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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.

Almost Done - A New Original 5x7 Oil Painting Demonstration by George De Chiara

Almost Done

 On December 8th, I'll be doing a free painting demonstration at The Dutch Art Gallery in Dallas. I've been thinking about what I'm going to paint for this and I've considered something like today's painting. I figured trying it out in the studio first might not be a bad idea. This way it gives me a chance to work out any issues and decide if it's something I really want to demo. It also gives me a bit of a road map for the demo so, hopefully, I don't fall flat on my face. I'm still not sure if this is what I'll do or not. There are a few other things I'm considering. For today's painting, I did manage to take a few progress pictures that I'd like to share with you.

 This first image was taken at the end of my block in. I started by toning the canvas with a mixture of cobalt blue and viridian. You can see a bit of it still coming through in various spots. On top of that, while it was still wet, I went back in with a bit more color and blocked in the major shapes. All of the paint is still very thin at this point, except for the sky. That's little further along than rest of the painting since it's the first thing I started on when the block-in started to wrap up. My goal at this point it to be able to have some of this under-painting show through in the final painting. I think I was most successful with this in the foreground hill. I like the effect it gives the painting as it seems to interject a little air into things.

 This image was taken around the half way mark. Basically I'm just trying to refine my shapes and colors while attempting to finish any areas that I can. This approach is a bit like focusing a camera manually. With each pass over the painting, I try to bring things more into focus and into a final state. This is, of course, just one approach to painting. I find it works better with smaller paintings. On larger works, I rarely use this approach, mostly because my palette isn't large enough to support all of these color mixtures at the same time. I don't want my colors to become muddy from being crowded on the mixing area of my palette. 

Below is the finished painting. See how it looks like it just came more into focus? I did manage to keep some of that original under painting and that makes me happy. If I do this one as my demo, I think I'll move the barn a little more to the left of the canvas and give it a better shape. I think I'll also push the colors of the sky a bit more. Maybe tweak one or two other things...not sure just yet. I find after a few days, these adjustments are easier to spot than right after I'm done painting.

 Almost Done © 

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.

Days End - An original 8x8 landscape oil painting by George De Chiara

Days End

This painting is another one that I did based off an older plein air study. I've had a great time revisiting some of these subjects this week. In the time that's passed since I first painted the study I've learned a lot about painting, color, and edges. It sometimes doesn't feel that way, since most of the time these improvements come in very small increments over a long period of time, but, looking back at something I painted last year or two years ago and repainting it today has really shown me where I've grown. More importantly, it's shown me where I still need to grow, directions to push myself, and areas to study that need more study. This what I enjoy and embrace most as an artist. The learning is never done, which is makes being a painter a lifetime effort.

Here is an image of how I started this painting. I'm using a little transparent oxide red (for the most part) to work out the placement of the larger shapes. The original painting was a 5x7 inch study and this painting is on an 8x8 inch panel so there are a few things to work out first. I spent some time getting everything where I wanted it. With just a few lines of thin paint, it's very easy to change my mind and move something at this stage. Believe me, I'd rather do it now then later when I have a lot of paint on the canvas and a lot of time invested in it. Once I was happy with the placement of all the larger shapes, I knew I could move onto the color and detail.

Well, I guess that this point I'm about half way through  the painting. I'm playing around a little bit with what to do with the foreground, because I don't want it to be all water, like the original sketch was. I feel I need something to stop the eye from running off the bottom of the canvas. Usually, placing something a little darker across the bottom will stop this and let the eye move back up through the painting easily. You can also see very faintly where I wiped off my first attempt at the sky in what will be the water when I'm done. The first sky I painted wasn't satisfactory, and, before I got too far down the road with the painting, I wiped it off and re-painted it. This time, I kept my paint mixtures a little thinner on the canvas and my colors a little cleaner when mixing them.

Below it the finished painting. You can see I finally settled on having several patches of land and grass in the foreground to help break it up and stop the eye. I felt this fit with what was going on with the background grass and land very well.

