Blog

Day 40 of the 50 Day painting challenge - How'd Ya Get Up There - by George De Chiara

How'd Ya Get Up There

 I can't believe I'm down to the last 10 paintings for my 50 paintings in 50 days challenge. It makes me want to do a NASA style countdown for the last paintings. 10...9...8...Well, you get the idea.

 For today's painting, I again turned to some of the fruit I bought yesterday at our local farmer's market. It took some time to come up with an arrangement I was happy with. I initially started off with some tomatoes and onions, and nope, didn't like that. Next, I tried a few lemons and limes... but, no I just painted limes yesterday. Hmm... how about these peaches? They have lots of great color to them, I especially like the one with the yellow stripe across the top. And maybe a plum to go with them. Ah yes, after an hour or so I finally had something to paint. Now I just needed to paint it! Below is how the painting came to life today.

Like most of my step-by-step blogs, here's an image of what I'm looking at while I paint. You might also notice that I took a few liberties with the blue foreground. Rather than painting it like it looked, I used one blue color for all of it. Once I got into the painting, I realized I didn't really like the darker blue color so I make it all the same.

This image was taken at the end of my rough block-in. Lately, I've been doing this with two brushes. The first pass is done with a large brush to get rough mass of the objects. Then, I go back over everything with a smaller, finer brush to refine the drawing a bit more. Since these paintings are relatively small (6x6 inches), even a small brush can cover a lot of canvas quickly, especially when the paint is thinned with turpentine. It's almost like painting with watercolors during this stage.

Once the rough block-in dries for a few minutes, I can begin to paint with thicker paint. This is also the first time I'll add white to my color mixtures. I started with the peaches mostly for one reason - I wanted to make sure I had a good handle on them before getting too far into the painting, just in case I need to scrape them off and try them again. I was a little worried about getting that fuzzy peach color on the first try.

Once I had the peaches under control, I could start to expand out to the other pieces of fruit. The plum is one of my favorite pieces of fruit to paint. If you really look at them they have very rich colors and the skin has a bit of shine to it, which picks up the colors around it. For this one, I used mixtures of Alizarin Crimson with Viridian and Ultramarine Blue.

The finished painting.

How'd Ya Get Up There

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 39 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Citrus Party - by George De Chiara

Citrus Party

 Today I found a new source for my models. It's a little farmer's market just around the corner from our house. They opened a few weeks ago, and I finally had a chance today to go and see it for myself. It's a tiny store, run by a very kind older gentlemen who showed my around the place and talked at great length about his produce. After looking around for a little while, I bought a few oranges, tomatoes, lemons, limes, plums, peaches, and a cantaloupe and even a mango. When I got home I was very excited to set a still life with my new models and go right to work. This arrangement came together pretty quickly, as it just needed a few adjustments and away I went.

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

Here's a photograph of about what I'm looking at while I was painting today.

This picture was taken at the end of my rough block-in. This process usually only takes a few minutes to get to. I'm working with paint thinned down with turpentine. My goal here is to get a good feeling of where all the objects are going to be and to make sure I have room for it all. I use a paper towel to wipe out lighter areas and to blend some of the paint together. For this one, I took a smaller dry brush and painted in some of the shadow areas, like in the limes and orange in the foreground.

Now that the rough block in is done, I can begin to refine the painting and start to add in color with thicker paint. For me, thicker paint doesn't necessarily mean thick paint; it's just paint that isn't thinned down with turpentine anymore. I started with the orange, since that's my center of interest. This is also the area that's going to have the strongest color, so by starting here I can better judge the rest of the painting's colors and values.

Once I was happy with the area that the orange is in, I must decide where to go next. I choose to paint the area above the orange because of the plate in the background. It's very close in color and value to the vase, and I wanted to make sure I could distinguish between the two. I find it easier to do this by starting with one of the objects and then stepping the values and or temperature up or down for the other object. The other reason for my choice was simply that I'd have about a third of the painting more or less done by completing this section.

Once the plate was done, it just made sense to work on the vase next. I still have the colors for the plate on my palette in case I need to do any touch ups on it. Plus this leaves the bottom of the canvas clean and dry, so if I need a place to rest my hand while painting I don't have to worry about putting it in wet paint. It was at this stage that I started to work on the bottom left corner of the painting. Once it was done, I went back over any areas that needed adjusting and added in any remaining details, like the blue  design on the vase.

The finished painting.

Citrus Party

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Sunday Tradition - Original Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Sunday Tradition

This painting reminds me of my childhood. Growing up in an Italian home, every Sunday we had pasta for dinner. All day long the sauce (red lead, gravy, Sunday sauce - take your pick) would simmer on the stove with rest of the ingredients sitting close by to be added at the proper time. Cans of tomatoes, garlic, onions and olive oil would all wait their turn to flavor the meal. A pinch of this, a little more of that, let it simmer for an hour, taste and repeat. On and on it goes for hours. It's a tradition that my wife and I continue to this day, especially since this has turned out to be my little girl's favorite meal of the week.  

