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Pink Beauty - An Original 6x6 Floral Still Life Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Pink Beauty

 I was just about ready to send my store-bought roses into the compost pile when I noticed that one of them still had a bit of life and color to it. It was starting to droop over a bit and I had to prop it up to get the angle I wanted for this painting, but other than that it seemed to be full of life. I really wanted to try a painting where I could concentrate of the shape of the flower and petals and this seemed like the perfect chance. Good thing I didn't wait any longer because by the next day, even this one had given up all signs of life and was starting to lose petals and wilt. I'm glad it had enough strength to stick around long enough to get this painting done! This painting is available though The Dutch Art Gallery in Dallas. Contact Pam at (214) 348-7350 for further information or to purchase it. 

Pink Beauty © 

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel.  
Medium: Original Oil Painting 

Price: $75 + Frame.
Frame: The gallery did an excellent job framing this.
Availability: Currently at The Dutch Art Gallery in Dallas. Contact Pam at (214) 348-7350 for details.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

You Crack Me Up - A New Original 6x6 Still Life Oil Painting by George De Chiara

You Crack Me Up

 I'm reminded of something Richard Schmid either said or that I read in his book about setting up a still life. His advice was to take as long as needed to get it just right, even if that meant waiting weeks to find just the right combination of objects and their arrangement. Schmid echoed in my head because earlier today, I set out to set up a still life to paint and two and half hours later and only after going through every piece of fruit we had in the house, I finally found it. I must have arranged, moved, replaced and rearranged thirty different pieces before I uncovered what I was after this morning. Part of the long start was that I didn't have a clear vision of what I wanted to do. I had a vague idea of doing something with a lot of fruit, which is why I emptied the fruit drawer in the fridge. I thought maybe I wanted to do something with reflections, so I grabbed one of our shiny metal mixing bowls. Nope, this one is too big, so I grabbed another. Still too big, so back to the kitchen for another one. A few more adjustments to the still life and...well..maybe the metal bowls weren't such a good idea. There was a brief period where I tried a number of different ceramic plates and dishes, but still nothing seemed to gel. For a while there, it looked like I was going to paint some apples and then it was going to be lemons and limes. You get the idea; this went on for some time. I'm sharing all this today because if you don't paint still lifes you might not realize just what goes into creating one. Sometimes it's hours of trying things out, other times it's days of just working through ideas in your head and on paper. Sometimes it's both! On the plus side, I think I came up with a few ideas to try out during the rest of the week...

You Crack Me Up © 

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel.  
Medium: Original Oil Painting 
Frame: none
Availability: Currently this painting is on the auction block at eBay. Click here to go the auction.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Jake - A New Original 6x6 Horse Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Jake

 A friend of ours was kind enough to invite us out the her parent's ranch for the day last spring. I had hoped it would be a day of painting, but brought my camera along just in case. We also brought our daughters  who were not quite 1 and a little over 2 along with us. While that seemed like a good idea, it did make painting just about impossible. Good thing I had my camera with me. I was able to take tons of pictures of their horses, ranch, and fields of wildflowers that were in bloom when we went. Of course, like any good father, I also took a ton of the kids playing on the ranch. Our friend had mentioned that she might like me to paint a commissioned painting of one of the horses. Since I had never done a portrait of a horse, I thought it might be a good idea to try one out in a smaller scale and see how it goes. That was about 2 months ago, when I started this painting. I was able to get it to about 70% complete, but couldn't figure out what was wrong with it. I knew it was lacking something, but being unable to put my finger on it I set the painting aside to think about it and do some research. I read many pages about horse anatomy and studied a lot of other pictures and painting of horses. Finally today, I felt like I might take a shot at finishing this one up. I'm glad I did!

Jake © 

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Winky - A New Original 6x6 Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Winky

 A few weeks before my wife and I met, she rescued a thin, undernourished and unhealthy Chihuahua that had wandered into her friend's yard. She figured since he was such a small animal, he needed a large name, so she promptly named him El Cid Guillermo Wee Willie Winkie, but we just call him Winky for short. He get's that part of his name for his ability to wink at you rather than blink. We still have him and he's gotten over being thin and unhealthy. While we're not positive on how old he is, we think he's somewhere between 8-10 years at this point. Judging from the amount of white hair he has these days he might be closer to 10 than 8. I liked the way he use to look, which was like a sad clown with his white fur around his eyes and mouth so I removed some of that white when I painted him. Below are a few step-by-step progress pictures of my painting process.

Since I wanted to make sure a I had a good, solid drawing and likeness before getting too far into the painting process, I spent some time working with just a thin mixture of Transparent Oxide Red and Ultramarine Deep refining those things. I used bits of paper towel with a little turpentine on it to wipe out or lighted areas as needed and to make the highlight in the eyes and on the nose. Once I was happy with the drawing and thought I had a pretty good likeness, I let this dry overnight. 

