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Mepps Lusox - An Original 8 x 8 Still Life Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Mepps Lusox

 Yesterday, I painted a still life of one of my newest fishing lures. That one was given to me by my wife for Christmas. Today's lure is one of the oldest one's I own. I don't remember where I got it anymore. I just know it's been in my tackle box for as long as I can recall. In fact, it's been moved from tackle box to tackle box as they wear out or break, but this Mepps lure has out lived almost every other piece of fishing gear I own. It's a bit worn now, which made it so appealing to paint, so I hope some of that comes through. It was a real trick getting it to stay in this position. It's a bit top-heavy and kept wanting to fall over. I finally had to use a little clay and string to get it to stay like this so I could paint it. 

Mepps Lusox © 

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.

Purple Tail - A New Original 8 x 8 Still Life Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Purple Tail

 One of my favorite places to look for inspiration is my tackle box. I love the brightly colored fishing lures that fill it and have painted them often, though not very recently. Well, it's time for that to change. I dug through my tackle box and quickly found myself gravitating toward this one with its long purple tail. I love the color in it and really wanted to try to capture it with paint. Since I wanted to concentrate on the lure to try to capture it as accurately as possible, I kept the background and the surface it sits on pretty simple. I like this approach with these small still life paintings because it lets me concentrate on the things I want to and not get bogged down with other aspects of the painting.

Purple Tail © 

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.

Slices - An Original 6 x 8 Still Life Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Slices

 With the rain and cold weather continuing outside today, I thought it best to stay inside and paint. It really wasn't a hard decision; it's much warmer in my studio. Since I still had my little still life set up mostly intact, I decided to do another one in this little series I've been working on. I really never had any intention of doing a series like this, but it's been so much fun, I'm going with it. I noticed today that quite accidentally I had made the first two still lives remarkably close in their backgrounds, so for this painting I thought I'd try to do the same thing. I love the way the three of them look together on my drying rack. I even made up this little image of them framed: 

Today's painting is the watermelon one. It was part of our breakfast this morning and I couldn't resist it. I liked that the pieces were a little tattered. This is thanks to my daughter, who's three and who likes to try to help with everything in the kitchen, including cutting up the melon.

Slices © 

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

Let's Split - An Original 6 x 8 Still Life Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Let's Split

 Our rain continued today, so it was another day of working in the studio, which suited me just fine. After yesterday's still life, I was itching to do another one anyway. For today's painting, I choose a banana. I find setting up a banana to make an interesting composition a real challenge. It took some time to come up with this one. I started off with a whole banana peeled about a third of the way down and just went from there. You can see I ended up with about a half of banana and parts of it are peeled all the way down. At one point I thought about just eating this one and starting over. I'm really enjoying this little peeled fruit series I have going...both of them! To be honest, I'm not sure how many other fruits I can find that are peeled, but it's suppose to rain again tomorrow, so I might have to look for another one. Anyone have any suggestions?

Let's Split © 

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

Cutie - An Original 6 x 8 Still Life Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Cutie

 It seems like I haven't painted a still life in ages. I guess I've enjoyed our Spring weather and trying to get out as much as I can before the dreaded summer heat hits. Today, though, we had rain on and off all day so it seemed like the perfect day to stay in the studio and finally work on some of those still life ideas I've been kicking around in my head for the last few weeks. This is one of those ideas. I like the simplicity of this set up. It forced me to really pay attention to the only object in the painting and try to make it as interesting as possible. It also gave me the challenge of having to peel an orange without breaking the skin, something I've never been very good at, but somehow managed to get it on the first try today! Truth be told, this is my second attempt at this painting today. The first one I had to wipe off about 30 minutes into the painting. I usually pause after my initial start in a painting and make the decision of whether or not to go on or wipe it. It's better to face that decision early in the painting than later on, I think.  Had I spent 2 or 3 hours painting before giving it a critical look, it would have been much harder to wipe it off and start over. 

Cutie © 

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

Hearts and Heads - An Original 12x16 Still Life Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Hearts and Heads

 When I started to set up this still life, I told myself that I wasn't going to use any fruit or flowers in the arrangement. I feel sometimes I rely on them too much and wanted the challenge of setting up something that could sit for days in the studio without needing water. By doing this, it really forced me to take my time with setting up all the objects in the still life. In places I would have just put a few pieces of fruit to add interest, I needed to think of something else to use instead. While this caused a lot of trial and error, I'm glad I did it because I think in the end I came up with a strong arrangement and had a blast painting it! Below are a few progress shots of the painting coming together. There are several hours of real-time between each image, but this should give you pretty good idea of how I painted this.

The first image on the upper left is how I started the painting. After sketching out the placement of everything with charcoal, I did a simple wash of color over all the objects. Pretty much everything in this image is that transparent color wash except the little ceramic angel sitting on top of the brass heart since that is the area I started to refine with thicker paint once the wash dried. In the upper right image, you can see how I expanded out from that little angel, working towards the upper left corner. I choose that direction for one simple reason: I like to place my fingers on the canvas when I paint for support and didn't want to put them into wet paint. By working toward the upper left corner, I had all the upper right and lower portion of the painting to rest my hand while working. Though it's impossible to tell in the lower left image, I continued in this manner working on the upper right corner first, so I could rest my hand on the lower portion of the painting before painting the lowest part of the canvas. 

Hearts and Heads © 

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.

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.

ACEO Valentine Themed Oil Paintings by George De Chiara

I Heart You

It's time for Valentine's Day again! I actually find myself oddly excited to paint conversation hearts and chocolate candies and to surround my studio in flowers. Painting for Valentine's seems to be a new tradition that I have developed over the last few years. People always seem to like them, and I really enjoy painting these sweet little works. I recently dropped off six Valentine themed paintings to the Dutch Gallery in Dallas. They are all available now for that special one-of-a-kind gift for your loved one. Each one is beautifully framed from the gallery. Make this a Valentine's she'll never forget by giving a gift that will last a life time. For more information or to purchase any of these please contact Pam at the Dutch Gallery. You can call her at (214) 348-7350 or if you're in Dallas stop on by. Their address is 10233 E Northwest Hwy, Dallas, TX 75238.

