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Cactus Blooms - An Original 8 x 10 Plein Air Landscape Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Cactus Blooms

 When I came across this cactus, I knew I wanted to paint it. I loved the back lighting, which created an interesting pattern of light and shadow. The bright red and pink blooms where a nice bonus to the scene. I was able to find a nice low location to paint this from, which let me get this rather front on view. The whole time I painted, the cactus was buzzing with activity as bees and other insects flew around it. Occasionally, they would buzz me to see what I was up to and then go back to feeding on the flowers.

Cactus Blooms © 

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 8x10 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.

Maytime Verbena - An Original 8 x 10 Plein Air Landscape Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Maytime Verbena

 This is from one of my favorite places in the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens, and, judging from how many people passed me by while I painted this, I'd say this is a favorite place for a lot of visitors to the garden. This is by the wonderful fountain that sits at the bottom of the cascade leading down to the rose garden. There is so much color in this area right now. Everywhere I looked there was another colorful, vibrant flower blooming.  As a bonus, I was able to paint in a nice patch of shade which is always welcome when the day is full of bright, warm sun. 

Maytime Verbena © 

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 8x10 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.

Researching Roses - A New Original 8 x 10 Plein Air Landscape Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Researching Roses

 Yesterday, before the arrival of today's storms, I took advantage of the light and painted at the Botanical Gardens in Fort Worth. It's an amazing resource and I go there often because there's plenty of room and it's a free public space with so many eye-catching scenes. Although the gardens are quite large and varied, I usually go to the same general area when painting there. This time, however, I decided to try the other end of the gardens where they have a large research building and gardens. I'm not really sure what they are researching with the garden, but the whole thing was in full bloom. I found this rose bush with hundreds of buds bursting open. I loved the contrast between the shady background and the sun drenched flowers. 

Researching Roses © 

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 8x10 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.

Blowin' In The Wind - A New Original 8 x 8 Plein Air Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Blowin' In The Wind

 Just down the road from where I live, there's a little nature area. I often go to it to paint since it's so close and I can usually find something that piques my interest. Every Spring, the park blooms with wild flowers like bluebonnets, purple verbena, buttercups, and pink evening primroses. Last year's show was unbelievable, and I must have done 4 or 5 paintings there! This year is starting off a little slower, but slowly, things are picking up. Right now the Indian Blankets are starting to come in. If we can just get a little rain, the while field would light up over night. For now though, there are a few really going good. This painting has several of them in it. It was windy while I tried to paint these, which made for an interesting painting experience. I had to look at the one I wanted to paint while it was still and then try to paint it before the wind blew it around. Fun indeed!

Blowin' In The Wind © 

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.

Yellow Poppies - An Original 8 x 10 Plein Air Landscape Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Yellow Poppies

 While out driving around looking for places to paint I ran across a patch of yellow poppies. I don't think I've ever seen these before, so I stopped to do this painting of them. I love the color of these! Very bright and saturated. This is a great time to just drive around Texas and discover all the flowers in bloom along our roadways and in the fields. Its like fireworks growing out the dirt! I'm still trying to track down exactly what type of flower these are. So far the closest thing I can find is called a Mexican Poppy, but to be honest I don't think that what these are. I'll have to keep looking.  

Yellow Poppies © 

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 8x10 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.

Cooper Street Flowers - An Original 10 x 8 Plein Air Landscape Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Cooper Street Flowers

 A few years ago, our city started a city beautification program. As part of that program, they spread wild flowers seeds along some of the roadways that didn't already have flowers blooming along them, such as this little strip of land just off Cooper Street. Since these wild flowers all re-seed themselves every year, the crop of them keeps getting better and better, especially if we have rain during winter and early spring. This is my first time painting this particular patch of wild flowers, but it will not be my last now that where it is. I'll add this spot to my list of places to check when the wild flowers start to bloom next spring.

Cooper Street Flowers © 

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

In Bloom - An Original 8 x 8 Landscape Oil Painting by George De Chiara

In Bloom

 My wife and I went to Oklahoma a few years ago for a quiet little vacation. With plans to do nothing more than hike and enjoy the wilderness, we set out to see the sights. We hiked along river beds flowing with water, trails leading up the mountain sides and around lakes and some trails that just seemed to meander through fields and forests. Somewhere along one of these hikes we ran across this hill-side scattered with rocks and covered in wild flowers. I snapped a reference photo of it with the intentions of doing a studio painting once back home. Since then I have done a few smaller studies of this scene, including this one: 

In Bloom © 

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.

