able to start posting my painting demo's again.

The finished painting.

Sunset on Lake Arlington

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 23 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Night Light - by George De Chiara

Night Light

 When I first decided on doing this challenge, I made a rough list of ideas for paintings.  Among the general ideas I jotted down was to do a few nocturnal paintings. Even though I paint outdoors, I've never tried a nocturnal painting before. I wasn't too sure what to expect painting in just the light of a nearby porch light, but I was anxious to give it a try. For this painting, I played it a little safe and set up in front of my house.  The street light a few houses away made for an interesting subject for the evening. After about five minutes of painting, I was glad I had set up so close to home. I had to run in and get something to keep the mosquitoes away. Note to self: Don't forget the Off next time! The only draw back to painting at night is it made it almost impossible to take progress pictures as I painted. It was just too dark to get anything worth while, so today's blog doesn't have any step-by-step pictures. Sorry about that. Hopefully tomorrow's painting will. It all depends on where my muse takes me...

By the way, my wife doesn't think that the richness and velvety look of the painting has translated very well into the photo, which is a good reminder that the painting almost always look better in real life.

The finished painting.

Night Light

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 22 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Why Can't We Be Friends? - by George De Chiara

Why Can't We Be Friends?

Every now and then, I come up with the title of a painting before I even start painting it. It's pretty rare, I think in the last 3 years it's happened maybe 5 times. Usually I settle on a title either while I'm painting it, usually towards the end of the painting or after I'm done painting, but today was one of those rare days where I had a title before I started. I woke up this morning with this song line running through my head, Why can't we be friends? Over and over again, I just couldn't shake it. Then it hit me, that's what I'm going to call today's painting. I was planning on painting these bell peppers, but I didn't know what I was going to do with them until that song line got stuck in my head. Then the idea came to me pretty quickly. That little banana pepper is trying to fit in with the larger bell peppers and he's asking them, "Why can't we be friends?" Silly I know, but that's how today's painting idea came to me. Now, I'll show you how the painting came to be.

First off, here's a photograph of approximately what I'm looking at. There are some things that just don't come through in this image. The reds in the foreground bell pepper were much deeper in real life and not nearly as dark.  This is one of the reasons I always try to paint from life when I can. Sometimes it's not possible, but when it is, it's well worth the effort.

This image represents the end of my rough block in. From this point on, I'll paint with thicker paint and take more time to create my color mixtures, but to get to this point, I use very thin paint with rough color mixtures. If areas get too dark, I can use a paper towel to wipe off the paint. That's how the light shapes were drawn on the background pepper. The paper towel is also great for blending and spreading the thin paint, which is how I blocked in most of the foreground.

I let the block in dry for just a few minutes so I don't pick up any of the thinned, rough color. Once it's dry, I can begin blocking in the painting with better drawing and color. I'm no longer thinning the paint with turpentine at this point. I'm also introducing white into my color mixtures. You may notice I've painted a bit of the background pattern already. Normally I wouldn't bother painting this kind of detail so early in the painting, but I want to have some time to think about whether I like this pattern or if I just want to use some solid colors.

The red bell pepper has really been a challenge to paint. There's an intensity to the colors that I've struggled with trying to match. The other test with these peppers is accurately represent the reflective shine they have. If I make the reflections too light, I lose the modeling on the shape. I'm also careful with the details I put into the reflections and shadow area. I only put in what I see when I quint my eyes and look. This image does have a bit of glare in the shadow area of the red pepper that I didn't notice when I took this image.

At this stage, the objects in the paintin are almost complete. There are a few details to add in still, like some of the writing on the book that the orange pepper is sitting on, and I need to either complete the pattern in the background or change it. In this case, I like the way that pattern looks, so I'll complete the pattern across the background and add in a few other details as well.

The finished painting.

Why Can't We Be Friends?

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 21 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Texas Wild Flowers - by George De Chiara

Texas Wild Flowers

 Today I once again turned to some of my photo reference for inspiration.  Last year, I took some photos of the south Texas wild flowers blooming and decided to do something with them today. Spring of 2010 was an explosion of color everywhere I looked. My in-law's house is surrounded by fields that all bloomed. One had these yellow sun flowers as far as the eye could see, and another had these little white and blue and purple flowers everywhere. I just couldn't decide which one to paint, so I did the next best thing. I took  the two images I couldn't decide on into Photoshop and combined them. 

Here's how today's painting came about:

This is my very rough block in, but its enough to get started with. The placement of the blooms is more or less worked out. I know it's hard to see, but as the image progresses, it should be easier to notice that those yellow spots will become flowers. Even though the drawing is very loose at this point, it is still carefully done. I moved around the main yellow flowers a few times to get them placed where I wanted. Since the paint is so thin at this stage it's pretty simple to move things around.