Days End © 

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Veggie Wraps - An original 6x8 landscape oil painting by George De Chiara

Veggie Wraps

 One of the great benefits of moving my studio recently is I got to rediscover all the things I stashed away for another day and forgot about, like this little plein air painting I did in the fall of 2010 of hay bales sitting out in the field. While I was never crazy about the results of the painting, I did like the subject and the general composition of the painting so I thought I'd give it another try. I didn't want to just make a copy of the original painting. I wanted to take this opportunity to make a few adjustments to the composition and colors of the scene. I also choose to make it a little large then the original 5x7 inch plein air study. Now, if you promise not to laugh I'll show you the original study. Promise? Okay good, here it is:

While I think most of the building blocks are here, I don't like the color, the general color temperature and some of the drawing is, well, less than stellar. However, I think with a few adjustments I can make a better painting.

Since overall I like the composition I had I'm going to stick with it for the most part. You might be able to see a few faint lines of where the hay bale in the back is shifted over to the right just a bit more than in the original painting. I also turned the way it is facing so we see the other side of it. I felt seeing 2 of the hay bales in basically the same position was a little boring and by rotating the background one I'm able to give a bit more variety to the piece. One of the other things I wanted to do was to break up the tree line in the background. I'm going to try to bring this set of trees that I started with and another set of the left side a bit more forward in space then the ones behind them.

At this stage, I have most of the background finished. Notice how I have almost the same shapes as in the original painting? I think this one has a lot more interest because of the wider value range and a bit more variety in the brush work. The foreground at this point is nothing more than washes of color thinned with turpentine. In fact, I even stole a little watercolor trick and put some turps in a spray bottle and sprayed the surface. If you look closely you can see the runs that it caused. In the end very little of this made it into the final painting, but it was an interesting experiment and one I want to continue to explore. Luckily, I did this right before I took my lunch break because it took a while for the surface to dry enough to continue painting.

Below is the final painting. I'm not sure the image is the best. Might have to re-shoot it in the morning and update this, but it should give you a good idea of what the final painting looks like.

Veggie Wraps © 

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.

Cool Breeze - An original 7x5 landscape oil painting by George De Chiara

Cool Breese

 Whenever I start a painting, I try to not repeat myself. That is, I try to approach each painting with a fresh approach and forget any previous attempts at painting a similar subject. By doing this, or rather by trying to do this, I hope to be able to honestly respond to the subject I am painting, whether it's a still life or landscape or any other subject matter. Sometimes, when I'm very lucky, I'm actually able to achieve this and paint something entirely new to me. This is what happened today, when I really let go of all previous ways I would usually begin and just started painting. I did do the faintest of layout lines just to work out the composition, but after that I tried to make every brush stroke one that would be visible in the final painting. Laying down thick, juicy brush strokes of color, one on top of the other while building up form and texture as I went along, I let my brush strokes be more visible and added in lots of broken color. In short, I had a blast! Time whizzed by and before I knew it I had completed this little painting. I only wish I had thought to stop long enough to take a few progress pictures. I guess that will have to wait till next time.

Cool Breeze © 

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 7x5 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.

Moving Hay an original oil painting by George De Chiara

Moving Hay

In yesterday's post, I talked about how I used Photoshop to prepare my reference images for a painting. Today's post is all about the actual painting. I tried to take these pictures at what I thought were the sort of major points of the painting process so you can see how the painting came about today.

This is the end of my block-in stage. I have a few different ways I'll start a painting, and, sometimes I just do a simple, very rough block-in of the major shapes and then go right into more finished, direct painting. This is the method I'm using today, so this is as far a I feel I need to go with my block-in. At this stage, there is very little paint on the canvas. I just thin it down with turpentine to lighten the color. From there, I use a paper towel to wipe out lighter areas and to spread the paint around a little, like in the foreground. Since this paint is very thin, it will dry to the touch in a just a few minutes.

Because the tractor is the most demanding part of the painting and its major shape, I wanted to start with it and get it correct before moving on to the rest of the painting. Truth be told, this is my second attempt at getting to this stage. In my first attempt, I made the tractor way too large, so I made the decision to wipe it off and start again. This is why there's so much brown color in the sky right now.In hindsight, I wish I had blocked in this shape better when I started. It would have saved me a few hours of painting time.