Chocolate Heart©        2.5x3.5 inches         Oil  

Pink Rose ©       2.5x3.5 inches               Oil

Yellow Rose ©      2.5x3.5 inches      Oil

I Heart You©       2.5x3.5 inches          Oil

Light Pink Rose©    2.5x3.5 inches     Oil

Here's an example of the framing!

      Red Rose©    2.5x3.5 inches     Oil

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.

Chocolate Heart - A New Original ACEO Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Chocolate Heart

 Is it too soon for Valentine hearts? I hope not, because as soon as my 3 year daughter found out I had chocolate in the studio, she quickly made it a point to come visit me as much as possible. On each visit, she would "sneak" another chocolate heart out of the studio and run off to eat it. Over the course of the last few days, she's gone through my whole supply of them! Well...that's not exactly they truth. She did have some help with them, but I'm not naming any names on who helped her.

 This painting is available through the Dutch Art Gallery in Dallas, if you're interested in getting it for yourself or as a wonderful one-of- a-kind Valentine gift for that someone special. They do an amazing job framing these into a 5x7 inch frame and they look great. Contact Pam at (214) 348-7350 for further details.

Chocolate Heart©

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 2.5x3.5 inches on canvas panel.  
Medium: Original Oil Painting 
Frame: Yes, contact Gallery at  (214) 348-7350 for details.
Availability: Available through the Dutch Art Gallery

Initialed lower right corner.

Valentine Roses - A New Original 6x8 Still Life Oil Painting George De Chiara

Valentine Roses

 Recently my wife and I went shopping at our local grocery store. On the way in, she asks if I've ever noticed that the floral section has a little area where they sell the older flowers at a heavy discount. What?!? I had no idea that existed until that moment. Since then, every time I go into the store I make it a point to pass by this section and take a look...just in case, you know. There may be something that I just can't pass up...like these roses. I couldn't believe it when I found a dozen of these pink roses for five bucks! I scooped them up and put them in the cart and away they came with me. I couldn't get a chance to paint them for a couple of days, and at their age, their beauty is fleeting. Some didn't make it very long, but I will do my best to preserve them in paint. There are a few that may make it another day or two, but that might be it. Hopefully they do, since I'd like to try at least one more painting with them if they hold up.

Valentine Roses © 

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.

Steam Power- A New Original 5x7 Still Life Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Steam Power

 Hmm...well, I'm not sure how I did this, but I actually posted this painting a few days ago and just forgot to post about it in my blog. In fact, the auction for this one is just about over. There's only 2 days left to get your bids in if your interested in this painting.

 I've had this locomotive just about my whole life. It came with my train set that's been handed down through my siblings till it got to me. I'm the youngest of five so you can image that by time it got to me it...well...it had character, which is, I guess, the best way of putting it. Still, I loved to set the trains up every Christmas and watch them run around the tree for a few weeks before packing them back up again. It's a tradition I hope to pass onto my two girls as they get older. Truth be told, I've never seen this locomotive make smoke or its front light work. Both of those features where well-worn out by the time I got to play with the trains.

Steam Power © 

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 5x7 inches on canvas panel.  
Medium: Original Oil Painting 
Frame: none
Availability: SOLD

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Christmas Cheer - A New Original 5x7 Still Life Oil Painting and a Painting Demo by George De Chiara

Christmas Cheer

 Ah yes, it's that time of the year again. Time to deck the halls and be jolly! It seems like every year we deck the halls a little more and add another set or two of lights to the outside of the house and put another ornament on tree.  These little ornaments are some of the first ones we bought together.  At that time, we had a little 4 foot tree and a box of decorations for it. Now on our big tree they would get lost. I'm just guessing, but it might be the sixteen boxes of Christmas that we have collected over the years. Still, these little shiny balls still haven't lost their luster, and reliably put me in the spirit of the season every time I bring them out of storage. 

 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.

Christmas Cheer © 

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 5x7 inches on canvas panel.  
Medium: Original Oil Painting 
Frame: none
Availability: SOLD

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Pumpkin Coffee - A New Original 6x8 Still Life Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Pumpkin Coffee

 I've been do so much plein air painting lately that I almost forgot how much fun a still life is to paint. I was in the mood to do something that represented fall to me. After trying out a few different items with my miniature pumpkin, this one turned out to be the most satisfying. With the addition of a few autumn leaves picked fresh from the maple tree behind my studio, I was all set. Here is my progress:

This image was taken after about 5 minutes of painting. While that doesn't seem like a lot of time, it is perhaps the most important 5 minutes of the painting process. It's in this stage that all the major shapes are defined and the composition is finalized. Of course, while adjustments can still be made after this stage, I prefer to have this stage be as accurate as possible before moving on. I consider this to be my block in, and, from here, I'll start working on refining these shapes and colors.

Now I can start to refine my painting and attempt to finish areas of the painting. I'm starting with my center of interest since this is the area that should be most developed. From here, I can judge what level of completion I want for the rest of it. I can also make sure that the rest of the painting doesn't compete for attention compared to this area. 

Once I'm happy with the general direction the center of interest, I can move on to the rest of the painting. My approach with this is to try to complete an area before moving on. At this point the entire right hand side of the canvas as well as most of the foreground is complete. From here, I just need to finish up the left hand side and this painting is finished.

 Pumpkin Coffee © 

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.

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.

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.