Spring In Texas - An Original 10 x 8 Plein Air Landscape Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Spring In Texas

 The wildflowers are blooming everywhere, even with the crazy weather and dry conditions. It's such a pleasure to watch the  ordinary hillside explode with the colors of spring. First the yellows peek up, then the pinks, and now, those glorious Texas bluebonnets. Probably thanks the Lady Bird Johnson, I found these on a hillside next to the highway. Luckily, I knew of a location to see and paint these from that didn't involve standing anywhere close to the busy freeway, though I've been tempted many times to just pull over on the shoulder of the interstate and paint with reckless abandon.

Spring In Texas © 

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Spring Dance - An Original 8 x 8 Landscape Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Spring Dance

 Well, we are just a few days into spring, and, while it seemed like we had left winter behind, apparently we had not. Like many parts of the country, winter weather made its way back into our lives this week. While we generally have it pretty good here in Texas weatherwise this time of year, today it turned cold and gray outside all day, with the next few days forecast of be more of the same. Determined to make the best of it, I took a look through my photo reference for some images of wild flowers to paint today. One way or another, I was going to get a bit of spring color into my day. I know it's just a matter of time before I can paint scenes like this outdoors again. I can hardly wait!

 I know a lot of people say that red is one of the hardest color to photograph, but for me it's yellow. These flowers really seem to have lost some of the subtle color changes that they have when I photographed them. I've noticed this on a few other painting that have a lot of yellow in them too. If anyone has any tips for getting better results I'm all ears. Thanks!

Spring Dance © 

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.

Spring Whites - An Original 8 x 8 Floral Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Spring Whites

 For the last few weeks, I've tried to get over to the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens to check on the new spring blooms. Today when I went, there were a few more flowers blooming than last week, but still no where close to the big show coming up any day (week) now. Still, it's a great time to be there as new life is popping up everywhere, like these tiny white daffodils. I only found this one little patch of them out in the middle of a field. On another note...Lesson learned today: don't forget your umbrella when painting in full sun! Since I did forget mine, I had to paint with my back to the flowers to keep my canvas and palette out of the direct sun. I find the direct sun too bright to paint in, so while turning my back to my subject solved this issue, it did make for an interesting time painting. I had to turn and look at what I was going to paint and then turn around and paint it. It actually became a pretty neat exercise in painting from memory.

Spring Whites © 

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Spring Has Sprung - An Original 8x10 Plein Air Landscape Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Spring Has Sprung

 It's official...spring is on its way here in Texas...or maybe it's already here. It's hard to tell when it's 92 degrees outside. If it's not here, then I know it will be soon because the Bradford Pears have started to bloom. For me, this always marks the start of the spring. First the tress, then the wildflowers and finally the garden! Everywhere I look I'm seeing more and more trees full of little while flowers. In a few more weeks, they will drop the flowers and put on leaves. For day's it will look like it's snowing with all the pedals blowing in the wind. Since these trees don't produce a fruit this is their big show for the year. 

Spring Has Sprung © 

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 8x10 inches on canvas panel.  
Medium: Original Oil Painting 
Frame: none
Availability: Currently available. $135

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Early Risers - An Original 8x10 Plein Air Floral Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Early Risers

 On a whim today, I went over to the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens to see if anything was blooming yet. It's early, but I heard that the Dallas Gardens are just about ready to come alive, so I thought Fort Worth can't be that far behind. There isn't a lot blossoming just yet, but I did find this little patch of very early daffodils and thought they were perfect for this late winter's day. I had to pick and choose which one's I wanted to include, which is always a fun exercise. In another week or two, there should be all kinds of things to paint. I can't wait!

Early Risers © 

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

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

For The Birds

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

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

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

For The Birds © 

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

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

Pink Beauty

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

Pink Beauty © 

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

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

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

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.

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

Spring's Encore

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

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

Detail of Spring's Encore

Spring's Encore © 

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

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

In The Brush

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

In The Brush © 

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

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

White Rose

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

White Rose © 

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

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

Coreopsis In The Morning

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

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

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

Coreopsis In The Morning © 

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Through The Rose Garden - An original 6x8 landscape oil painting by George De Chiara

Through The Rose Garden

 Hmm...I'm not sure how this happened, but it's taken me almost 4 months to post this painting. It was one of the last ones I did right before I packed up my old studio and started work on the new space. I guess I just forgot about it with everything else going on. I rediscovered it while gathering up all the paintings I had in different locations around the house to dry while I was studioless.