Now I can start to work in thicker paint and more accurate drawing. I've started with this spot because it's close to my center of interest and it will help me establish my lightest lights and darkest darks right off the bat.

Now, I'm just continuing out from where I started. I try to be as careful as I can with the shapes I paint. To get to this stage took a while and I'm not sure why, but I didn't stop to take any pictures from this point on. I remember I kept thinking to myself, I'll stop just as soon as I solve this problem or that problem, but just when I starting thinking about taking a picture another problem would pop up and I'd forget about taking a photograph. Really that's what painting is, it's problem solving. I can tell you that when I thought I had finished the painting, there was something about it that I wasn't happy with. While I stood back looking at it trying to figure out what I was missing, my wife came into the studio and within a minute or two suggested making the white flowers a little lighter and putting a bit of a deeper blue in some of the flowers. Isn't it great to have a fresh pair of eyes occasionally?

The finished painting.

Texas Wild Flowers

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 20 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Hey There Little Red Rooster - by George De Chiara

Hey There Little Red Rooster

The other day on Facebook, some of my fans made suggestions of some things to paint during this challenge. I loved the suggestions and feedback from them. While I have a pretty good list of subjects already, I really like a lot of the suggestions and plan to use what I can.  One of my fans mentioned they would love to see a painting of a Rhode Island Red Rooster. It just so happens that I have some pretty good photo reference from our grandmother's chicken coop of her rooster. I didn't know it at the time, but her's is a Rhode Island Red. Since I was thinking about doing this for the challenge anyway, things couldn't have worked out better. If you'd like to join my Facebook fan page you can do so by clicking here. FYI: I haven't really announced this yet, but when I reach 200 Facebook fans I'm planning on doing a drawing for a free 6x6 inch painting. 

Here's how today's painting came to life:

Here's the photo I'm working from. This rooster is the friendlier of the two she has and seems to almost pose for pictures, like this one. The other rooster, who's a different breed, seems happier running around the coop chasing all the hens.

This is my block in today. I used a bit more paint then I normally do in this stage because I really wanted to get some of the colors to blend on the canvas.  I find this makes painting the feathers a little easier since the mixing can often look like feathers overlapping. I just need to look for them and make sure they make sense with my photo reference. Even though I'm using more paint than normal, it's still very thin so I can wipe it off if needed and I can let this dry for just a few minutes and work back into it without any fear of it lifting.

 You know it's kind of weird, but I finally realized today that I actually prefer to paint wet into wet to start (my block in) and the wet into dry for my rough color pass and finally wet into wet to finish. Until I started writing these step-by-step blogs, I would have said I paint wet into wet all the time.  Like I said, just a weird little thought that popped into my head today. Now let's get on with the demo...

I started with the head today. I wanted to make sure I got it placed correctly on the canvas right off the bat since rest of my drawing will be based off of this. The other reason I started with the head is I usually find them the most challenging thing to paint so I like to try to get that under control early in the painting. This way if I need to scrape off parts of it or all of it, I'm not going to mess up the other areas around it too much since I haven't done much with them yet. In this painting, that turned out to be a good thing since I scraped the beak and top of his head off about half way through painting the head. Once I thought I had the head under control, I started working out from there.

At this point, I'm working across the upper half-ish portion of the canvas. I'm not going to paint everything that's in the background, since that would make the painting a little too busy and take away from the rooster. I will use some of the color cues from the photograph, but I'm going to try to keep it pretty simple.

I'm pretty happy with the background now, and I've just about finished up the rooster at this stage. I need to add in his legs and feet still and paint the foreground. Most of this went pretty quickly so I didn't take any other progress images. Once I have everything painted to some point of completion, I went back over the whole painting and made my final adjustments and tweaks.

The final image.

Hey There Little Red Rooster

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 19 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Cisco Kid - by George De Chiara

Cisco Kid

It seems like every time I pull out my fishing lures, I have to do two or three paintings of them before I'm satisfied. For those of you not keeping score, I did one yesterday with 3 of my lures in it and now one today. For today's painting, I wanted to explore how I could make an interesting painting with very few objects. In this case just two, the lure and a small branch. I wanted to lure to be as large as possible and still have an interesting composition. To achieve that, I was going to need a good cast shadow, so I placed my light is such a way that it would produce a strong shadow. I had to play around with my arrangement of the lure and light for a bit to get something I was happy with. I think the key was getting the lure to rest on the branch. The helped give the painting some depth and movement. Here's how my painting came to life today.

Here is a picture of my set up. Sorry for the strong depth of field in this image. I didn't realize that's the way my camera was shooting this image until I starting writing this blog. Unfortunately, I have already broken down my set up in preparation for tomorrow's painting. This should still give you a pretty good idea of what I was looking at while painting today.