Lures - An original oil painting by George De Chiara

Lures

 For Christmas this year, my wife gave me a new tackle box. It was a much-needed gift since my last one was being kept closed with rope and twine. After 20 plus years it's served me well, but it was time to retire it. So it was with great delight that I opened my new tackle box, but the real treat was that she actually filled the whole thing with tackle. She knows how much I like to paint my lures as well as use them to fish and managed to find a nice collection of used lures to fill the new tackle box with. The old ones are just so much better to paint. Each little nick and scrape adds so much character and makes them more enjoyable to paint. Below are step-by-step images of the parinting process:

 Here's an image of what I was looking at while painting. The lures are sitting on top of a piece of glass to give a little reflection. This is a simple technique to give the foreground some interest without having to add more objects to it. Looking at this image, I notice a few things that really look different than what I saw. For instance, the little piece of fishing line on the lure in the front didn't show up nearly that well in real life and I could also see a little more reflection in the glass than the camera captured. That's why I prefer to paint from life whenever I can.

This is my rough block-in. I did this a little different then I normally do. With this block-in, I used a lot more paint and didn't thin it with turps. Instead, I used a paper towel dipped in turpentine to wipe some of the paint and correct the shapes as I painted. I even used some of the paint on the paper towel to tone the canvas in the foreground and creat the shadows on the ground. I did this because I wanted to try to use some of the underpainting in the final painting. My thought was that the majority of my brush strokes from here on out would be in the negative areas. Because of this I let the painting dry overnight so I could work wet on dry.

Well I've got to start somewhere, so I choose to start with the background and work my way forward. I thought that this would work the best with the approach I was trying. I tried to use as much of background green color as I could to help define the shape of the lure and where ever I could I used the initial painting. A good example of this is the tail feather/hair. Most of this is actually the original painting with just a few little strokes of color to add detail and shadow.

Just about done now. I think I spent more time on that black lure than anywhere else in the painting. It just took a while to get the look right. Too dark and it would have been a big hole in the canvas. Too light and it didn't look like it was a dark-colored lure. After a bit of trial and error, I think I finally got it. Now I just need to finish up the last lure and a bit of the foreground.

The finished painting:

Lures © 

 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.

Molasses and Garlic - An original oil painting by George De Chiara

Molasses and Garlic

 For the last few days, I've been thinking about doing a still life with a few of the bottles of cooking supplies in our cupboard. After grabbing the ones that I thought would be interesting to paint, I tried a few different arrangements adding a new bottle here and there and removing a few as I went. After a little while, I started to realize I needed something else besides the bottles so I added the garlic and measuring cup. Everything came together pretty quickly once I did that and so the only thing left to do was to paint it.

Here's how the painting came to life:

I took this image when I felt I had finished my rough block-in. I wanted to have a bit more color during this stage then I normally do. At this stage in the painting process, I was thinking I'd paint a little thinner in the next stages of the painting and let a lot of this underpainting show through. Well, what's that saying about best laid plans...?

Now I'm starting to refine my block-in and add more color. At this point, I'm starting to realize that I'm probably not going to be leaving as much underpainting as I thought. Oh well, this is the way things go sometimes. I've just got to roll with it and make the best painting I can. If I need to paint thicker to get things painted accurately and looking the way I want, then so be it.

At this point I'm just about done. I have a few little details I want to add in and then I'll refine and clean up any areas that I think need it. It's tempting sometimes to get into some of these final details too soon. I have to remind myself that it's better to get the larger color and values correct first. The lettering and design on the bottles is really just icing on the cake. 

Molasses and 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.

Strawberries and Chocolate - An original oil painting by George De Chiara

Strawberries and Chocolate

 In my last blog post, I mentioned going to a church garage sale. This white heart is another one of the items I picked up at it. I think this one cost me a quarter. I liked the contrast between it and the dark background almost immediately. Now, what to put with it to finish off my arrangement? After a bit a digging around the house, I finally settled on using some strawberries, and, what goes better with a strawberry than some chocolate? It surprised me how quickly and easily this still life arrangement came together. Now all I needed to do was paint it.

Here's how the painting came about:

First, here's an image of what I'm looking at while painting. As hard as I tried I just couldn't get a good image of the set up. I can't even see the highlights on the white heart in this image. This is one of the reasons I prefer to paint from life when ever it's possible. 

Here's my really rough block-in of the basic shapes. I toned the canvas with a very thinned mixture of Cadium Red and Terra Rosa. To draw the outlines, I used the same color mixture with less turpentine and a paper towel dipped in turpentine to wipe out some of the light areas. At this point, I'm not really concerned with anything more than making sure everything will fit on the canvas and that I have a composition I'm happy with.

It seems like it's rare to be able to start with the thing that represents the lightest light and darkest dark right off the bat, but I lucked out with this one. Usually, it seems like I need to paint a little more of the painting before establishing these values. I have to admit that kind of luck is nice. 

Just about done now. I have to paint the chocolate hearts still and adjust a few of the edges. Edges are one of those things I really want to work on this year, so if you're a regular reader of this blog your going to hear me talk lot about them. Right now I'm experimenting with soften the edges more than I normally do, trying to give the eye places to rest and giving it a clue that it should move on from the spot it's in. To soften, I'm using a very soft clean brush and I'll just lightly swipe it across the edge.

The finished painting:

Strawberries and Chocolate © 

 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.

Love Bird - An original oil painting by George De Chiara

Love Bird

I love finding new things to paint, which is what inspired this painting. I had that little ceramic bird for less than an hour when I painted him. He was a score from a local church garage sale for a whopping dollar! How could I pass that up? Plus, I had already had the chocolates which I bought for some Valentine-themed paintings anyway. The two just seemed to fit together so well. Below are a few step-by-step photographs of how this image came to life.

First off, here's an image of what I'm looking at while painting. The rose is made from crêpe paper that my niece folded into a rose. I've used them a few times to stand in for real roses and they work great. Never wilt and never change shape!