 I painted this at the Fort Worth Botanical Gardens on a beautiful sunny day. This is at the far end of the walkway and trellis that runs though the rose garden. I just love the way the light was hitting the upright supports for the trellis and the light and dark patterns it created. I also was intrigued by the distance I could see from this view. If you look closely, you will notice the fountain at the end of the path in the background. In real life, this has to be about 150 yards from where I was standing. At the gardens, it's rare to find a view that long that isn't obstructed by something. 

Through The Rose Garden © 

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x8 inches on canvas panel.  
Medium: Original Oil Painting 
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid on this painting.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

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

Turkish Caps

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

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

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

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

Turkish Caps © 

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

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

Botanical Garden Roses

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

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

Botanical Garden Roses © 

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Trumpet Vines - An original 6x8 landscape oil painting by George De Chiara

Trumpet Vines

Those of you who read this blog any regularity will notice that this is my first post in a few weeks. You may recall one of my last posts where I mentioned that I was moving my studio and needed to renovate the new space first. Well, I'm happy to report that project is now done! In fact, I'm writing this post from the comfort of my new studio. While this project took much longer then I anticipated (don't they always?), I couldn't be happier with the results. I have a little more space then I use to, a lot more natural light and much better views of the outdoors. I do, unfortunately, have a roof leak that I still need to fix and a few repairs to do inside once that's fixed, but other than that my new studio is up and running now. 

 One of the first projects I wanted to tackle in my new studio was to finish up a plein air sketch I started a few weeks ago. Occasionally, I'll get a painting home and just not be satisfied with my results. That was the case with this painting. When I finished painting this on location, I thought I was done with it, but that may have been the 100+ degree sun pouring down on me that made me think that. Once I was back in the comforts of air conditioning and had some fluids in me, I knew I'd have to make some adjustments to this one. Below is my original painting, before I did anything to it in the studio.

While this effort has all of the important notes of color I need, it lacks in a few other areas. It's a little too loose for my tastes and has far too many soft edges. The background is rather plain and has a whole lot of green in it. It also lacks any interest or excitement. Even with all these issues, I think I could make this the painting I wanted to paint out there in the heat, in the coolness of my studio. 

 The first thing I did was Google a few images of Trumpet Vines to help refresh my memory. Between those images and my original painting, I felt I had enough information to begin reworking the painting. One interesting thing I discovered while looking at the images my search returned is that it can take up to 5 years to get blooms in this vine. 5 years! That's long time to just watch a vine grow, but once they bloom they really are amazing flowers to look at. I'm just not sure I have the patience to wait that long, since I get frustrated when my flower seeds don't burst into bloom as soon as they spring from the ground.

Here's the finished painting. What do you think? Is this one better to you?

Trumpet Vine © 

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 6x8 inches on canvas panel.  
Medium: Original Oil Painting 
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid on this painting.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

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

Blowing In The Wind

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

Blowing In The Wind © 

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Interlocken Wild Flowers - An original 8x6 plein air landscape oil painting by George De Chiara

Interlocken Wild Flowers

I had looked at this location for a few days before I went and did this painting, so I thought I had a pretty good idea of what I was going to paint when I headed out. I had planned on doing a close-up study of the wildflowers and not the grander view I wound up painting. I had a change of heart on my drive over when I noticed the wonderful clouds we had on this day. I'm a real sucker for a good sky and whenever I see one I want to include it in my paintings. I was also thinking about how the trees behind the flowers usually had a great pattern of light and shadow on them every time I went and looked at this scene. By the time I arrived I knew I was not going to do the painting I had intended and instead I'd do the view depicted in this painting. I found a nice little shady spot to set up in and got to work painting. 

PS - My posts have been a little sparse lately while I finish up the remodeling project on my new studio space and a few other rooms around the house. I can finally start to see some of the light at the end of that tunnel and hope to be posting at a more regular pace soon!

Interlocken Wild Flowers © 

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 8x6 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.