The advantage of letting my drawing dry overnight is that when I went to add some color to it, I could do this initial wash with thin paint layers and still retain my solid drawing underneath it. I could even wipe off the color at this point and still have my drawing. At this stage there is still very little white or thick paint on the painting. I am purposely keeping it thin so I'm free to make changes easily.

Here I'm starting to refine the color and drawing to a more complete state. Now I'm using thicker paint mixtures and adding more white to them to make them lighter and more opaque. I like to start with the eyes when doing painting like this and then work out from there. In this case, I started with the eye on the right hand side of the canvas and worked that up to a state of completion before moving on. From there, I'll work on the other eye and then the nose and mouth, continuing to adjust the whole painting until I am happy with it.

Winky © 

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Spring's Encore - A New Original 6x6 Plein Air Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Spring's Encore

 It may seem a little odd to have a spring painting this close to winter, but the truth is that's when I started this one, right before the summer heat took over. In fact, I went back to this field a couple of weeks later, all that remained was the tall summer grass, and a lot of dried up flower petals and seed pods. My painting, on the other hand, was placed in my drying rack with the intention to make a few tweaks before sending it out into the world. Well, days turned to weeks and weeks to months before I finally got around to making those tweaks. Truth be told, it was kind of fun remembering back that warm spring day when I painted this while making my adjustments, especially since winter has seemed to arrive here in North Texas this week. 

 I had some trouble getting what I think is a good photograph of this painting. For the most part this image looks good, but it's still lacking something compared to the actual painting. While this is generally the case, this one seems to be a little further off than normal. For this reason, I'm also posting a close up of the image. I feel this gives a better idea of what the painting looks like. 

Detail of Spring's Encore

Spring's Encore © 

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

In The Brush - A New Original 6x6 Plein Air Oil Painting by George De Chiara

In The Brush

 While visiting my in-laws recently, I kept noticing this scene at the end of the dirt road that leads to their driveway. I must have driven by this site a dozen times during our stay, each time thinking to myself that I really need to paint this before we go. Each morning I woke up, got me painting gear together and headed out to paint before the day really got going with our visit and each day I drove past this scene in search for something else to paint. Now for the life of me, I don't know why I kept doing this other than each time I thought I'd find something more interesting to paint. Somewhere in the back of my mind it's more interesting to paint things that aren't right in front of me. Some part of me enjoys the search for something that needs to be painted. Then again, I'd drive by this each day and think to myself that I wanted to paint it. Finally, on the last full day of our visit I decided to paint it rather than drive off looking for greener pastures. I'm still a bit shocked that south Texas has so many wild sunflowers still blooming strong. This is the warmest start to winter I can ever remember, but then again, I've only lived down here for 10 years.

In The Brush © 

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

White Rose - A New Original 6x6 Plein Air Oil Painting by George De Chiara

White Rose

 Imagine my surprise to find most these lovely white roses still going strong this late into the fall. I'm not sure why I'm so surprised, since we've had a wonderful fall so far filled with warm days and cool nights (that's Texas warm and cool which means it's been between 50 and 80 most of the time). We haven't had much rain, but that hasn't slowed these roses down. In fact, almost all the rose bushes in the Botanical Garden had spring-like blooms on them with new buds forming just waiting their turn to burst into full flower. I chose this one in particular because I liked the way it seemed to be looking right at me, which is a neat perspective to paint them from. The strong pattern of light and shadow made these flowers especially beautiful to paint on this day.

White Rose © 

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Koi - A New Original 6x6 Plein Air Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Koi

I learned a lot about Koi fish during this painting. For example, I learned that it's very difficult to convince them to stay still long enough to paint them. I also learned that they tend to swim in similar enough patterns that it's possible to watch them enough to paint them from life. Finally, I learned that when they stick their mouth out of the water they make a rather unpleasant sucking sound. It took a little while as I was painting to figure out what on earth was making those sounds, then I noticed one of the larger fish trying to suck the moss or algae from one of the near by rocks and realized he was the one making that noise. I didn't realize they could stick their whole mouth out of the water. It's a very odd sight.

 Koi © 

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Weatherford Hay - A New Original 6x6 Plein Air Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Weatherford Hay

 Occasionally over the years, I have had to drop my wife off at work out in Weatherford and always noticed this field with hay bales, which I thought would be a great subject to paint. At some point last year, I decided it was time and went out ready to paint, only to find all the hay bales had been hauled out. Time moves on though, and recently I drove by this field again and discovered it was once again full of bales. Now I just had to find a place to paint it from. You see, this field sits right off a major road with no way to paint from the shoulder without risking serious harm. After driving down the side roads that are closest to the field, I was finally able to discover a wonderful place to paint from which was safe, far off the road, and with a great view of the field. On this day, however, the sun just refused to cooperate. It lazed the morning away by poking in and out though the thick cloud cover. Because of this, I decided to do just this small study for now. I like to do these to get a feel for a place and it's surrounding. Now that have a few sunny days in the forecast, I hope to get back and do a larger painting before all the hay gets hauled out again and I have to wait for the cycle to repeat.