This image is taken after about 30 minutes of painting. I stained the canvas with a mixture of Cadium Red and Cadium Scarlet thinned with a lot of turpentine. Then I used them same mixture with a lot less turns to drawn in the basic shapes and a paper towel dipped in turpentine to wipe out a few lighter colors. I give this a few minutes to dry and then started blocking in the larger color masses of the bird. 

I continued working on the bird until I was happy with his appearance, which, naturally, lead to the surrounding areas in order to get the edges that I want. 

Just about done now. Everything is blocked-in and I just need to bring rest of the painting up to the level of completeness that I want. I generally try to soften the edges and to let more of the underpainting show through as I get closer the edges of the canvas. I do this for two reasons. First, I just like the look of the incompleted painting, and, second, I feel it helps move the eye back towards the more complete areas of the painting, which is the center of interest. 

Love Bird © 

 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.

Little Angel - An original oil painting by George De Chiara

Little Angel

 For the last few days, I've been working on a few commission paintings and haven't had a lot to post. Today I needed a break from those paintings, so I thought I do a little still life. We have a lot of our Christmas decorations out now and I just can't resist using them for my props. I grabbed this little angel and quickly set up a little still life with it. I have to admit this was just the kind of diversion I needed today.

Little Angel © 

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.

A Little Christmas Cheer - An original oil painting by George De Chiara

A Little Christmas Cheer

 I've been looking forward to this time of the year for a few months now. Our oldest daughter, who's just 2 years old, is just starting to understand Christmas and the holidays in general. Almost every night before bed for the last few weeks, we've read her current favorite book, Santa Mouse. So it's been with great anticipation that I've been looking forward to getting the Christmas decorations out. Not only do my wife and I get the great joy of explaining all the traditions and mysteries to our daughter, I get a whole new set of subjects to paint for a few weeks.

 I only have a few step-by-step photos today because I scraped off my canvas about half way through the process. I didn't clean the canvas off; rather, I just scraped off as much of my previous painting as I could and then re-painted it. I did this for two reasons. First, I had started the painting on Tuesday and wasn't able to get back to it until today, so the paint had become a little tacky on the canvas. Plus, I wasn't happy with what I had painted and felt I could a better job if I scraped it off and started over.

This image was taken after my very quick block in. I'm really just scrubbing on a little bit of color in the general area things will go. Then I can use a little turpentine on a paper towel or even just a soaked brush to wipe off highlights and make small adjustments to some of the volumes.

Here, I'm a little more than half way through the painting. This was about the point I was at before I scraped off the previous painting and started over. The surprising thing is that it didn't take that long to get back to this point once I started over. There was still a little underpainting left on the canvas and I had already painted it once, which always seems to make things go fast when I do them again. You might also notice that a few of the ornaments that are blocked in didn't make it into the final painting. As I was finishing up the painting, I felt I really didn't need them in the painting, so I took them out.

A Little Christmas Cheer © 

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.

Guard Duty - An original oil painting by George De Chiara

Guard Duty

 About a year or so before I actually starting painting still lifes, I started to collect things that caught my eye as something I might want to one day include in my paintings. As any still life painter will tell you, we all love our "stuff" and usually have it stashed all over the studio. You never know when you will need just that perfect thing to complete your still life. You'll find us hunting through the thrift stores for that must have tea-cup or bowl or even the odd knickknack. I've noticed that sometimes I use what I buy very quickly; other times, things that looked good when I bought them seem to lose their appeal once back in the studio and are doomed to sit and collect dust until I notice their charm once again. Well, that little statue in this painting was one of the first things I ever bought for my still life collection. I actually have two of them, along with a few other little figures that I got for $2 at an estate auction almost 3 years ago. Then, there it sat on the shelf in the window collecting dust. I tried it in a few other set ups over the years, but it never really worked out so I always removed it and put it back in its place. Well, I'm happy to report after three years, I finally used this little guy in a painting! Hopefully another three years don't pass before I use it again. 

Here's how this painting came to life:

I took this image at the end of my rough block-in. At this stage there's very little paint on my canvas. I mostly just thinned my paint down with a little turpentine and used a paper towel to wipe out lighter areas, like the vase in the upper left and the statue in the lower right.   The reason I like this approach is because it very quickly gives me idea of the overall colors of my painting and a fairly accurate layout of all the objects in it. From here, I can concentrate on each section of the painting and know that I'm not going to run out of room for everything in the painting.

I let the rough block-in dry for a few minutes. Once the turpentine evaporates, it's more or less dry. Then I start painting. Since I'm fairly confident that the placement of all my objects is correct I can bring the objects I'm painting to an almost complete state. I do go back and make some small adjustments as needed while I finish, but most of these areas are done now. I started with the statue since it's my center of interest and I want to judge the rest of the painting against it. It's also one of the more difficult things to paint, so I figured I'd get it our of the way first. This way if I need to wipe if off and start over I don't risk messing up areas I already painted. Notice how many other objects the statue leads to just to get it painted correctly. Most of the foreground is done in front of it and a large part of the background needed to be done to complete the statue.

In this image, I continued working on the background, almost in a counter-clockwise order. The reason I did this is I like to rest my hand on the canvas when I paint and by leaving the foreground till the very end I'm able to do this without smudging the paint. One thing that doesn't show in these pictures is one important step I did so I could paint that blue ribbon in. First, I drew the edges of it with a little bit of paint so I knew where it went. Then I took my palette knife and scraped off any paint that's under the ribbon. I even used a paper towel to wipe off some of the it. Then, I could paint the ribbon cleanly without having to layer on the paint. I don't have anything against thick paint, but I want to use that effect where I want it and not just to cover up the paint under it.