From here, it's really a coin flip as to which to finish first...the background or the foreground. I chose the background since I needed it to really finish off the edges of the hay bales. This also gave me a little more time to think about how I wanted to approach the foreground. Initially my thought was that I'd leave a little more of the foreground unfinished than I did in the finished painting. Sometimes it's too easy to keep saying, "Just one more tweak here and I'll be done." Well, that's exactly what happened today. Still, I'm happy with the way the foreground came out and the painting overall.

Moving Hay ©

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.

Composing with Photoshop by George De Chiara

 Perhaps the single most useful program I've ever used on my computer is Photoshop. Now, don't get me wrong. I've used some extremely high-end graphic packages - the stuff capable of making all those special effects in the movies, but for an artist there's almost nothing more useful than Photoshop. You can use it for developing all those digital images you take, preparing files for shows, creating website images and promotional materials, and for composing the next painting. That's the topic I want to cover here briefly. The other uses would make great blog posts on their own, so we'll leave them for another day. This blog does assume you have some basic Photoshop knowledge and can find your way around the program fairly well. Hopefully you'll pick up a few tricks and ideas on how to use this application to improve your work.

 Here's the photograph that originally inspired me. It's a little rough from a painting point of view, but I think I can make something of this. I took this image a few weeks ago while visiting with our in-laws. That's actually my father-in-law driving the tractor out on his ranch bringing hay to his very hungry cows in south Texas.

Okay, so to make this a more paintable subject, I want to crop in more tightly on the tractor. There's too much space around it on the right hand side and along the bottom. The first thing I do is create a digital matte by creating a new layer in Photoshop. Then I use the marking guides and rulers to mark off an area that's the size of my intended painting or that has the correct proportions of my painting size. In this case, I'm going to be doing a 6x8 inch painting. I do this rather than crop the image, since it gives me flexibility throughout the process to continue to adjust which part of the image I use. If I just cropped it right off the bat, I would be stuck with that portion of the image the whole time or forced to start over later if I wanted to make a change.

Notice how my selection area (those marching ant lines) isn't centered? I do this, because at this point I'm not sure what part of the image I want to use, but I do know the size I want in the end. So by making the correct size first, I can move the selection area around my image until I find the approximate area I want to paint. It doesn't have to be exact at this point. I can fine tune it  later on. The important thing at this point is that I have the correct size, or aspect ration. Once I find the approximate area I want to paint, I invert my selection and then fill in this area with black. This gives me my digital matte. Now I can duplicate my background layer (the original image) and move it within my digital matte to fine tune the area I'm going to paint. You might have to rearrange your layers so the digital matte layer is on top of the duplicate background layer.

Here's where I'm at so far. Notice I also moved my guides so I can see where the center of my image is. Now I can move the background copy layer around until I'm happy with my composition. You might also notice that the foreground has changed a bit in these images. Truth be told, I added that little suggestion of a path in the foreground at the end by using the dodge and burn tools. When I was deconstructing my Photoshop file for this blog, I realized I had done this on the base layers, so for now just ignore that they are there.

So far so good, but now I'm not very happy with the tree line. I don't like that the taller trees are on the same side of the image as the tractor. It makes the image feel too heavy on the left hand side. To try to balance that out a bit I'm going to flip the trees horizontally. The first thing I do is use the lasso selection tool to roughly select the trees. It doesn't have to be super accurate at this point. I'll clean it up later. Once I make the selction, I can just copy (CTRL + c) and paste (CRTL + v) it, and Photoshop will automatically put it in its own layer. Then I can use the menu Image>Image Rotation>Flip Horizontally. The trees don't look very good at this point, but after adding a layer mask and feathering them back into the other layers, it's pretty hard to tell they've been flipped. Here's what it looks like:

Things are starting to come together now, but there's still a few things I think I can improve before I start to paint. First off, that sky is just way too plain with not a cloud in sight. Now, I know Texas is in one of the worst droughts it's had in a long, long time, but I like to paint clouds when ever I can, so I'm going to add a few in. First thing I need to do is find an image that has a sky I like and that has about the same perspective as the image I'm working on. Here's the image I choose to use. This is actually from North Texas ,but I won't tell anyone if you don't. :)

This image also has the added benefit of having a grassy foreground that may just work to add a little more variety to my foreground. I simple drag this image into my Photoshop file and it's automatically placed on a new layer. I re-arrange the layers so the clouds are under my digital matte layer and then I turn the transparence of the layer down a bit so I can see some of the image below it. This allows me to adjust which part of this image I'll use. Once that's dialed in, I'll turn the transparency back to 100 percent and add a layer mask. When I make this mask, I set it so everything is hidden and then slowly paint the mask out to reveal the clouds and a little bit of the foreground.