Ah, the all important block in. In reality, this is just a few brush strokes of color, but it took just as long to get these in the correct spot and the correct size as any of my earlier paintings. Like most of my earlier step-by-step blogs, this is done with very thin paint and a paper towel to wipe areas that need to be lighter or corrected.

After my block in has dried for a few minutes, I can start to work on top of it with thicker paint. In this case, the thicker paint is mixtures of colors close to what I used in my block in, except I don't use any turpentine to thin these mixtures and I use white paint to lighten them. In my block in, I almost never use white. I just thin the colors down or wipe some of it off to get the approximate value I want. Normally, I wouldn't put in details like the eye this early in a painting, but since this is the only lure in the painting I want to make sure things are in the correct place before I get too far. Since the eye is so large because of the intimate scale I'm working at, I felt it important to get it in there sooner rather than later.

Here I'm working on getting rest of the objects in the still life worked out. You can see I've got the back part of the lure painted in and the cast shadow for the hook on the back. I find it easier to paint these fine detail things in the reverse order I normally paint objects. Normally, I'll start with the object and then add in its cast shadow. For very small, fine objects, like a hook, I find it easy to paint the shadow first and then paint the hook on top of it later. Between this picture and the final image, I spent a lot of time working on the branch. You will notice I changed its length and shape quite a bit. I felt with the end of it going off the front leads the eye off the canvas too much. Plus, it cut the corner off a bit, since both ends of it were edging off. I know this may seem like a little thing, but with a composition like this, it's all the little things that make or break the painting.

The finished painting.

Cisco Kid

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 18 of the 50 Day painting challenge - The One That Got Away - by George De Chiara

The One That Got Away

Recently my in-laws came by for a visit. They have an old hickory tree that's falling down and have cut it up to use for barbecue wood. I've wanted to try some of this out next time we cook, so we asked them to bring us some. They brought a pretty good sized batch of wood and I was anxious to look through it and see what we got. While checking it out, I ran across one piece that really caught my eye. I knew I wanted to use it in a still life, but what would I use with it? Well, my fishing lures of course! When I'm setting up a still life scene like this I always think about what it must look like at the bottom of the lake. How many fisherman have lost their hooks, bait and lures to mysterious objects under the water's surface? I know I've lost my share of tackle, never to know what grabbed on to it.

This is what I'm painting today. You might notice that this set up isn't exactly like what I painted. When I was just about done with the painting my wife came into the studio and accidentally bumped my still life box, causing the lure in the front to fall down along with the branch it's on. While trying to set it back up, I knocked the tin down. Luckily, I was just about done painting when all of this happened. I had everything more or less painted, so I got the set up back as close as I could and continued to paint.

Here's my rough block in. The paint is pretty thin at this stage, and, with a paper towel, I can wipe out where some of the lures are going to go. If the paint doesn't lift off well or if it doesn't get light enough, I can dip the paper towel into a little turpentine and then wipe out the shapes I want. Even if the wash dries, a moist paper towel will wipe it off. This is very useful,  since these thin washes will dry in just a few minutes.

Once I'm happy with my block in, I can start to build up my paint. A good block in is like a map I can follow while painting. I don't have to worry about where things will go or if there's enough room for everything. Those questions have already been answered for me. Now I can concentrate on other things, like the drawing, colors and edges in my painting. Here I started with the yellow and green lure. To clean up the drawing of the lure, I need to paint the tin and one of the rocks. Before I know it, I have almost half the painting roughed in with more exact color and drawing.

At this point in my painting, I'm just trying to get the rest of the it roughed in with better color and more accurate drawing. I'm still using a pretty large brush and trying to avoid any details. I'll paint around the lure (lazy ike for you fishermen out there) on the log. It's easier than trying to cover the log color with yellow paint. The only way I know of to keep the yellow of the lure clean is either to paint around it or to paint the lure with very thick paint. I prefer the first choice, since it leaves the door open for the second choice as well. For the other little lure toward the top of the tin, I chose not to paint around it. I'll scrape some of this paint off when it comes time to paint that lure.

Just about done now. I have everything to a pretty good stage and I can now start putting in some details, like the hooks and some of the details on the tin. I'll go over everything at this stage to make sure I'm happy with the way it looks. You might notice I didn't paint the background like it is in the photograph. That was on purpose. I wanted the background to be mostly a light blue color, but I didn't have one piece of cloth or piece of paper big enough for this, so I the used two small pieces I did have, which, unfortunately, didn't match.

The finished painting.