"Wine Cups and Indian Blankets" - An original 8x6 inch landscape oil painting by George De Chiara

Wine Cups and Indian Blankets

 We've been very lucky this year to have such wonderful wildflower blooms. First, we had bluebonnets as far as the eye could see and now indian blankets are popping up everywhere. It seems like there are thousands of them this year along with a great mix of wine cups, indian paintbrushes, and a whole bunch more whose names I still need to learn. I find it almost impossible to drive anywhere right now because every few feet I want to stop and paint the flowers while they are here. When I see them I know I need to act on it quickly before they are gone. For example, this painting was intended to be bluebonnets. I had found a very nice patch of them in Arlington's Interlochen area by Rush Creek, but didn't have time to paint them then. I went back a few days later and most of the bluebonnets had gone to seed already. Luckily, they where being replaced by these indian blankets and wine cups. I'm not sure what the little red flowers are in the foreground. This was the first time I've seen them. If you know what they are, please let me know. Thanks:)

Wine Cups and Indian Blankets © 

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 8x6 inches on canvas panel.  
Medium: Original Oil Painting 
Frame: Framing available through gallery.
Availability: Available through The Dutch Art Gallery.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Incoming Storm - An original landscape oil painting by George De Chiara

Incoming Storm

This was painted during the Outdoor Painters Society paint out in Ennis (TX). Due to some other commitments, I was only able to go the paint out on one day. It just happen to be the one day that we had storms. Being ever the optimist, we headed out for the hour drive in cloudy weather thinking that the storm would blow out soon. Well, we got there and found a place to paint, but the clouds were still around. With nothing left to do, I set up my easel and hoped for the best. About 10 minutes after I started painting, the rain started coming down. I put up my umbrella and continued to paint, still thinking it was only matter of time before the storm blew out. After about 90 minutes of painting under the protection of my umbrella, the rain finally stopped. Well...I thought it stopped. About 30 minutes later another storm came in with lots of thunder and lighting. While I don't mind painting in the rain, as soon as I see lighting it's time to pack it up and that's just what we did. As quickly as I could I broke down my easel and packed up my gear. We got everything in the car just as the heavy rain started to come down. Of course as soon as we made the hour drive back home, the sun came out! That's just part of the adventure with painting outdoors.

Incoming Storm © 

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

Tandy Hills - An original oil painting by George De Chiara

 We've been very lucky to have so much rain this spring. Not only is everything green and our lakes are filled back up from last year's drought, but we've had one of the best wildflower shows in year. It seems like every field, ditch and unmown area has something blooming in it. While we are getting past the peak now, I was able to get out a few times when things were really going strong and paint. This painting is from Tandy Hills, a wonderful nature area just outside Fort Worth. All of the fields were in full of color when I went there. Unfortunately, you can also see the results of last years drought. That little pine just couldn't make it, but it did go out in a blaze of color.

Tandy Hills © 

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

Snow Irises - A commissioned painting by George De Chiara

Irises in Snow

One of the reasons I enjoy doing commissioned paintings is I never know what someone will ask me to paint. This request was one of those wonderful surprises - irises in snow. I grew up in cold climates and must have seen scenes like this at the start of every Spring, but I've lived in Texas now for so long that this image just never crosses my mind anymore. That is, until I was asked to paint it by one of my collectors. This turned out to be a bigger challenge then I thought it would be. In the end, I found it easier to paint the flowers making sure I got all the petals in the proper place and then put the snow on top of them. When I just tried to paint the snow with parts of the pedals coming out of it, it never looked right. I only took a few step-by-step images of this painting coming to life, but hopefully this will give you some idea of how I approached this painting.

I took this image at the end of my rough block-in. For me, the goal of this stage is to work out the placement of all the large shapes of my painting, making sure there is room for everything, and that I have a pleasing composition. The color is rough and is just meant as a placeholder, something to give me an idea of what colors go where, but is by no means meant to be the final color. I do try to let some of this underpainting show through in the final painting when possible since I think it lends a sense of "air" to the painting. 

Since the rough block-in is all done with very thin paint, it doesn't take long for it to dry. It's just a little oil paint thinned with turpentine, so in a few minutes when the turpentine evaporates, the paint is more or less dry. Then I can start to go back into those initial washes and refine the shapes, color and edges. You can see in this image I'm still trying to paint the snow on top of the flowers first. In the end, I scraped off this snow, painted the flower pedals and then placed the snow on top of them.

The final painting:

Irises in Snow © 

 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.

