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Wood Duck - A New Original 10 x 8 Landscape Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Wood Duck

We had a few days of rain in our forecast, so before the weather turned, I went down to the lake not far from our house to take some reference photos just in case I was stuck in the studio. Normally, this lake is full of ducks, geese and all type of water fowl, but on this trip there was just a hand full of mallards playing in the water. None the less, I began to take a few photographs of them because I was in the mood to paint some ducks anyway. While I was taking my pictures, someone arrived at the lake with a big bag of bread and began to feed the ducks. Well, it didn't take long for all the ducks and birds around the lake to start making their way towards the free lunch. Slowly, but surely, more and more ducks started to appear and that's when I spotted this one wood duck swimming with a small group of mallards. I couldn't believe my luck! I love the distinct markings on this bird and knew I'd want to paint him if I could get a good reference image of him. That proved to be the tricky part. It seems this little duck is camera-shy. It took almost 30 minutes of waiting for him to swim close enough by me so I could get a good image of him, but it was worth the wait. He settled right in front of me for almost 5 minutes! I must have snapped about 50 pictures of him during that time. What a treat!

Wood Duck © 

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 10x8 inches on canvas panel.  
Medium: Original Oil Painting 
Frame: none
Availability: Currently available through my eBay auction. Click here to go the auction.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Hobbs - An Original 8 x 8 Commissioned Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Hobbs

 I recently finished up this commission piece for a new collector. I had to work from photograph they provided me, but I was able to use a lot of artistic licence on the background. This was actually the client's idea and I was happy to fulfill it. This was the first time I've tried to paint such curly hair and while it was a great challenge, it was also a lot of fun to work on. If you would like to commission your own painting, please contract me at george@georgedechiara.com. I'd love to hear from you!

Hobbs © 

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 8x8 inches on canvas panel.  
Medium: Original Oil Painting 
Frame: none
Availability: SOLD.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Struttin' - An Original 8 x 8 Wildlife Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Struttin'

 We had lots of sun today, but not much warmth, so I decided to grab my camera and head down to one of the local lakes around the house. I knew that even with the cold weather, we'd still have plenty of ducks and water fowl hanging around. When I got to the lake, just about all the ducks where sitting on the shore line sleeping or trying to stay warm. These ducks are all very used to getting bread and oats from most of the visitors coming to this lake, so as soon as I crouched down to take a few pictures this duck came walking over to get his bread. When he figured out that I didn't have any, he turned and walked away. This must have tipped off the other ducks because even though it was cold in the water, most of them started heading in. I guess they thought the camera couldn't get them in the water. I noticed as soon as I left, they all started to head back on to land.

Struttin' © 

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 8x8 inches on canvas panel.  
Medium: Original Oil Painting 
Frame: none
Availability: Currently available through my eBay auction. Click here to go the auction.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Red - An Original 8 x 8 Wildlife Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Red

 For the last few months, I've watched a pair of cardinals that come to eat from the bird feeder just outside my studio window. I'm not sure if they see me looking at them through the window or if the cat scares them off, but either way, they never stay for very long.  I've thought about painting one of them for a while now and today seemed like the perfect day for it. I had hoped they would stop by while I was working so I could look at them for reference, but I guess they had other plans. Come to think of it, I haven't seen them in a few days now...hmmm...I wonder if it's time to refill the bird feeder?

Red© 

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size:8x8 inches on canvas panel.  
Medium: Original Oil Painting 
Frame: none
Availability: SOLD

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Pride - An Original 8x8 Bald Eagle Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Pride

 Sometimes I just feel like painting something new, something I've never tried before. Today was one of those days for me. I felt like I wanted to paint a bird of some sort, but after looking though my references nothing really grabbed me, everything looked like something I've already painted. Then I found this image of a bald eagle and knew I had found it. This would work out well, I'd get to satisfy my craving to paint a bird AND something new all in one shot! 

Pride © 

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 8x8 inches on canvas panel.  
Medium: Original Oil Painting 
Frame: none
Availability: Currently available. $135

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Winter Grazing - An Original 8x8 Landscape Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Winter Grazing

 For the last few days, I've been recovering from a cold my 3-year-old thought she should share with me and her 18 month old sister and mother. It seems I got the worst case of it and spent most of the day yesterday laid up in bed. Luckily, it seems, that was the worst of it because today I was able to get back into the studio and do a little painting. I wanted to go out and paint, but our weather was still a little on the cool side and I thought I best not push it so soon. Instead I stayed in the studio and painted these cows grazing in a typical later winter or early spring pasture here in Texas, and though there are no leaves on the tress yet, there is still plenty of green grass to chew on. 