Guard Duty © 

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 9x12 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Contact me to purchase ($230)

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Purple Basil - Original oil painting by George De Chiara

Purple Basil

 My wife and I have been experimenting with our green thumbs for the last few years. Slowly, but surely, they are getting greener, and, every now and again, we hit one out of the park. We are lucky that in Texas, we can garden almost year round and try to make the most of that by re-planting after we pull up the old crops. This year we had one whole bed of onions that we harvested early in the summer. Afterwards, we planted a bunch of plant seeds we had for a while. We weren't sure if they would still be good or not, but we figured we take the chance and see what happens. Almost everything we planted sprouted up, some faded fast or never produced fruit. Others, like this purple basil, took off beyond our dreams. I'm not sure how much for sure we harvested, but below is a picture of the plants pulled up and placed in a bucket so I could get them all in the house. Tomorrow we'll make basil ice cubes for the winter. If you're a gardener and haven't tried this for your herbs, it's totally worth it. They are very simple to make. Just chop up your basil or any other herb. We've done parsley and oregano, in addition to basil. Once you have it chopped up, mix in either a little olive oil or water and fill up an ice-cube tray. Once they are frozen, you can pop them out and put them in plastic bags to store. Then when ever you need some just throw a few ice cubes in what ever you are cooking. I think it tastes much better then dried herbs.

 I had intended to take step-by-step pictures of the painting process, and I did take a few, but the painting changed so much as I painted it that these images will be more confusing than useful. I can show you where I was when I thought I had finished this painting.

At this point, I thought I was done with this painting. However, when I placed it on the shelf to dry and really stood back from it I felt it didn't read very well. When I showed it to my wife, it was one of the first things she commented on. At that point, I made the decision to change the background. While I was at it, I also wanted to address the glass. I didn't like the way it sat on the edge of the canvas and really wanted to get rid of it altogether. So I took the painting back into the studio and put it back up on the easel. Here's what it looks like after the changes.

Purple Basil ©

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.

Fruit Stack - An original oil painting by George De Chiara

Fruit Stack

 Back in the studio today. It's been a few days since I've painted indoors. My last few paintings were done outdoors, but I had set this still life up a couple of days ago and really wanted to paint it once and for all. I actually attempted this one right after I set it up, but about half way through that painting, I wasn't happy with what I had. Today I started over with a new approach. Okay, that's not totally true. I tried this new approach the last time I attempted to paint this still life. Like I said, it didn't go well, but with the knowledge of where I went wrong last time I approached my easel once again hoping to get a little further this time.

Here' s a photograph of what I'm looking at while painting. I use to paint from photographs a lot and now I'm amazed every time I look at one like this. There's so much the camera doesn't capture. That's why it's important that I work from life as much as possible. It's the only way I know of to learn to really see what your subject looks like, and, more importantly, how to compensate for a photograph when I have to work from them. Things like the shadows are much darker and void of color compared to what I was looking at.

I took this photo at the end of my rough block-in. My goals are a little different for the block-in today. I wanted to try to keep it very loose and just have rough, clean color. My hope was to try to keep some of this as I refine the painting. In the end, I wasn't able to do this, but it's an approach I want to keep working at to see if I can make it work.

Well, you can see it didn't take long to cover up some of my rough block-in with more opaque or thicker paint, but that's okay. New approaches take a while to work out and I learned a few things that I'll try to apply on the next painting. Now my goal is to try to complete the painting as best I can.

At this point, I have most of the fruit blocked in and mostly finished. Now I'll get ready to complete the wooden box on the left side of the painting and then I'll finish up the foreground. Once that's done, I added in the blue berries.

Fruit Stack ©

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 5x7 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: SOLD

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Pumpkin Trio - An original oil painting by George De Chiara

Pumpkin Trio

 I finished this painting late Friday night and had meant to post this entry sooner, but it's been a very busy weekend around here and this is the first chance I've gotten to write this blog. I really wanted to do one more painting of all the little pumpkins and gourds we bought this year. They really area a treat to paint because of their wonderful colors and variety, which keeps me on my painting toes. 

 We've tried for 2 years now to grow these pumpkins ourselves, but, so far, we haven't had much luck. The first year we tried our crop was destroyed by vine borers that we didn't catch in time. Really, we only had about a day to catch the little nasties before the damage was done and the plant dies. But gardening optimism never dies around this house, and, this year, we had a really promising crop going. We even had a rather nice medium-sized pumpkin ripening on the vine when a hungry racoon wandered by and ate it. Then, as you may have heard, Texas had a record-setting summer for heat and almost no rain. No matter how hard I tried to keep the patch going, the conditions where just too much for the plants and we lost everything towards the end of August.  The garden hose is just no substitute for rain and rain barrel systems are dependent on that magical nectar from the sky. I hoping next year, our third time trying, will be the charm.  We are, after all, ever optimistic.

Here's how this painting came to life:

This picture was taken at the end of my rough block-in. There's very little paint on the canvas at this point. Most of this is completed with a little color thinned down with turpentine. The biggest advantage of this approach is the paint is more or less dry when the turpentine evaporates and it really doesn't lift when I paint on top of it. I can also make changes very easily with just a paper towel dipped in turpentine. This is how most of the lighter areas are achieved.

Well, you have to start somewhere, and, for this painting, I started with the yellow and orange pumpkin in the back. This turned out to be the second most difficult one to paint, but more on that later. Once I had  a pretty good start, I started to work on the background and adjusting the shape of the pumpkin.

I continued to refine the background a bit more before starting on the white pumpkin. This one turned out to be the most difficult one to paint out of the three. I was seeing so many different colors in it that I really had to slow down and take my time with my mixing to get it. In the end, I'm not sure I got all the color variety I was actually seeing, but I'm pretty happy with it.

The finished painting:

Pumpkin Trio ©

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.