Notice the slightly greener foreground now? That image worked out rather nicely. I'm just about done now. There's only a few things I want to do before I start painting. The first is to pump up the color a little bit on the hay and grass. It just looks a little too drought-stricken for my tastes. To do this, I'll duplicate the background layer one more time. Just make sure the one you duplicate is the one that's already in the correct place. In this case, I duplicate the layer called "Background copy". I then adjust the color of this layer using a variety of the tools under the menu Image>Adjustments. In this case, I used Vibrance to get more color into the layer. It can be a little over the top since I'm not going to use the layer as is. I'll add a layer mask to it and lightly paint in a few spots to bring the color up.

Ah, that's better. The very last thing I did, like I mentioned above, was to add the hint of a path in the foreground. It's an old trick to lead the eye into the painting and one that's easy to over do. I want there to be just a slight suggestion of the path in the final painting to have enough to break up the foreground a bit and add something of interest to it.

 Well, that's just about it. The only other thing I'll do before I start painting is to actually crop the image to the size of my painting. Now on to the painting! Check back tomorrow for a step-by-step blog on how the painting goes.

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!

Still Life Set Up Box - My current set up by George De Chiara

Recently, I was asked to share some information on my still life box. This is the current set up I've used for about a year and a half now. It's based mostly on Carol Marine's set up. It works great with small still lifes, but because of the small area of the box, I don't care for it for larger arrangements.  To paint more expansive still lifes, I've been setting those up more and more on an empty table or desktop. This can be awkward because I cannot control the lighting as well as I do in the box, so I am considering building one that was twice as wide. Until then, though, this is what I have, and for smaller works, the box is nice.

First, I'll show you a few pictures of the box it's self:

You can see I clip my lights on the edges of the box most of the time. I also use the top to store a selection of backdrop material and colored papers. I also keep some tape and tacky putty on there so it's in easy reach when I'm setting things up. I have the box on plastic rolling storage cabinet. This way I can roll it closer to me when I'm painting and then roll it out-of-the-way when I'm not using it. Most of the time I use it at this height, but if I need to make it higher I'll place a box under it. The box is quite light, so I can pick it up easily. Occasionally, I'll place it on the floor if I want to have a top down view on what I'm painting. The top and both sides are covered with a white piece of material and a black one on the outside. The white, of course, reflects the light inside the box while the black keeps room's lighting out. Those two spring clamps you can see on the box are there to hold my lights when I need them. The material will stay in place without them. Across the top, I have a few scrap pieces of foam board to support the items I store up there.

Here is a detail of the construction of the box. It's simple pvc pipe with a few connections holding it together. The corners are a three-way connection, x,y and z. The "Y" connection (the one going up) is threaded so it has a threaded connection on it that the pipe just slips in to. I only glued the bottom corners. The bottom and back are pieces of plywood with holes drilled every foot or so. I used zip connectors to attach them to the frame. This works well, but the bottom does have  some give to it. It's not a big deal, just something to be aware of. The box is 2'x2'x2', so to build it you need:

• 3 - 8' x 1/2 inch pvc pipes
• 1 - 2'x4' 1/2 inch piece of plywood cut into 2 2'x2' pieces.
• 8 three-way connectors with 1/2 inch connections on all sides
• 8 1/2 inch threaded connector
• a handful of zip ties

You'll also need a saw, a drill for the plywood, and pvc cleaner and glue. It should only take an hour or so to build depending on how handy you are.

Cut the 8 foot pvc pipes into 2 foot sections. Then, build a bottom and a top by gluing the 3 way corners to the pvc pipe. Make sure the extra connection on the 3 way connectors are all pointing in the same direction. Then, you can attach the top to the bottom using the remaining pvc pipe pieces. Once it's all together, you can install the back and bottom plywood pieces.