The One That Got Away

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 17 of the 50 Day painting challenge - One Hot Number - by George De Chiara

One Hot Number

When I was setting up my still life a few days ago (Day 15), I had an idea for another still life with my peppers. Today's idea was a little simpler, with just three peppers, but I think it has more impact. The small size of these challenge paintings works very well with small, intimate arrangements like this. It gives me a chance to really concentrate on accurate drawing, values, and colors. I also had another opportunity to use sheet music for my background. I've done this on several still life paintings in the past. I think the sheet music gives the background some interest and uniqueness, while not detracting from the main objects. Besides, there's something really interesting about painting the notes on the paper.  I don't really remember how to read sheet music anymore, it's been too many years now and I take a lot of liberties with it when I'm painting it. I'll move the notes around to give it more of a pattern. Below is how today's painting came to life.

Here's a picture of approximately what I'm looking at while painting this. If I have the option to work directly from life, I take it, which is what I did today. This picture is here to give you an idea of what I'm seeing. I placed a large box towards the back of my still life box to give that darker shadow. I felt this added a little interest to the background. It's also a visual clue to the eye to stop heading in that direction. A lot of landscape painters use this trick on the bottom of the canvas by having a large shadow go across the bottom. I felt it worked just as well on the top of this canvas in this case.

This picture was taken at the end of what I consider my block in. At this point, all the major shapes are represented and some basic colors have been laid in. All of this work is done with paint thinned with turpentine. The highlights and lighter values are wiped out with a paper towel. To draw the peppers, I used the edge of a large brush. For the green tops and shadows I used a slightly smaller brush in order to get the finer shapes. One of the reasons I like this approach so much is that in very little time I have a pretty good representation of what I'm painting, while still having a loose, painterly feel. I don't have a lot of paint or time invested in this picture yet, so if I want to make changes it's not a big deal. In this case, I'm happy with what I have and I'll continue to work on it.

This stage is almost a repeat of my block in. I'm just cleaning up some of the drawing and getting a little more paint on the canvas. Most of the middle tones on the peppers are painted now as well as a few darks. I'm using mixtures of Cadmium Red, Cadmium Scarlet, Terra Rosa and a little Ultramarine Blue and Viridian,  plus a little white, but not much at this point. I've also adjusted the background to have more yellow and violet in it. I've kept these mixtures pretty thin at this point.

Now I start to establish a few lighter values on the peppers. At this point, I'm not sure if these are the final values for the lights or not, I just need to get something down to judge the other values against. It important to get as large of a value range as possible as early as possible for this very reason. This doesn't mean you want to get a white and a black down, but what is going to be close to your lightest light and darkest dark for your painting.

I continue along working on the peppers and getting some of the background color cleaned up and corrected. I'll save putting in the notes until everything else is worked out. It's way to difficult to try to adjust something major with the background if the notes are painted in too early. I do need to get some base color down though to paint the cast shadows and correct some of the edges on the peppers.

The finished painting.

One Hot Number

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 16 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Indian Blankets - by George De Chiara

Indian Blankets

My first spring in Texas, which was a mere eight years ago, I was struck by all the wildflowers that bloomed along the highways and empty fields. At the time, I didn't know the story of why we had so many wild flowers or where they all came from (thank you Ladybird Johnson!), but I was instantly hooked on the color of them. From that point on, I looked forward to each spring and the blooming flowers. Sometimes I'm able to go out and paint these wonderful flowers from life, but other times I have to capture them in photographs to be painted at a later date. That's the case with today's painting. These Indian Blankets grew in our back yard last Spring. We only had one plant with a few blooms on it, but I was still very happy to see them right in my yard. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to paint them when they where blooming, so I took a few photographs of them. Today I remembered about those pictures and pulled them out to paint. Below is how this painting came to life.

My block in for today's painting is very loose with just a few well placed strokes of color to let me know where I'm going to put the flowers. While this looks like a simple block in, it did take a little bit of time to work out the placement of the flowers. If you look closely, you can see where I wiped out a few and moved them around a little.

I started off by painting the flower with a combination of my palette knife and brush. Once I had a pretty good start to the flower, I started to paint in some of the background. Mostly, I'm trying to clean up the drawing of the flower, but I'm also keeping an eye out for any opportunities to do some negative painting. For those of you not familiar with negative painting, it's basically the idea of painting the shapes around another shape rather than painting that shape. For example, if you look at the area right below the flower I've painted, you can see I used a few well placed strokes of darker color to give some indication of stems and leaves.

Now I'm looking to get a few areas to near completion, so I paint in the flowers around the area I started with and try to work my way to the edges of the canvas. I continue to paint the flowers with a combination of knife strokes and brush strokes. In real life, this plant did not have these two blooms. The one in the lower left is a copy of the one in the lower right. I just rotated it a bit and scaled it down a little. I felt this area would need a bloom in it, otherwise it would look too empty. I did some of this work in Photoshop before I started painting.