Natalie's Pumpkin - Original oil painting by George De Chiara

Natalie's Pumpkin

 Last year, I painted one of these small pumpkins and named it after my then one year old daughter, so it only seemed fitting that I use my newest daughter's name for this year's small pumpkin painting. She's way too young (2 months old) to have actually picked out this pumpkin, but it's the smallest one we have this year and it seemed fitting to name it after her. What attracted me to this little one was the stem. I loved that it had that little stringy bit and that I could pose it almost any way I wanted to for my painting.  I had to be careful though; I accidentally broke off one of the little vines off of it while working out this arrangement.

Below is how today's painting came to life:

First off, this photograph will show you what I was looking at while painting this today. I think I may have had my camera a little low when I took this image, but it's close. You might notice that I simplified the bit of vine that's still on the pumpkin in the painting. In the end, I felt that was just too busy and went with a simpler version of what was there.

This image was taken at the end of my rough block-in. Yes, it's very rough at this stage, but I wanted to see if I could keep things a little looser in the beginning and still get the result I wanted. With that in mind, I felt this was all the block-in I needed to before getting started with more defined painting.

I started with the pumpkin with large simple shapes once my rough block-in had dried a little bit. First, I defined the light areas and then the shadow areas. From there, I kept refining it by building up the form as I went along. I only painted the foreground colors when I needed to define and correct the outer edges of the pumpkin.

Natalie's Pumpkin ©

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.

Fragile - Original Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Fragile

Fragile is the latest painting to roll out of the studio. I actually finished this one a few days ago, but things have been super busy here and I'm finally getting a chance to write my blog post about it now. I'm not really sure what inspired this one. I was playing around with a few different objects in my shadow box trying to come up with something that I liked when I noticed that most of the things I had grabbed were all glass. Hmm..., I thought, that might be an interesting idea. All glass! What do I have to lose? So I immediately went to work finding all the interesting glass objects in my collection of still life objects. I spent an hour or two trying a few different arrangements before focusing on and fine tuning this one. The last touch was to add a little colored water into bottle on the little plate. Then it was time to paint. Below is how this painting came to life:

First off, here's a photograph of approximately what I was looking at while painting. Some of the color is really lacking in this image. When I was painting from this arrangement, it seemed to me that the green bottle was a little lighter in color, with a lot more yellow in it and that blue bottle in the foreground was a lot darker. This is one of the reasons I prefer to paint from life when ever it's possible.

This image was taken at the end of my rough block-in, about 45 minutes of painting time. The goal at this stage for me is to make sure I can fit everything on the canvas that I want, and to get a very rough indication of the color and shape of each object. I'm using a mixture of paint thinned with turpentine, color mixtures with white added to them, and a paper towel dipped in turpentine to wipe out areas of the canvas to create shapes.

Once the block-in is finished, I give it a few minutes to dry so when I start to paint on top of it, the colors don't lift and blend. I'm starting with the glass bottle in the foreground. I think this is a good place to start since it has some of the lightest lights in it and some of the darkest darks. It's also the area I want to be my center of interest.

I more or less worked across the canvas, concentrating on the glass objects. I figured once I had those done, the rest of the painting should go pretty quickly. Once I got to this point, I felt I had all the glass objects well under control and mostly finished, so I concentrated on finishing up the foreground and then give everything one last once over.

Fragile ©

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 9x12 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: SOLD

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Pumpkins - an original oil painting by George De Chiara

Pumpkins

I love this time of the year. The weather finally starts to cool off, the leaves start to change, and the pumpkins go on sale for Halloween. I just love all these miniatures varieties they have out now. When I was a kid, the only type I remember where those that you could carve. Now don't get me wrong, I like those too, but for paintings, I tend to go for the miniatures. They have great color patterns and come in all kinds of colors. Plus, they are a lot of fun to paint so when I ran across these the other day at the gardening store, I just couldn't pass them up. Today, I finally got a chance to use them in painting. Below is how today's painting came to life:

This is what I had set up in my shadow box while I was painting today. The painting is cropped in a little tighter than this image of course, but this will give you a pretty good idea of what I was looking at.

This image was taken at the end of my block-in. Like most of my block-ins, there isn't much paint on the canvas yet. I'm just thinning the paint with turpentine and using a paper towel to wipe out the lighter areas. I did use a little white in my mixtures at this stage, which is something I don't normally do.

Once the block-in is done, I can start refining the painting. I'm starting with the little bird's nest wood carving and the things that surround it. This is going to be my center of interest, and, by starting here, I can better judge the rest of the painting's color and edges to make sure they don't compete too much with this area. The other reason I wanted to start here is because of the wicker bowl that the little white pumpkin is sitting in. I figured this would be a challenge to paint and I want to get that well under control before getting too far into the painting process.

I continue to work out from my starting point, trying to complete each passage as much as possible before moving on. Once I get everything more or less to this point. I'll go back over the painting and make small adjustments where they are needed. You might notice that I painted over the red ribbon that was blocked  in at the beginning. Sometimes I find it easier to paint things like that over the other shapes rather than trying to paint around it. This decision was a little easier to make since I didn't have a very good block-in of the ribbon.

The finished painting:

Pumpkins ©

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.

Apples and Peaches. A step-by-step demo by George De Chiara

Apples and Peaches

In yesterday's post, I talked about how I came up with this arrangement of objects for the still life below. Today's post is all about the painting decisions. Like my other process blog posts, I tried to take pictures at each major step.. Now, let's get on with the demo!

Since one of the things I really wanted to work on is my accuracy in drawing what I see in front of me, I started this painting with a line drawing. Admittedly, the drawing is rough, but this should be enough to get me started down the right road. I'll continue to adjust the shapes as I paint them and get everything to "settle" into place on the canvas. That's one of the wonderful things about painting in oils; I can continue to adjust and refine my painting until I'm happy with it.