Tea Rose - An original oil painting by George De Chiara

Tea Rose

Believe it or not, the Botanical Garden in Fort Worth is still in full bloom this late into November. In fact, in some places it looks more like spring than fall as flowers bloom and reach for the sky. The Rose Garden is no exception with every rose bush full of fragrant full blooms that are all popping with amazing color! This morning I met a group of fellow painters out there and it seemed like almost everyone fixated on the flowers today. I chose to paint these Tea Roses between the fountain and the lake. These are just a few of the many flowers blooming on a very large bush. The whole time I was painting this I could smell the roses, even over the oil paints! What a lovely surprise.

Tea Rose © 

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.

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.

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.

Day 21 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Texas Wild Flowers - by George De Chiara

Texas Wild Flowers

 Today I once again turned to some of my photo reference for inspiration.  Last year, I took some photos of the south Texas wild flowers blooming and decided to do something with them today. Spring of 2010 was an explosion of color everywhere I looked. My in-law's house is surrounded by fields that all bloomed. One had these yellow sun flowers as far as the eye could see, and another had these little white and blue and purple flowers everywhere. I just couldn't decide which one to paint, so I did the next best thing. I took  the two images I couldn't decide on into Photoshop and combined them. 

Here's how today's painting came about:

This is my very rough block in, but its enough to get started with. The placement of the blooms is more or less worked out. I know it's hard to see, but as the image progresses, it should be easier to notice that those yellow spots will become flowers. Even though the drawing is very loose at this point, it is still carefully done. I moved around the main yellow flowers a few times to get them placed where I wanted. Since the paint is so thin at this stage it's pretty simple to move things around.

Now I can start to work in thicker paint and more accurate drawing. I've started with this spot because it's close to my center of interest and it will help me establish my lightest lights and darkest darks right off the bat.

Now, I'm just continuing out from where I started. I try to be as careful as I can with the shapes I paint. To get to this stage took a while and I'm not sure why, but I didn't stop to take any pictures from this point on. I remember I kept thinking to myself, I'll stop just as soon as I solve this problem or that problem, but just when I starting thinking about taking a picture another problem would pop up and I'd forget about taking a photograph. Really that's what painting is, it's problem solving. I can tell you that when I thought I had finished the painting, there was something about it that I wasn't happy with. While I stood back looking at it trying to figure out what I was missing, my wife came into the studio and within a minute or two suggested making the white flowers a little lighter and putting a bit of a deeper blue in some of the flowers. Isn't it great to have a fresh pair of eyes occasionally?

The finished painting.

Texas Wild Flowers

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 16 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Indian Blankets - by George De Chiara

Indian Blankets

My first spring in Texas, which was a mere eight years ago, I was struck by all the wildflowers that bloomed along the highways and empty fields. At the time, I didn't know the story of why we had so many wild flowers or where they all came from (thank you Ladybird Johnson!), but I was instantly hooked on the color of them. From that point on, I looked forward to each spring and the blooming flowers. Sometimes I'm able to go out and paint these wonderful flowers from life, but other times I have to capture them in photographs to be painted at a later date. That's the case with today's painting. These Indian Blankets grew in our back yard last Spring. We only had one plant with a few blooms on it, but I was still very happy to see them right in my yard. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to paint them when they where blooming, so I took a few photographs of them. Today I remembered about those pictures and pulled them out to paint. Below is how this painting came to life.

My block in for today's painting is very loose with just a few well placed strokes of color to let me know where I'm going to put the flowers. While this looks like a simple block in, it did take a little bit of time to work out the placement of the flowers. If you look closely, you can see where I wiped out a few and moved them around a little.

I started off by painting the flower with a combination of my palette knife and brush. Once I had a pretty good start to the flower, I started to paint in some of the background. Mostly, I'm trying to clean up the drawing of the flower, but I'm also keeping an eye out for any opportunities to do some negative painting. For those of you not familiar with negative painting, it's basically the idea of painting the shapes around another shape rather than painting that shape. For example, if you look at the area right below the flower I've painted, you can see I used a few well placed strokes of darker color to give some indication of stems and leaves.

Now I'm looking to get a few areas to near completion, so I paint in the flowers around the area I started with and try to work my way to the edges of the canvas. I continue to paint the flowers with a combination of knife strokes and brush strokes. In real life, this plant did not have these two blooms. The one in the lower left is a copy of the one in the lower right. I just rotated it a bit and scaled it down a little. I felt this area would need a bloom in it, otherwise it would look too empty. I did some of this work in Photoshop before I started painting.

