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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.

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.

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.

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.

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

Jump Up

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

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

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

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

The finished painting.

Jump Up

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

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

Book Worm

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The finished painting.

Book Worm

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 6 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Sweet and Sour - by George De Chiara

Sweet and Sour

For today's painting, I wanted to continue to explore the compositional possibilities of the fruit I used yesterday. I changed out the apple for an orange - just for a change of color and texture. I also did not use the pear again, but something close to the same shape, a sugar bowl. The sugar bowl caught my eye this morning sitting in our cupboard. I knew as soon as I saw it sitting in the cabinet that I wanted to use it in my painting today. I really like the color and design of it. With my battery fully recharged for my camera, I took a few extra step-by-step photographs today to make up for the lack of them yesterday.

This is approximately what I'm looking at while I painted today. You might notice I didn't totally get rid of the apple like I said earlier, but I'm using so little of it I might as well have.  Like the other step-by-step blogs, this image is just to show you what I'm painting. I painted this from life.

My initial wash and drawing. I'm using a lot of turpentine to thin down my oil colors. I also try to use colors close to the actual colors. You can see this in the orange pretty clearly. Notice how even in this stage, I've blocked in some of the shadow color already. I find if I can leave some of these areas in the final painting, it helps to give the painting a sense of air to it. It's not always possible, but I always keep my eye out for the possibility.

Once I'm happy with my block in, I can start to refine my colors and shapes. I'm painting thick over thin, meaning I build up my painting layers with each one containing more paint, and, thus, being more opaque. I try to keep the shadow areas thin and the lighter areas thick.

From the initial area, I can now work outward. In this case, I'm working mostly front to back. I enjoy working like this since by starting one object, I can bring the previous object to an almost complete start. Notice how by painting the orange, I can pretty much finish off the plum in front of it and get a pretty good idea of where the plate is that the plums sit on.

At this point, I try to get most of the object the foreground blocked in further. The plums are at a pretty finished state at this point, but I'll continue to refine the plate as I work on the objects behind it and the green striped portion of the foreground.

 Now I continue to work on the objects in the background. First the sugar cup, and then the little hand fans that make up the back most objects. I leave out just about all the details in both of these objects until I'm completely happy with their shapes and values.

I'm just about done at this stage. I've even started to add in some of the details in the background objects. From this point, I try to go over everything in the painting making any final adjustments to the shapes, colors and edges of each object.

Here's the final painting one last time. I hope you enjoyed seeing how I painted this painting and reading some of my thoughts about each stage of the work. I'm never sure how much detail to go into with these things, so if there's something I'm not talking about that you would like to know, let me know. I'd be happy to answer any questions I can.

Sweet and Sour

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 5 of the 50 Day painting challenge - On The Spot - by George De Chiara

On The Spot

We seem to have a lot of fruit in the house these days. Our 20 month old daughter just can't get enough, so we keep things well stocked. I don't mind since I like to use fruit in my still life paintings and it's nice to have lots of models to choose from. For today's painting, I grabbed some of the many plums we have along with the last apple and pear. This is the first traditional still life arrangement I've tried with this square format. It presents some interesting compositional challenges. I kept finding that I had edges falling on the center mark if I wasn't careful. To avoid this, I used my view finder that has hash marks on the center to constantly view my arrangement and make adjustments. Once I was happy with my set up, I was able to start painting. I have to warn you, my camera battery died half way into this painting today so the demo is going to be a little short. Sorry...

Here's the arrangement, more or less from the angel I was viewing it at. Like all the other challenge paintings so far, I painted this from life and this photo it just to give you an idea of what I was seeing.

My initial drawing stage. This is just some very thin oil paint pushed around with a brush and paper towel. I don't use very much color at this stage as I'm mostly concerned with getting the placement of the objects correct. Once I'm happy with this, I let the painting dry for a few minutes. This lets the turpentine evaporate and the canvas is more or less totally dry when I start to paint again. By doing this, I avoid getting my next layer of color to thinned from the turp's on the canvas.

Now I start to lay down some color. Nothing is at its final stage yet. I'm just trying to work out some value changes and get some basic color down. Right after I took this photograph, I scraped off the pear and most of the blue paint behind it. I felt the color was starting to get a little muddy. Rather than add clean color on top of the muddy color, I wanted to remove it first.

Here you can get a better idea of how I worked on this. Notice the plum on the right just has some basic color right now and the objects I started with are now a little more complete. It's sort of a 2 steps forward, one step back approach. I block in an object or two, then go back and refine what I have painted before. I continue in this manner until I'm happy with the whole painting. Right after I took this photograph, my camera battery died. It takes a few hours to charge and I didn't have the time to wait before finishing this painting, so I pushed on.

Here is the completed painting once more:

On The Spot

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 Bowl - Original Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Fruit Bowl

 We've had this bowl of fruit in the kitchen for a few weeks now. Every week or so the fruit gets changed out, as we eat what's in the bowl and refill it. I've thought about painting it off and on, but could never seem to come up with a composition that I liked. I think the problem was that I kept trying to use just the bowl with the fruit to come up with something. This time, I added in more objects to make a more complete composition. It took an hour or two  to come up with an arrangement that worked with this bowl of fruit, but in the end, I was happy, which made the painting much easier to complete.

Fruit Bowl

 
Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 9 inches x 12 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.
Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

The Trio - Original Painting by George De Chiara

The Trio

 Wel, I hope this week goes better than the last one. I had fully intended to paint last week, but just couldn't seem to find the needed time.  The was largely because my wife and I tried to catch up on all the things we let slide while on vacation during the holidays. The good thing is that we are finally all caught up and I look forward to spending some much needed time in the studio this week. 

 I had started to paint these apples last week when I had a little time, but wasn't happy with my results so I wiped my canvas.  They were still set up in my still life box, though, so I thought I'd try them one more time today. I knew the mistakes I made last time, like getting into to much detail too fast and muddying the colors, so I was careful to avoid those same pitfalls this time. This time I made sure I blocked everything in first, then slowly worked in the detail I wanted.  Additionally, I kept my colors clean along with my palette, which really helps to keep things from getting too muddy.

The Trio

 
Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 5 inches x 7 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to go to ebay auction.
Initialed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Daily Painting - Room For One

Room For One

 I've been dying to paint this vase since I bought it a few weeks ago. It has such interesting color to it when the light shines through it. I also have a taller, skinner one that I can't wait to use in a set up one day. While I was painting this, I kept thinking to myself that the one apple stuck in the vase had turned to the other apples who where hoping to get in and said "There's only room for one, fellas." Of course, the next thought in my head was, how can I make that into a shorter title.

 This painting will be in an upcoming show with the Artists Of Texas at the Dutch Art Gallery in Dallas. I'll post more information in the next few days. It should be an exciting event. This is the first year I'll be showing with this group.

Daily Painting - Sliced Apple

Sliced Apple

  One of the appeals of oil painting for me is the option to use a painting knife, which allows for a very thick application of the paint and strong edges. It also lend itself to some very interesting color blending since the knife can blend the colors as you're painting with it. I just got a new set and wanted to test them out. They looked so shiny and clean sitting next to my pallet and I knew I couldn't leave them like that! While normally I believe you should use the correct tool for the job at hand, I really wanted to practice with my new knifes. I did almost this entire painting with them. I used a few brush strokes in the end to clean up a few of the edges and correct a little drawing here and there, but that's about it.