Winter Grazing © 

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 8x8 inches on canvas panel.  
Medium: Original Oil Painting 
Frame: none
Availability: SOLD

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

I Know Kung Fu - An Original 8x8 Rooster Oil Painting by George De Chiara

I Know Kung Fu

 My wife's grandparents have a small chicken coop with maybe 20 chickens and this one lone rooster. They had a few other roosters at one time, but that's a story for another day. Every time we visit, I make it a point to bring my camera along in the hopes of getting a few good images to paint from. This has proved to be more challenging than I thought since for one thing the chickens don't really like strangers too much to start with, and, two, we always go there with our daughters who are 3 years old and 18 months old. If you ever want to see chickens run in every direction possible, bring along 2 little girls whose idea of good time is to see how many of the chickens they can chase at once!  

I Know Kung Fu © 

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 8x8 inches on canvas panel.  
Medium: Original Oil Painting 
Frame: none
Availability: SOLD

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

For The Birds - An Original 12x16 Still Life Oil Painting by George De Chiara

For The Birds

 Lately I've been in the mood to try some larger still life paintings. While doing the smaller ones are a lot of fun and a great exercise, sometimes it's nice to stretch a little and do something a bit more involved. And that's exactly what I did. After returning home from doing a small plein air piece in the morning, I spent the rest of the afternoon gathering and arranging this still life. Like many of my still life paintings, the arrangement went through many changes, thoughts and ideas before coming together into something I wanted to paint. Below are a few step-by-step pictures of the painting coming to life. Since I'm running low on the number of images I can upload on my site I've had to combine a few of the steps into one image. Not my favorite way of having to do this, but it keeps me under my limit.

The first image was at the end of the day after I had finished setting up the still life. The only thing I had time for was to sketch in the shapes with a thin wash of (mostly) Transparent Oxide Red. In hindsight, I'm glad that's as far as I got on this first day. That image isn't cropped in, my drawing is. After thinking about it overnight, I decided to redraw the composition so it's a bit more pulled back. I had a few reasons for coming to this decision, but the main one was I wanted a bit more breathing room around the edges of the painting and I wanted to make sure the flowers in the background were visible. Since my wash from the night before was dry, I used a piece of charcoal to redraw everything and then went over that with thin washes of color as seen in the second image. These thin washes helped hide the lines from the previous nights work. Once I was happy with this composition, I was able to start in with a bit thicker paint and more refined colors and values.  I'm starting with the potted plant since it's close to my center of interest and I'm not sure how the flowers are going to do now that I took them from their sunny window. 

Hmm... these combined images get a little small. Sorry about that. I"ll have to figure out something better, but in the meantime, you can see how I moved from the flower-pot to the ceramic bird next to it in the first image. This also gave me the opportunity to finish off the background, since both the bird and plant are defined by it. By the time the second image was taken, I had just about finished the little white vase on a stack of books on the left edge of the painting. From here on out, I alternated from one side of the painting to the other to finish it up. 

For The Birds © 

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 12x16 inches on canvas panel.  
Medium: Original Oil Painting 
Frame: none
Availability: $385 (unframed)

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.

Flamingo - A New Original 7x5 Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Flamingo

 At our zoo, one of the first groups of animals you come to are the flamingos. You can smell them from the moment you enter the front gate. If you've ever been around a large flock of these birds, you know the distinct and powerful smell I'm referring to.  One the day I took the reference photo from this painting, most of the flamingos where busy building their nests in the sand for their eggs. This was the first time I've seen this and it was fascinating to watch as they built tall towers of sand to lay their eggs in. Apparently, this one got a little hot and thirsty while working and decided to go for a little swim to cool down. I took a few photos of him (or her) playing in the water before returning to the sandy shore to continue work on the nest. I had hoped we'd be able to return after the eggs had hatched, but I think we missed our chance. I'm sure they hatched some time ago.

