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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.

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.

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.