This is one of my few attempts at painting transparent glass.  Representing the reflectiveness of the bottle and the translucency of the olive oil has been one of the most interesting technical challenges I have given myself in a long time. I had to continue to remind myself to squint at the bottle and then paint what I see. The contrast between the transparent bottle and the color of the veggies really captures the liveliness of Sunday and this cooking ritual.

Sunday Tradition

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

Fruit Bowl - Original Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Fruit Bowl

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

Fruit Bowl

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

Guarding the Castle - Original Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Guarding the Castle

 Every now and again when I'm setting up a still life, I get these silly little ideas in my head about what could be happening at this moment in time if these object where actually alive. Today was one of those times. While setting up my still life, I had this idea that the little lemon was fending off the tomatoes who were trying to get past it. I'm not sure what triggered this thought, but I think it was the way the vine on the tomato looked. Then I thought, well, if the lemon is a guard he needs a shield, so I went outside to our lemon tree and picked a couple of leaves off of it. I figured the one leaf leaning on the lemon is his shield. The other ones are various weapons that the tomatoes knocked out of his hands. Once this story played out in my mind, the title was pretty easy to come up with.

Guarding the Castle

 
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.

Fresh Picked Lemon Drops - Original Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Fresh Picked Lemon Drops

 We've had this tree for a for years now and it's never really produced any fruit. The few little lemons it did create never ripened and were always very small. Last spring, I pruned the tree down a bit and made sure to fertilize it well over the summer. I also moved it to a spot that got more sun. Well, all my work seems to have paid off now as the tree is finally producing fruit! It still takes them a long time to ripen; in fact, I picked these today after the tree spent the winter inside keeping warm with these already growing on the branch. I'm hopeful I'll continue to get fruit from this tree since I really enjoy being able to include the leaves and branches in my paintings. 

Fresh Picked Lemon Drops

 
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.
Initialed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Fruit Melody - Original Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Fruit Melody

 Over the holidays I had a commission where the client asked me to include sheet music in the painting somehow. I had so much fun painting the sheet music that I've been itching to use it again. Well, today was the day. I really wanted something in the background and the sheet music filled that bill. I enjoy painting the sheet music because there's a certain abstract quality to it. Between the shadows from the holly branch and the dark printing of the notes, there are lots of opportunities for painting interesting shapes.

 After my wife had finished looking at this painting, she asked "Do you have a name for it yet?". Jokingly I said "Fruit melody".  Over dinner, the name kind of grew on me so I went with it.

Fruit Melody

 
Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 8 inches x 16 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Click here to go to eBay auction.
Initialed on front. Signed and dated on back.

5 Till 1 - Original Oil Painting by George De Chiara

5 Till 1

 I had a lot of fun setting up this still life. For one thing, it came together pretty quickly considering how many objects are in it. I was able to use meaningful objects from around the house, like the little green books in the background. These are my daughter's little books, which are classics I think we all had at one point or another - The Tale of Peter Rabbit, The Tale of Benjamin Bunny and The Tale of Tom Kitten. The dried flower arrangement is from my wife's baby shower that were made by her mother and grandmother on that day. Finally, the watch was my father's, which was a gift from my mother to him on his 21st birthday. They gave it to me a few years ago. Amazingly, it still runs to this day! Laying brushstrokes went pretty smoothly, for the most part. I did have to wipe a few parts off and re-paint them, but I was really surprised how much easier (and better) the second attempts came out. Normally I really struggle when I have to wipe off a part of the painting and redo it. It sometimes feels like failure, but I guess its just a part of painting. There's no reason to work in oils if I'm not going to take advantage of one of it's biggest benefits - anything is fixable!

5 Till 1

 
Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 8 inches x 16 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Contact me to purchase this painting.
Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Daily Painting - In Need of Ade

In Need of Ade

 I've been trying to figure out how to work this bowl in almost every still life I've set up since I bought it a few weeks ago.  I finally thought it might look good with some lemons and limes. I really enjoyed painting the details in the bowl, the little dark red rim around the outside, the slightly raised edge along the rim before the bowl dips down, and, of course, the painted details in the bottom of the bowl. I was trying to do a lot with transparent washes with this one, especially with the surface the lemons and bowl are on. I did have to use thicker and more opaque paint here and there, but that's okay. I like the effect of thick over thin paint.

 This painting will also be in an upcoming show with the Artists Of Texas at the Dutch Art Gallery in Dallas. I'll post more information in the next few days as I get more solid details.

Daily Painting - Hide N Seek

Hide N Seek

 
  When you look at the painting, the lemon in the bowl and the one behind it are hiding from the lemon in front.That's what I was thinking when I came up with the title for this one. I set this still life up to test myself in seeing values. The white bowl on the white piece of paper was a real challenge.  The shadows are very strong, so it could have been easy to turn this into a black and white painting if I wasn't careful. In just about every painting I do, there is always one little area or brushstroke that seems to give me great satisfaction and I suspect most artists have this feeling about their work. Sometimes, it's the highlight laid down with one swipe of a loaded brush or the crisp edge from a pallet knife stoke. In this painting, it's the peppers on the side of the bowl. I believe I used 5 brushstrokes to paint all of them. I love it when things go like that!