Here are a few close up pictures of the lights I currently use. The first image is what I use as a fill light. It has a color corrected 5K light bulb that I bought at Home Depot.  I can't recall the brand, but it doesn't burn very hot, which is important since it is so close to the fabric. The fill light should be positioned in the back of the box and pointed up so it's light bounces around the box. For the front light, I've tried several different lighting fixtures. The one I am happiest with is a clip light with an aluminum shield on it.  I've experimented with different light bulbs, and currently I'm using a GE Reveal 60 watt halogen bulb which is a full spectrum light.  The bulb does have one major drawback: it's very hot.  It will heat up the lamp fixture to the point where I can't adjust it without burning my hand. However, the light it produces is very nice to paint. FYI, I keep an extra one of these bulbs on hand at all times. My light fixture once fell off of the box and the light blew as soon as it hit the ground. Since then, I keep an extra around.

Well, there you have it. If you have any questions, please let me know. I'd be happy to try to answer them. Happy painting!

Doing the charts - The color charts that is.

 In Richard Schmid's book, Alla Prima, he talks about the importance and his experience painting the color charts. Encouraged by his writings, I first did my color charts in watercolor several years ago. Every word Mr. Schimd wrote about doing the charts is true. I learned more about the colors on my palette painting the color charts than I did with all the paintings I had done before the charts combined. New discoveries awaited around every corner. I mean, when do you get the chance to play with every color combination on your palette? When I tried to do this while producing a painting, ultimately the painting would suffer. At the time, I was working mostly in watercolor, so my colors would get muddy or my color choices where often "settled" on because I couldn't mix the color I was seeing.  After spending the time doing all the color charts, I could immediately see the difference in my work. My color choices where easier to mix and much fresher.

 About a year ago, I wanted to work in oils again after a very long break. Before that, it had been almost 15 years since my last oil painting. It took a while for it all to come back to me, but slowly I started to remember how to work with my oils and started to make new discoveries as I painted. Then a funny thing happened. I started to notice the same issues I had with my watercolors before doing the color charts. My colors where often settled on, especially with the darks. I just couldn't mix some of the colors I was seeing in my subjects. Then it hit me; I've been using a palette of colors that I hadn't used in many, many years. It is different enough from my watercolor palette that only some of the information I learned with my watercolor charts carried over. In fact, the colors on my palette weren't even the same as the last time I worked in oils. It was time to do the charts again. I'm about half way through my palette at this time. Just like with my watercolors, each chart reveals new insights into each color and many new mixing possibilities.

Pay attention to the color mixtures and how you apply them. A lot of people will paint the color charts in oils with a palette knife, which is what I'm doing. The knife allows for very clean color mixtures since you can wipe it completely clean. Then there's the added benefit of getting a lot of practice with the knife on canvas. I can already feel the difference with my palette knife from the first chart I did to the most current one. I'm much more confident with it. With each chart, I get better and better at laying down the color. I got in the habit of mixing all the color mixtures on my palette together when my palette needed to be cleaned. I found this usually happened right around the time I was ready to start on a new color section of my palette. What I mean is I could usually mix all the yellows on my palette with whatever color chart I was working on before I needed to clean my palette. These mixtures turned out to be wonderful colors I wish I could have saved. I'm actually considering ordering some empty paint tubes to save these mixtures in for the remaining color charts I need to do.

Some simple things to keep in mind for this project:

• Be prepared to go through a lot of paint. This is not the time to be stingy with your paint.
• Make each mixture count and make each one accurate.
• The color of the chart you are doing should be the dominate color in all the mixtures. For example, if you have yellow ochre and cobalt blue on your palette, when you paint the yellow ochre chart the color should lean towards the yellow and when you do the cobalt blue chart the mixture should lean towards blue. None of the mixtures should be equal parts of each color.
• Take your time when doing these. It's not meant to be a race.

For me, taking the time to paint these color charts is the same thing as a musician practicing their scales, or an athlete taking the time to practice the fundamentals of their sport. It's what makes you better at your craft.

UPDATE: Several people have asked about my comment to have the color of the chart be the dominate color, so I'm posting this image to try to help explain things a little better.