Weatherford Hay © 

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Coreopsis In The Morning - An original 6x6 landscape oil painting by George De Chiara

Coreopsis In The Morning

 Early in the summer, or maybe it was late in the fall (it's often hard to tell for sure here in Texas unless you look at a calendar), I came upon these wonderful yellow wild flowers growing in a local park. These came in late, after the blue bonnets and indian blankets had all played out. If I remember correctly, these were some of the last wild flowers to bloom before the heat of the summer shut everything down. I loved the bright intense color of these little flowers and quickly focused in on painting them. There were lots of blooms, and I was able to pick and choose which ones that suited my painting. 

 A few weeks after I had finished painting this, my wife was strolling our youngest daughter in the same area when she saw a copper head snake laying on the side-walk, just a few feet from where I had stood. Yikes! I'm glad he wasn't there when I was painting. I hope he's a fan of art and not artists, if I ever run into him.

 This painting will be part of the annual Artists of Texas Exhibition at The Dutch Art Gallery in Dallas this year. The show opens in November and runs through the new year. I'll post more info about it soon!

Coreopsis In The Morning © 

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x6 inches on canvas panel.  
Medium: Original Oil Painting 
Frame: none
Availability: Contact The Dutch Art Gallery

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Shady Balcony - An original 6x6 landscape oil painting by George De Chiara

Shady Balcony

Last Sunday, I met a few friends at the Fort Worth Stockyards for a morning of painting. It had been some time since I've been able to meet up with this group of painters since I've been so busy with the studio remodel. I got there a little later than most everyone else, which is the price for having a one year old and an almost three-year old I suppose, and most of the painters had already set up in one place just a few feet from each other. The funny thing was everyone was facing a different direction. When I got there I noticed this window and balcony right away. I loved the long shadows being cast and the wonderful colors of both the window and it's shadow. No one else was facing toward this window, so I set up my easel and got to painting. I had a great time catching up with a few of the other painters as we worked and can't wait till the next time. 

 Why did it take so long to post this? Well, I've tried to not post any of my paintings the day I do them anymore. I've noticed that I really need to live with them for a few days to catch any mistakes or things I want to change before releasing them out into the world. There have been several since I started doing this that needed some fixing after looking at them for a day or two so I'm really glad to be taking this approach now. I think in the end the better paintings are worth the delay.

Shady Balcony © 

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

This Is My Good Side - An original 6x6 landscape oil painting by George De Chiara

This Is My Good Side

 Just down the road from our house, we have a wonderful little lake that plays host to more ducks, geese and water fowl than I can count. In the winter months, the whole lake is covered with birds. In the summer, the flock thins down to about 50 to 100 animals. I'm not sure what it is about this particular lake that they like so much, but my guess is it's the endless buffet of bread and seed that people bring them that keeps them coming back year after year. This also makes them very friendly. There are several ducks and geese that will eat the bread right out of your hand if you let them. It's one of our daughters favorite things to do. She squeals with delight as the birds flock to her for the bread. I'll often take my camera with us to take a few photographs of the birds. It seems like this Chinese goose was determined to have me photograph this side of him since every picture I took, he had his head turned. After noticing this, the title for this painting seemed pretty straight forward.

Please note that the auction for this painting will be on Daily Paint Works. Click the link below to go to the auction.

This Is My Good Side © 

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Turkish Caps - An original 6x6 landscape oil painting by George De Chiara

Turkish Caps

A few years ago, we planted a small Turkish Cap plant in our front bed along with a few other flowers. This bed is in a difficult spot that doesn't get a lot of sun during the day, so these Turkish Caps seemed like the perfect thing to plant. As luck would have it, that winter had one of the hardest freezes we've had in a while and it came on fast. It seemed like one day we had decent weather and the next night we got the very cold freeze. Needless to say, we missed our chance to cover up the fragile flowers and plants. For the rest of the winter we watched everything freeze and die off. Then, somehow, in the spring a little sprout of Turkish Cap sprung up from the ground. It was the only plant to make another appearance. Well, fast forward a few years and that little sprout is now a giant, beautiful plant full of red blooms. It now takes up about of a third of the flower bed! For this painting I just went out to the bush and clipped off a little section to paint from back in the studio. Below are a few progress pictures of how this painting came to life.