I'm just about done now. I've continued to paint the upper portion of the painting the same way I've done the lower part. For each new flower, I mix new colors that have a slight variation to them. I'm also constantly mixing new green mixtures to keep the background interesting. From here, I'll paint in the final flower and then give everything one last pass. You can see in the last image below, I added in a few strokes of pure or near pure color here and there. I did this to give the painting some pop, but also to lend a little interest to some of the areas of the painting that needed a bit more punch. I need to always remind myself to be careful when doing this. It's very easy to over do it.

The final painting.

Indian Blankets

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 15 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Five Fingers of Peppers - by George De Chiara

Five Fingers of Peppers

Happy Fourth of July everyone! I hope you all had a great day with family and friends. I spent a few hours of my Fourth painting, and, of course, working on this blog. My models today came straight from our garden. A few evenings ago, I picked a large bunch of ripe, red cayenne peppers. During the spring when I planted these, I had high hopes of being able to get a few to paint, but I had no idea how plentiful our harvest would be. Now my wife and I are talking about how we are going to dry and grind them. I can't wait to use a few for our barbeque rub. I hope they are as tasty as they look.

 My wife suggested the title, Five Fingers of Peppers, for this painting. After thinking about it for a while,  I decided to go with it. She's usually pretty good with coming up with a witty titles for my work and this one was no exception.

 Here's how today's painting came to life!

I forgot to take a picture of my actual set up before I broke it down, so today's step-by-step pictures start with my block in. For this block in, I used the edge of a large brush with a bit of Cadmium Red and Alizarin Crimson Permanent thinned with turpentine to get the basic shape and layout of the peppers. For the background, I used Ultramarine Blue and Transparent Oxide Red, again thinned down with some turps, and a large flat brush. I then took a clean paper towel and dipped it into my turpentine and squeezed out the excess. Using the damp part, I wiped out a few lighter areas. The wetter the paper towel is, the more paint it will remove. The dry portion removes very little paint, but does a great job blending with paint on the canvas.

Now that the block in has dried for a few minutes, I can start to build up my paint and not worry about it getting thinned or blending with the block-in wash. You can see in this image that I'm pretty much working on everything at once within a small area. I have the peppers started, the background, and the glass all at about the same stage in the center of the painting. This is mostly due to the glass being such a large shape in the painting.

I continue working on just about everything in the painting. This is the only way I'm able to paint the glass correctly. I will go back and fine tune the peppers once I think I have a handle on the glass. I've found that the easiest way to paint glass is to squint my eyes while looking at it and then try to paint the values I see. For the color, I look with my eye's open. I try not to think about the glass, but rather the colors I'm seeing. A large portion of the glass is nothing more than the colors behind it. It takes a while to get it looking correct and I just need to trust that I'm being as accurate as possible. If I am, it will look like a glass in the end.

I've just about got everything to a near-finished stage at this point. There's still a lot to do, but, overall, I have a pretty good idea of what my painting will look like. I still need to add the green tops and stems to the peppers as well as give them a few more values, like highlights and a few shadows.

The finished painting.

Five Fingers of Peppers

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.
Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 14 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Little Poppers - by George De Chiara

Little Poppers

Somehow, in all the heat we are having here in Texas, our tomato plants are still managing to produce and ripen handfuls of tomatoes just about every day. Every evening, I go out when the sun is setting and check on the garden, do a little weeding and pick everything that's ripened during the day. Last night, I picked a bunch of cherry tomatoes and  yellow bells, along with a large handful of cayenne peppers. When I brought them into the house, I laid them out in the kitchen in piles to show my wife the harvest for the day. While waiting for her to come and see I was struck by the way the tomatoes looked scattered across the counter. I knew I had found what I would paint today. 

Here's a photograph of what I'm painting today. To get this arrangement, I put the tomatoes in a bowl and dumped them out in my still life box. From there, I removed a few that seemed to have piled up too much and moved a few others to help my composition. All of these adjustment are done by looking though my view finder, which really helps me make these decisions.

Once I was happy with my set up, I started painting. I used a large brush, large compared to the size of the painting, and started to roughly paint where the tomatoes go. I used a slightly smaller brush to rough in the shadows and a paper towel to wipe out some highlights and mid-tones.

Once the block in is done, it's just a matter of cleaning up the shapes, color and edges. It's a real challenge to try to capture the translucency of the tomatoes. I find it helps to have a little spot of lighter color at the edge of the shadow side. This shows up the best in the yellow bell tomato I've painted in the foreground.  I think it also helps to put a little spot of color in the shadow, just on the opposite side the highlight.

I'm continuing to work to the top of the canvas. For the most part, I'm using color mixtures that are already on my palette. I'll try to cool them off a bit as things recede, and alter the color to give each tomato more variety.

Here, you can see how I progressed and  continued to work towards the top of the canvas. It was a nice change of color and shape to finally get to paint my one lonely pepper.

The finished painting.