In this image is my Yellow Ochre Pale chart and my Viridian chart. Notice how in each one there is one dominate color and how the Yellow Ochre + Viridian mixture yields different colors than the Viridian + Yellow Ochre mixtures. This is the reason for doing all of the colors on your palette, they all produce different results. I hope this helps explain things a little better, if not, let me know!

Make Like A Tree... - Original Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Make Like A Tree...

 Last night, I was watching Richard Schmid's DVD "The Capital Collection." This is a wonderful DVD with artwork spanning most of Schmid's career. He narrates the DVD with stories and the history of each painting while throwing in a lot of interesting little tips along the way. During the presentation of one of his floral paintings, he talks about the importance of painting leaves and how they can make or break a painting. A few slides later, another floral painting come up, and, again, he mentions the how the leaves really make the painting. With this in mind, I thought I would practice painting leaves of various types and colors. I have to admit this is one area where I usually struggle.  Sometimes I try to get by with more of an impression of the leaves then an accurate rendering of them. By doing a painting of pretty much nothing but leaves, I was forced to concentrate on them and learned a great deal about painting them. 

Make Like A Tree...

 
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.

Things I learned this week (Jan 31,2011)

Here's the second installment of things I learned this week in the studio. I was a little smarter this week with writing them down as I ran across them, which makes this much easier to do. I did a lot of Valentine's Day themed pictures this week with lots and lots of hearts. I think I'll mix it up a bit more this week.

- Sleep. I just can't paint well when I can hardly keep my eyes open. I need to make sure to get enough rest at night and paint when I'm fresh.

- I noticed that I'm in the zone when I'm just painting and no longer really thinking about what I'm doing. The paint is just going on the canvas. Of course that's also the moment I realize that I was in the zone, which pretty much ends it. How did I get into the zone in the first place? That's really the question.

- When drawing elliptical shapes don't forget to identify where the outer most points are, left, right, front and back. Then, use short angled straight lines to connect them. Leave the rounding off till the very end (if at all).

- I'm always looking for faster ways to do some of the repetitive tasks I need to do. One of those things is setting up my easel to hold the painting I need to photograph. I use to take an architectural triangle, which has a 90 degree angle on it, and use it to make sure the back of my easel is square. This helps to make sure that the painting and camera are both square to each other so the painting isn't skewed in the picture. Well, I finally realized that I could just mark the place on my easel where it's square and not measure it each time.  This cuts the set up time in half.

- It's very difficult to paint light (near white) shapes over Cadmium Red without getting some of it into the mixture. I think next time I need to do this, I'll paint the white shapes first and then paint in the red. Cadmium red is such a strong color that even a little of it in a near white mixture will turn it pink in no time.

Well, that's it for this week. I'm looking forward to getting back in the studio tomorrow and get going on some new paintings. Stay tuned...

Things I learned this week (Jan 24,2011)

Since starting this blog, I am noticing little shortcuts and having lightbulb moments, but they aren't quite making it to post.  Sometimes, the new idea seems painfully obvious, but when put together with the other things, it becomes much more.  Other times it's a new twist on my observations, like noticing there's more color in a shadow pattern than I had thought.   As the song goes, "Sometimes you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right." So I started thinking that maybe some of these things would benefit others. This lead to what I hope will be a new addition to my blog: Things I learned this week. Here's my short list for this week.

• The lights I bought to photograph my artwork actually work well if all the other lights in the studio are off. Yes, off. Just like it says in most of the articles I've read about photographing your artwork...Duh! Okay, this one might actually make a good post on its own, but for now this will have to do. If you have photography lights, use them and only them when photographing your artwork.

• When working with oils, sometimes it's better to cut my losses and just wipe off the area of my painting that isn't working.
• Always ask yourself: Are you painting what you see or what you want to see? I noticed I was doing the latter a lot more than I thought. When I caught myself and stopped, I think my painting started coming out better almost immediately.
• We have 4 dates this year that are all 1's (1/1/11, 1/11/11, 11/1/11 and 11/11/11). I believe this is the only time in our lifetimes that this happens. I can't think of any other year where you get 4 dates of all the same digit.
• It's never a good idea to play Scrabble with an english professor (my wife). I've never won a single game we've played.

 I must confess when I came up with this idea, I had a few other things to share. I guess I need to keep track of these things as they happen. What have you learned? Care to share...?