After I roughed out where I'd place the flowers and then general flow of the painting, I started to lay in what I hoped would be the background for the painting. Sometimes I'm able to keep a lot of this in the final painting, sometimes I'm not. It all comes down to how accurate I can be with the rest of my brush strokes and drawing. If you look closely you can still see some of the makes from my rough layout. Those little red marks are where the flowers will go. I also started playing around with an old water-color trick at this stage. See the little, lighter dots? Those were achieved by spraying little turpentine on the surface of the canvas and then gently blotting it with a paper towel. It's a fun technique and one I want to experiment with more.

At this stage, I have most everything blocked in. Now it's a race against time to get the information I need from my clipping before it starts to wilt. I'm still trying to hold onto the background I had, but you can see some of it starting to slip away. The reasons pretty simple, I got a little sloppy with some of my drawing and had to make some corrections. Dang, it's hard to not make mistakes. Hahaha!

Below is the final painting. You can see I painted over most of the original background, but that's the way it goes sometimes.

Turkish Caps © 

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 5x7 inches on canvas panel.  
Medium: Original Oil Painting 
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid on this painting.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

On The Up Side - An original 6x6 landscape oil painting by George De Chiara

On The Up Side

 It strikes me as a little funny that the first thing I want to do once my new studio is finally up and running is go out plein air painting, but I guess that's the way it goes sometimes. Or as Ron Washington might say if he was a painter, "That's the way painting go". So I packed up my painting supplies and headed out to Weatherford, where to be totally honest, I had an errand to run anyway. Once I was done with that I took a drive along some of the rural roads scouting for something to paint. It didn't take long before I ran across this wonderful hill-side dotted with trees and bushes. I just loved the abstract pattern these made on the hill and knew I had found my subject for the day. The next order of business was securing a location to paint from since the road I was on was a 2 lane, 45 MPH twisting trail without any shoulders. Luckily, just a few yards from where I had spotted this scene I found an entry way to a drilling station. Ah ha! I've used these locations before to paint from. They work out great every time because they are good open spots with either a paved entries or good crushed gravel, and almost no one every comes by these locations. Perfect for a few hours of painting. 

On The Up Side © 

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Botanical Garden Roses - An original 6x6 landscape oil painting by George De Chiara

Botanical Garden Roses

This painting started it's life outdoors. Painting in the hot sun and wind, I tried my best to capture what I was in front of me. The problem was, what was in front of me keep changing ever few seconds as the wind blew. Still, I pressed on to finish the painting. I came home and placed the painting on my drying rack satisfied with the results of the day. That is, until I had some time to sit and really study what I had done. Below is an image of the original plein air painting.

While I felt that most of the building blocks where there, after looking at the painting for a while, I wasn't satisfied that I had the painting I wanted. So today, it went back onto the easel. Below is the finished work. You can see I reworked the top rose quite a bit. I also reworked almost the entire background. I just didn't like the way it read in the original painting. I use to be very cautious about reworking plein air studies in the studio, but now I starting to reconsider that position. Why shouldn't I take every opportunity to get the painting just exactly the way I want them, whether that's done entirely outdoors or indoors or a combination of the two? What do you think?

Botanical Garden Roses © 

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

I Grew Garlic - An original 6x6 still life oil painting by George De Chiara

I Grew Garlic

A few years ago my wife and I decided to try our hand at growing garlic. Since most of our garden sits idle over the winter it seemed like the perfect thing to try. If you've never grow garlic, it's really pretty easy and there are an impressive number of varieties to try. In the fall, plant the cloves and water daily till they sprout. If you've ever left your garlic out too long in the kitchen, you already know what this looks like. Anyway, once winter sets in there's really nothing left to do with them until spring when you resume watering and fertilizing. We usually pick a few of our plants towards the end of spring or the beginning of summer to see how they are doing. Then we either pull them all or give them some more time. Usually we can pull up the whole bed just in time to plant tomatoes or some other summer crop. Then we get to enjoy a rich variety of garlic all year-long. One other great benefits is without fail harvesting the garlic crop gets us excited to start the summer growing season. 

 This painting was one of the last bulbs of garlic I picked this year. After picking it I nailed it to our fence and brought out my painting supplies to paint this picture. Then...well, I sort of forgot about it. I packed up everything in my old studio to get ready to move it into the new studio and there the painting sat packed away waiting for the new studio be ready. Finally the new studio space is ready and I was unpacking when I rediscovered it. Just in time too, since we are already making plans for our next crop!

I Grew Garlic © 

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Blowing In The Wind - An original 6x6 inch plein air landscape oil painting by George De Chiara

Blowing In The Wind

 At the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens, they have an area that they call the Experimental Gardens. I overheard one the tour guides telling the group he was with that this is where they try new varieties of plants and flowers to see how they will do before planting them in the permanent gardens. It's also one of the only areas where everything is grown in raised beds, so it's very well-organized and manicured. Not the best environment for painting larger views of the gardens, but it does lend it's self nicely to little close-ups of the flowers like this painting. 

Blowing In The Wind © 

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.