Little Poppers

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.
Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 13 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Beach Reflections - by George De Chiara

Beach Reflections

 Today, I still felt inspired to paint more water, reflections and the beach, so I again turned to my photo reference from Mustang Island. This painting actually has the boat from yesterday in it. I'm just pulled back a bit so I can also paint the catamaran next to it. To mix things up a bit today, I used my palette knife for a large portion of this painting. I'm slowly getting better with my palette knife and I can control it much better these days. Having used it to paint my color charts last month, the practice is really paying off now. The knife tends to put the paint on very thick, which is one of the nice things about using it. The colors mix in a very unique way that can only be achieved with a knife. When I needed to use a brush, I made sure to load it up with thick paint too so the style would match.

Here's how today's painting came to life:

Here's my initial wash of color. I did this with a brush loaded with very thin paint. I also used a paper towel to wipe out a few lighter areas. I just can't think of any way to do this with a pallete knife, and, to tell the truth, I'm not sure I'd want to. At this stage, I want to be loose and free to make changes. The pallete knife would put down too much paint to allow for this.

Now that I'm happy with my block in, I can pick up my pallete knife and start to lay in thicker color. My technique with the knife differs a bit from the brush. When painting with the brush, I tend to start with one object and move from the center out as I paint.  With the knife, I'm working methodically, from the top down. I find this helps me keep the colors clean since I'm mostly working into a dry area all the time my knife doesn't pick up any unwanted color.

I'm continuing to work down towards the bottom of the painting. The reflections are particularly fun to paint with the pallete knife. I lay in lots of thick color and then I can take a brush and blend the reflections into the water. With such thick paint, it's almost like sculpting!

Now, I'm working my way back the other catamaran. At this point, I'm using a brush and knife equally. I did a lot of the beach with a brush loaded with thick paint. Then, I used the palette knife to put in a few details and spots of color. I'll also use it to blend the paint that's already on the canvas. With a clean knife, I'll lightly hit the high spots and blend them with the paint underneath.

The finished painting.

Beach Reflections

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.
Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 12 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Beached Catamaran - by George De Chiara

Beached Catamaran

Yesterday's painting got me thinking about painting more water, specifically reflections in the water. I'm not sure why, but I really enjoy painting the reflections. There's something about the symmetry that puts my mind at ease. I often find myself getting lost in thought while painting them and when I finally look up, hours have passed and huge portions of my painting are done. This is one of the true joys of painting for me, that zen-like state where you can lose track of everything and just relax. Some people call it the painter's high and I've talked to a lot of artists that have experienced this. There's a long thread on this topic on Fine Art Views blog. Here's a link to it. Have you ever experienced this? Care to share your story?

 For this painting, I had to use one of my photo references from Mustang Island. We were there over Memorial Day weekend last year and the beaches were filled with people, boats, and tents of all kinds. On one of the many walks my wife and I took along the shore, we ran across a few catamaran's on the beach.  The reflections on the wet sand and lapping water just sparkled with color. I knew one day these would make for a fun painting and today was one of those days!

This is the photograph I'm working from. I edited the figures in the background out since I didn't feel like they added anything to the painting. Other than, that I tried to stay pretty true to the image.

This is my quick block in. I mostly used some thinned down Ultramarine Blue and Yellow Ochre to block in the water and sand color. Then I took a paper towel dipped in turpentine and wiped out the lighter areas. With the dry portion of the paper towel, I can mix the wet color and wipe it down a little to get a mid-tone. The lower right corner is a good example of this.

Once I let my block in stage dry for a few minutes, I can start to build up my color and refine the painting. I'm starting with the background, since I want those colors to have a little more gray in them so that they recede into the distance. I find it easier to do this by starting with those grayer colors and mixing cleaner color as I get closer to the foreground. This gives me something against which to judge the rest of my color mixtures.

Remember what I said in the beginning of this blog about getting lost in painting the water? That's exactly what happened right after I took this picture, so this is the last image in my step-by-step pictures. I felt once I had gotten to this point I really wanted to start to get the reflection going, since so much of the painting is a reflection. I find it helpful to paint both the reflection and the object being reflected around the same time. This way I can use some of the same color mixtures, tinted slightly with the water or sand color, for the reflections.

The finished painting.