Flamingo © 

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 7x5 inches on canvas panel.  
Medium: Original Oil Painting 
Frame: none
Availability: SOLD

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Hazy Morning - A New Original 6x8 Plein Air Oil Painting and a Painting Demo by George De Chiara

Hazy Morning

 We recently went to visit my in-laws down in south Texas for a few days. On the first morning we were there, I work up to find a foggy morning had fallen upon us. I love to try to capture this effect when I get the chance, so I sprang out of bed, grabbed my painting gear and headed out the door as quickly as I could. I think I might have been the first one up that morning. That never happens in a house with my father-in-law in it! As I loaded all of my gear into the car, I noticed that the rising sun was quickly burning off the fog. If I was going to have any chance at painting this I needed to find a place quickly, which I was able to do just a few miles down the road. I like this view because it still had most of the background engulfed in fog and gave a nice distant view of the ranch. It also had a great spot to pull off the road and paint from, which is always a plus on narrow country roads. By the time I was done painting this, the sun had fully risen and burned off all the remaining fog leaving us with a beautiful sunny day to enjoy.

 If you're in the DFW area on Saturday December 8th, be sure to stop by the Dutch Art Gallery and watch my free painting demo. I'll be there from 10 - 2 PM painting. I'd love to see you there! The Dutch Art Gallery is located at 10233 E NW Hwy in Dallas.

Hazy Morning © 

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x8 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.

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.

Hanz and Franz - An original oil painting by George De Chiara

Hans and Franz

 Well, it's official. Christmas is over. The last bell has jingled and all the decorations are put away. Things here are finally returning to some form of normal. Or at least as normal as they can be with a 2-year-old and a 5 month old. My wife is a college instructor and her schedule changes ever semester, so normal around here is always a temporary thing at best, but for now we are back on track. For the last few weeks, we've had a steady stream of visitors here at the house and now that the last one has gone back home, I'm looking forward to updating this blog and website. I've got a lot of exciting news to share over the next week or so, along with a few new paintings and tips and tricks, so be sure to stop back often.

 A few weeks before Christmas, I got a phone call from one of my very first collectors. I hadn't spoken to him in many years and had a great time catching up. Towards the end of the call, he asked if I could paint him another portrait of his latest dogs, who are two wonderful looking Saint Bernards. After a few emails following our phone call, we reach an agreement on two paintings, both of which would be Christmas presents. With time running out, I got to work painting. Below are a few step-by-step images of one of the paintings coming to life. I also will have another post on how I used Photoshop to work on my initial composition and a few other tips on how I used the program to help work on this painting.

Here is the original image my client sent me. Normally, I would have prefered to take my own reference material, but in this case that simply wasn't possible. In order to give my client a better idea of what I wanted the painting to look like, I took this image into Photoshop and adjusted the posititioning of the dogs and simplified the background.

This is what I came up with in Photoshop. You can see I cropped in on the dogs to get them a little larger in frame and moved them closer together. I also eliminated all the background since none of it really supported the image of the dogs. From this post on, this is the image I based my painting on. In fact, I never looked at the original image again until I started writing this blog today.

Here is my initial wash and drawing on the canvas. Since I had adjusted my reference image to be the same proportion as the painting, I used a simple grid method translate the image. Once I was happy with the drawing, I let it dry for a day or two. This wasn't really by choice, I had a few other things to do and couldn't get back to the painting for a day or two. This did have a great unexpected benefit. The drawing had completely dried so once I started painting I was free to wipe off areas I didn't like and not lose my initial drawing. This came in handy, since about an hour into the painting I wiped off everything I had started and started over.

You can see in this image some of the evidence of where I wiped off my initial work and the dried drawing showing though on the right side of the dog's head. At this point, I'm trying to nail down some the drawing and establish my light and dark colors.

At this stage, I'm just about done with the dog on the left. As I worked on the one of the right, I did occasionally go back and make a few adjustments to the other dog. Notice too how I'm trying to leave as much of the original wash in for the background as I can. I am adding slightly thicker paint, but for the most part I want as much of the wash to show through as possible. I didn't take any images of the other dog in progress. I got really into painting him and sort of lost track of time. I basically painted him in much the same manner as I did the first dog, starting the nose and eyes and working out from there.

The finished painting.

Hans and Franz © 

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 11x14 inches on linen panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: SOLD

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.