I'm just about done now. I've continued to paint the upper portion of the painting the same way I've done the lower part. For each new flower, I mix new colors that have a slight variation to them. I'm also constantly mixing new green mixtures to keep the background interesting. From here, I'll paint in the final flower and then give everything one last pass. You can see in the last image below, I added in a few strokes of pure or near pure color here and there. I did this to give the painting some pop, but also to lend a little interest to some of the areas of the painting that needed a bit more punch. I need to always remind myself to be careful when doing this. It's very easy to over do it.

The final painting.

Indian Blankets

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.

Years of Memories - Original Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Years of Memories

It seems like every few paintings my wife comments that she wants to "keep that one" so I thought I would do a painting for her for Valentines Day. To keep her guessing, I listed the painting for sale on eBay. Since it was a higher priced painting I didn't really think it would sell on there, especially since that, in my experience with eBay, the smaller, less expensive pieces ($100 or less) sell the best. Naturally then, on the very last day of the auction with about 10 minutes to go, someone bought the painting the day before Valentine's Day. Yikes!

Sheepishly, I explained to my wife that I had sold her painting. She was very understanding about it, but commented that for our anniversary she wanted a painting that would not find it's way to auction. Well, our anniversary is coming up this week so I've been working on this special painting just for her. I've had to sneak things from around the house into the studio and hoped she didn't notice them missing for a few days. Plus, I had to keep her out of the studio. There where a few times when I thought she would figure it out, but luckily she never did.   The painting is dry now, safely in her hands, and definitely not for sale. So since I know I can't sell this one, I thought I'd take this opportunity to mention that I do accept commissions. Feel free to contact me if you would like to discuss a commission.

Years of Memories

 
Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 11 inches x 14 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: NFS
Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Cascading Zinnias - Original Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Cascading Zinnias

 Yesterday my wife and I took a walk to the nursery right up the street from where we live. We wanted to add some new flowers for our garden. Feeling confident with our new-found ability in keeping flowers growing and alive we walked around the whole nursery looking at all of the possibilities. After about an hour, it was time to make some decisions. In our minds, we must have picked out about 30 plants, but we had to narrow that down a bit. For one thing, our garden isn't big enough for all of those plants. Plus, we walked there and would have to carry back what ever we bought. After a bit of a debate, we settled on 5 or 6 plants, plus two new strawberry plants to help rebuilt our crop after a harsh winter did most of them in.  Once we had them home, I couldn't wait to paint them. I brought them straight into the studio and set up my still life. Once the painting was done, we took them all outside and picked out planters for them, transplanted them and set them in the garden. I'm already looking forward to painting this new batch some more as they grow and continue to bloom (here's hoping).

Cascading Zinnias

 
Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 8 inches x 10 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.
Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Spring Blooms - Original Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Spring Blooms

 Right around the end of February when the weather started to turn nice here in Texas, my wife and I bought a few flowers for our garden. In the past, we have not done well with flowers. I'm not sure why since our vegetable garden seems to do well. This year we vowed to do better with them. I planted them into clay pots with the hopes of keeping them alive long enough to paint once or twice. Well, I'm happy to report that not only did we manage to keep them alive, they are thriving. All of them have more than doubled in size and blooms. This is the third time I've been able to paint these since we got them. They are going strong and so far haven't shown any signs of slowing down. One of the reasons I think they are doing so well is my 18 month old daughter just loves to dead head them (picking off the flowers that died). Of course she also get's a lot of flowers that are still in their prime, but it seems to be working. Now I only wish I had used larger clay pots since these might be maxed out in their current planters.

Spring Blooms

 
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 bid.
Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Spring Trio - Original Oil Painting by Geroge De Chiara

Spring Trio

 These are the same flowers I painted a few weeks ago. They are thriving so I decided to paint them one more time, only this time, I used them all together. How can I resist when they are growing so well? I did take them inside to the studio so I could arrange them a bit better and I'm glad I did. It took almost an hour to come up with something I was happy with. This really surprised me, but I hadn't consider when I planted them that I used almost the same pot for each one. This meant when I went to set them up they where all about the same height which makes for a terrible composition. In the end, I wound up having to put different size object under each pot to offset them a bit. I guess next spring I'll be sure to vary my pots a bit more when I do my planting. Live and learn....

This is another one of my RayMar panels from the sample pack. This one is the medium cotton canvas. I'm not sure I like this panel, but I can't really give a good reason other than this is the third painting I've painted on it. The first two were scraped off, so I'm not sure if it's the panel or me. For now, I'm blaming the panel. It's an easy target.

Spring Trio

 
Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size:6 inches x 8 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to bid.
Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.