Beached Catamaran

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.
Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 11 of the 50 Day painting challenge - We Need A Goose - by George De Chiara

We Need A Goose

 After yesterday's painting, I was still in the mood today to paint ducks. Only this time, I wanted to paint some real ones rather than a rubber ducky like yesterday. We are lucky to have two small ponds close to our house. Both of them attract a lot of duck, geese, swans and birds of all kinds. In the fall and winter, the population expands to close to 100 of them. With a constant supply of people willing to bring them bread, it's no wonder we have so many. We love to take our daughter there with some bread, too. The ducks will practically eat it out of your hands if you let them. Our daughter just laughs and laughs and then does her best duck quack! It's priceless. For today's painting, I looked through the photo reference I've taken at these ponds. I couldn't quite find one photograph that I liked, so I took three different images and combined a few of the ducks together in Photoshop. For an artist, a basic knowledge of Photoshop or some other photo editing software is very handy. I'm lucky to have used Photoshop for the last 16 years, so combining these images and getting things arranged is a pretty quick task. Once I had a new image to work from I was able to get started. Here's how the painting came to life today.

This is the image I'm working from today. You'll notice that the combining of my images is not perfect, but I think it's good enough to work from.

Stage 1 - The block in. I'm always amazed at how just a few strokes of color and swipes of a paper towel can resemble what I'm painting. It's one of the reasons why I favor this approach so much. In just a few minutes, I have a pretty good idea of what my painting will look like. It if doesn't look exciting to me at this point I can make changes, rearrange things or flat-out wipe it off and start over. Since I have very little time and paint invested at this stage, I don't hesitate to do any of the above.

Well, I'm not sure why I didn't more photographs between the first stage and now, but I didn't. I know I was struggling a bit with the ducks and got caught up trying to get things worked out. When I finally got to a point where I thought I had things going in a positive direction, this is where I was at. I really enjoyed painting the reflections in waters. The patterns can be quite abstract and offer a lot of color variation.

I'm just about done with the ducks now. At this point, I must have scrapped off the mallards head about 6 times trying to get it right. I still think it needs a little work, but other than that I'm pretty happy with the ducks and need to get started on the background. This is the last image I took of my progress, but I can tell you I finished the painting and placed it on my fireplace mantel to look at for a while. After about an hour or so I decided to take it back into the studio and work on the water behind the ducks and the background and it's reflection. I felt it was all a little too flat and didn't have enough value variation in it. Below is the final painting after all of my tweaking.

The finished painting.

We Need A Goose

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.
Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 10 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Ducky Tea - by George De Chiara

Ducky Tea

I started my morning taking our little girl to the doctor. She came home from daycare yesterday with a nasty fever. My wife and I spent the night caring for her and managed to get her fever down a bit, but we still wanted her to get checked out today. After I got home with her, she was feeling a little better and even managed to play a little. When she went down for a nap, I spent some time looking through her toys for ideas. Now, I should have most of them committed to memory at this point, since I spend a portion of each night picking them up and putting them away, a chore I can't wait for her to take over soon, but at 20 months I just don't think she grasps this concept quite yet. At any rate, I really like the colorful quirky little things some of her toys come with. These little tea cups are one such example. Great color and smily faces on them to boot. I already had picked out the rubber duck and thought the two of them would go together well. When I set up this still life I wanted to have some drama to the light, so I used one of the many toy bins we have to block some of the light and give the background some depth and mystery. At least I hope I did:)

Here's an image of what I'm looking at while painting this still life. Like all the other still life demo's in this blog, this is just to show you what I'm looking at while working. I painted this still life from life, which, in my opinion, lets me see much more accurate color.

Like a lot of my paintings, I start out by washing on very thin color and use a paper towel to wipe out areas of light. This helps give the very loose brush work at this point some definition and form. After I'm happy with this initial layout, I'll let everything dry for just a few minutes. It doesn't take long for the turpentine to evaporate and the paint to dry enough so it doesn't lift with the next layer.

Every painting needs to start somewhere, so for this one I started with the duck. I like the way that shadow goes across the tail and back of the duck. I feel this helps give him some depth and mystery as the duck emerges from the shadow.

Once the duck is in good shape, I can move on and work on the rest of the painting. These plastic tea cups turned out to be both fun and frustrating to paint. The colors in them are very saturated and I'm finding myself struggling to accurately capture them. This is one of the reasons I wanted to challenge myself to paint these. They force me to stretch and learn while painting. With my daughter being sick today and painting in-between her naps, I didn't take a lot of progress pictures today. Sorry about that. Hopefully tomorrow will go a little smoother.

The final image.

Ducky Tea

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.
Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 9 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Everywhere A Chick Chick - by George De Chiara

Everywhere A Chick Chick

 My wife's grandparents started to raise chickens a few years ago and now have quite a flock running around the yard. I think they started off with just a few chickens, maybe 5 or 6 and now they must have over 30! And let me tell you, 30 chickens lay a lot of eggs. Every time we visit with them, we bring home six or seven dozen eggs and now we are thoroughly spoiled.  We'd like to have a constant supply of the eggs, but, unfortunately, her grandparents live about six hours away.  