I love to get the color work as fast as I can. For me, this is the most exciting part of the painting; however, I don't want to sacrifice accuracy for pretty colors, so I did this very rough color pass to get everything blocked in and establish my color harmony. There isn't much paint on the canvas yet. This is all done with very dry paint scrubbed onto the surface. Some of this paint will show through when the painting is finished. Other parts will get wiped off and started over as I progress with the painting, but for now this gives me a pretty good idea where things are and what color they are.

Once my rough block-in is finished, I can start to refine the painting more and spend time getting things drawn accurately. Notice how the blue bottle has moved slightly to the right and the apples have settled into their place. That peach on the far left will need to move too. I didn't notice in my block in, but I have it way too high in the picture and there isn't enough space between it and the watch, which is leaning on the box. I didn't actually notice this until I had the whole peach painted (after this image was taken). I then had to scrape it off and move it. Not sure why I didn't notice it before I painted it, so I'll chalk that one up to laziness, the painter's enemy!

Just about done now. Notice the new position for the peach on the left? It looks much happier there doesn't it? I know I'm happier with its position, since I can fit the blue ribbon into place now. For me, this ribbon is a very important part of the painting. It can take the eye from the edge of the painting right into the heart of it, so being able to accurately fit it in is important.

The finished painting.

Apples and Peaches

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 8x10 inches on linen panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: SOLD

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Some thoughts on setting up a still life by George De Chiara

 Sometimes I think the most challenging part of painting a still life is setting it up. There are so many decisions one has to make, such as what objects to use, how many, and where to place them, just to name a few. When I first starting painting still lifes, I was lost about how to set one up. Through trial and error, I have learned a few things since then, although I'm a long way from mastering the set up.  Undoubtedly, that mastery only comes after many years of practice.

In the beginning, my first few attempts at setting up my still life arrangements where all pretty much the same. I'd take a few objects and just sort of arrange them in some very basic way. I paid attention to some simple compositional rules, like not having anything dead center, avoid tangents, and try to have the shapes overlap a little, but all of those early paintings seemed to fall flat. They didn't grab my eye or lead it around the painting in any way. I needed to come up with some way to have a... well, theme, for a lack of a better word. The theme idea allowed me to have a context to arrange my thoughts. Now, I realize this may seem obvious, but it actually took me a while to realize this. Almost all of my previous experience with arranging still lifes was in very academic manner. Think dark background, wine glasses or a candle in a wine bottle, or a pile of grapes, so this is what I was recreating for the most part.  Thankfully, I never used the candle in a bottle. Once I started thinking in the terms of my theme, I noticed it got a little easier.

 Now you may be thinking the theme is something like music or your daughters first years memories, but this is not really what I mean by theme. To me, the theme is more of an abstract thought. For instance, one of my favorite theme ideas is "white water rapids," while another is "hay bales". Now, I'm not literally trying to paint these things in my still life; rather, I use these themes to help me arrange the objects in my still life. Somehow by thinking in these real world terms, I find it easier to come up with interesting compositions. Maybe it's the years I've spent painting landscapes before introducing still life paintings to my repertoire. Either way, it's almost become second nature to me now. The other thing I always try to work into my set ups is the appearance that there is more to the still life than what is painted, like if you could expand the canvas there would be something there.

For this blog, I photographed the progression of setting up a still life. Hopefully, this is interesting to a few of you.

For this still life, my "theme" was waterfalls. This means that I need to have lots of vertical size changes, like the rocks hidden within a waterfall. I also wanted to creat the feeling of depth or that misty atmosphere you sometimes see with very large waterfalls. For this reason, the first thing I did was set up lots of thin layers of material scraps, printed paper and ribbons.

Most of this will get covered up as I add more objects to my still life. Once I start to develop this more, I'll move and re-arrange these objects a bit, but for now this should be good enough to get me started.

My aim now is to build up different layers of height and vertical shapes. In my theme idea, the books represent the rocks at the bottom of a water wall, while the ribbons are the flow of the water. This also make it very easy for me to pick out which objects to use because I need something that gives me that variety in height. I do tend to grab the newer objects that I've acquired before relying on the old stand bys. In this case, my new stuff is that old wooden box and thin blue bottle. It's at this point that I start using my view finder to help guide where I'm placing these objects.

Now it's time to start adding the meat of the arrangement, so to speak. The fruit will most likely be the most interesting things to look at in the finished painting, which I consider the splash of this symbolic waterfall. I usually start this part of the process by first just getting the fruit into the still life about where I want it. Then, looking through my view finder again, I'll start to adjust the position and arrangement of the fruit. Notice how in the next image I have moved the fruit in ways both obvious and subtle.

This is the final arrangement that I'll paint. I've removed the book on the far left since it just sort of felt like it was barely leaning into the painting. I also felt this helped stop the eye from leaving the painting, since the larger dark green book acts like a stop and there's not much on the other side of it to attract the eye toward the edge of the canvas. I added the jewelry in the foreground lower left corner to help fill in this area, while still leaving a lot of open space. The open space invites the eye into the painting and once in, the jewelry and ribbons help lead the eye towards the focal area, the fruit and plate. I echoed the jewelery in a few other places as well, like on the wooden box and right behind the red piece of cloth. These should, hopefully, be nice little discoveries for the eye as it looks around the painting and hopefully continue to re-direct the viewer's eye back toward the center of interest. I also added a few other round shapes, like the watch and white coaster behind the apples, to help repeat the shape of the plate. The last change I made might be hard to notice just by viewing the images, but I rotated the apple right behind the plate so the darker red side of it on the shadow side. Why? Well, for me this is an easier way to paint it. I've found that if I try to have the darker colored side on the light side of the object it's usually a struggle for me to get it to read correctly. This seems to just lend it's self better to the lighting in the arrangement. I missed doing this same thing to the peach right next to it, but that's fine. I don't seem to have this issue with other types of fruit, just apples for some reason.

Well, that's it. This is basically how I come up with the arrangements for my still life paintings. I try to take my time and study the arrangement before diving in and painting it. On this set up, I spent about 2 hours arranging everything and making all the little tweaks I wanted to. I spent a lot of time studying it though my view finder to make sure I'm happy with where everything is. My view finder is divided into halves, creating four quadrants of equal size. I usually try to have an interesting arrangement of shapes in each quadrant of the view finder and to have some of the shapes overlap the quadrants next to it.  The only thing left to do now is paint it. That will be the next blog post, so be sure to check back!

Fresh Clippings - Original Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Fresh Clippings

Win this painting! It's simple, just like my Facebook page and when I reach 200 fans, I'll have a drawing to see who wins the painting. No strings attached, no gimmicks, it's really that easy to win. Currently, I'm at 180 fans, so someone will be winning this painting soon. You can like my page here.

 I've had these flowers growing in a pot out by our garden all summer. Somehow through the 60 plus days of 100 degree weather we've had, I've been able to keep them alive and growing. That is until the other day when I was mowing the lawn and accidentally knocked the pot off the ledge it was on. It flipped over and landed upside down, breaking almost all the flower stems. I couldn't believe my bad luck! When I was done mowing, I went back and cut all the broken stems off and put the flowers in a vase. I originally thought I would paint them that way, but I wasn't happy with the way they looked in the vase, so I finally took them out and laid them down in this arrangement. While this made for a better painting, it did, ultimately, spell the doom the flowers.

Here's how the painting came to life:

Believe it or not, this is the end of my rough block-in. I used a different panel that I normally do for this painting, and the paint went on a little differently. This surface is a linen, which I've used before, but this one seemed to really dry my initial washes out quickly and didn't really allow for the blending and lifting I normally do with a paper towel. This is why the flowers aren't blocked in at this point. I had planned to do this by wiping them out.

One of the really nice advantages of this panel is I could paint with very dry layers of paint to build up color and variety. The entire little red tin is painted with dry brush strokes, which allowed for the paint underneath to show through a little. I really like this effect because of the sense of texture it gives the painting. The flower is painted with thicker brush strokes.

Before I painted in the rest of the flowers, I really wanted to make sure I had the plate well drawn and painted, which is what I wanted to concentrate on in this image. Once I had this under control, I painted in the flowers, stems and leaves. 

The finished painting.

Fresh Clippings

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 5x7 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: NFS

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Hot Terra Cotta by George De Chiara

Hot Terra Cotta

 It's been a little over a week, maybe even closer to 2 weeks, since I last painted. Raising a newborn and a 22 month old has really started to catch up with me and my wife. We both are starting look a little exhausted and sleep deprived at this point, but there is hope. The baby is starting to sleep longer at night and our 22 month old is starting to adjust to her new sister and slipping back into her routines.

Anyway, I've been thinking about doing this painting for a while now. It's a commission piece for one of my collectors who wanted a painting to go along with one of the 50 paintings in 50 days pieces he bought. That painting was of cayenne peppers, so to complement it, he wanted haberneros. Habeneros have beautiful variations in colors that range from bright yellows to deep reds when on the verge of being overripe, so they make great subject matter for still lifes. I really didn't think it would be that hard to find a few good haberneros for this painting, but I had to go to 3 different stores before I found any that didn't look like they've been sitting in the produce section for months.  The first two stores only had the deep red color, which, while pretty, doesn't really capture my interest. Finally, I headed to the Mexican market and found what I was looking for. With these colorful peppers in hand, I was anxious to get back to the studio and start painting again.

Now, I seem to get rusty quickly when it comes to painting. Too long of a break (anything over 3 days) and I'm paying for it the first few days back. Knowing this, I made sure not to rush the painting process. Instead, I committed to wiping off anything I didn't like and taking as much time as needed to get something I was happy with. After a few days, I seemed to be back in the swing of things and I was able to finish up this painting.

Here's how it came to life:

Here's a photograph of the still life I was painting. You might notice I didn't paint the little pepper at the top of the terra-cotta pot that's standing up. Originally, I thought I would pull back a little further, but once I started placing the painting on the canvas, I realized I needed to crop in a little tighter to get the right feel. After I did this, I really didn't like the way that pepper looked, just barely squeaking into the painting, so I left it out.

This image was taken at the end of my rough block-in. This was actually the second block-in I did. The first one was pulled back a little more, but I think it made the peppers too small in the picture, and, since they are the reason my client commissioned this painting, I wanted to make sure they were very prominent. You might also notice that I only blocked in one little pepper just to the right of the plate. Originally, that's all I had there. Once I got to that portion of the painting, I felt it needed more interest, so I added another pepper.

I give the block-in a few minutes to dry so it doesn't blend with the more accurate colors I start to use in this stage. Most of the paint at this point is still pretty thin, except for the plate and the peppers on it. This was the area I started with, so it's the most complete at this point. The peppers are mostly all painted with the same colors, Cadmium Yellow Deep, Cadmium Red and Cadmiun Yellow Pale, just mixed in different ratios with each other.

At this point, I've more or less finished off the top half of the canvas. Since I had given most of the painting a good once over in the previous stage, this part of the painting went pretty quickly. The terra-cotta pots are painted with different mixtures of Terra Rosa, Cadmium Yellow Pale, Cadmium Red and Viridian. To finish the painting off from here, I pretty much worked from the middle down. I spent some time trying a few different arrangements of peppers to the right of the plate. I liked the two peppers close together the best out of everything I tried. I feel it gives this area a little interest and by having the stem touch the plate it really tied the left and right half of the painting together well.

The finished painting.

Hot Terra Cotta

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.

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 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 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 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 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.