In any case, every time we go there I like to go out back and take some pictures of the chickens. I love painting them, but can't do it from life. They just move around way too much. Now, to be fair, I'm not sure if they just like to move around or if it's my 20 month old daughter trying to hug them that makes them move.  Either way, I'm forced to use photo reference when painting them. For today's painting, I looked through the many photographs I've taken until I found one that I felt had a good pose. Why did I choose this one? I thought it would work well with the square format I'm using for my painting challenge. I like the profile view of this chicken and I was really drawn to the color of this one. She's been in the coop since almost the beginning and lays the prettiest red/brown eggs. By the way, does anyone know any good recipes that use a lot of eggs?

Here's how my chicken started out. I doubt this answers the age-old question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, but this is what came first for this chicken. I'm just using a little paint with a lot of turpentine to wash in the larger shapes. Since I don't have much paint or time invested at this stage I can easily make changes and refine the placement of my shapes.

At this stage, I'm still using thinned paint. It's not as thin as the previous stage, but still very thin. I'm trying to get a nice wash of color into the chicken. My thought is that I can build on this to create the feeling of feathers without having to paint each feather. You can see around the head I've started to use a little thicker paint. Thicker may not be the correct word, really, I've just stopped using turpentine in my mixtures.

I think you can see in this image how I'm building up the feathers on top of the loose color I laid down earlier. I've also started on the background. Since it's going to be a pretty large dark shape, I wanted to get some of its color in now so I can better judge my values in rest of the painting.

I'm just about finished at this point. This is about where the painting is when I start to finalize everything in it and finish up the foreground. The feathers on the tail need a little more work, but for the most part I'm done with the chicken.

The finished painting.

Everywhere A Chick Chick

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.
Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 8 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Today's Harvest - by George De Chiara

Today's Harvest

 My wife and I started our garden the first spring after we bought our home. Every since then, it's been a constant learning experience for us because in the beginning we had very little idea of when to plant, what to plant, and how often to fertilize and water. This year, our yields way up, but now we have to learn to keep the raccoons from eating all of our veggies.  (I am open to suggestions, by the way.) It's been a great hobby for both of us, and, slowly but surely, we are getting better at it. Marcie used to joke that we grow $80 tomatoes, since we use to get so few of them and spent so much money on the garden. This year that joke is down to $5 dollar tomatoes, but I'm not sure that's very accurate any longer since we are picking more than we can eat right now. Our peppers are also starting to produce lots of colorful fruit of all kinds, we have a couple of pumpkins on the vine, both Italian and purple basil, corn, squash, and even a few watermelon plants. So for today's painting, all I had to do was walk out to the garden and harvest what ever was ready to eat. I brought everything straight into the studio and started setting up this still life. I adjusted and removed some of the items I just picked until I was happy with my arrangement. Then I started painting. Here's how it came to life.

Here's a picture of what I'm looking at while painting. This is just to show you what I'm seeing while working. For this painting, I worked directly from my set up. If you like to grow tomatoes, those yellow bell's produce a lot of fruit. Beware though, they tend to spread out a lot. Ours is planted almost in the center of one of our 4'x10' beds and it's vines have just about woven themselves from end to end in both directions.

In this image, I'm working out the placement of all of my objects. I'm thinning my oils with a lot of turpentine at this stage and using a paper towel to wipe out areas that I want lighter. A good example of this is in the bowl. I blocked the whole thing in with the shadow color and then wiped out the lighter areas. At this stage, there's very little actual paint on the canvas.

Now that I'm happy with my block in, I can start to layer in thicker paint to build up the form and color of my objects. I usually try to start with something around my center of interest, which, in this case, is the largest tomato. I'm careful not to get any of the tomato's color on the bowl. Past experience has taught my it's very difficult to cover up a red color with a white color. I'll be just as careful when I paint the bowl color around the tomatoes. If I pick up any of the tomato color on my brush when I'm painting the bowl, it will totally change the color I'm trying to paint.

Once I establish where I'm going to start, I than try to work outward from that point. You can see in this picture I've worked on everything that touches that starting tomatoes except the little yellow bell tomatoes. This allows me to get a good start on almost everything in the painting. The sooner I can do this, the better I can judge the colors, edges, temperature and values of everything else I paint.

At this stage, I'm trying to get to the edges of my canvas. Once I can reach an edge, I can start to finalized areas of my painting. I think the peppers are at this stage now as well as most of the green background. From here, I'll work on the remaining areas that I haven't painted yet, like the foreground and the yellow tomatoes. You may also notice that I haven't painted the design on the bowl yet. I'll save that till the end. I want to make sure I have the underlying values correct first.

Everything had a pretty good start now. At this point, I go over everything and make sure I'm happy with the way it looks. I'm checking the color, drawing and the edges. From here, I'll put in the final details like the design on the bowl and the leaves and vines on the tomatoes.

The final painting.

Today's Harvest

Painting Details:
View Larger Version here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.
Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.