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

Apples and Peaches

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

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

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

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

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

The finished painting.

Apples and Peaches

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

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Day 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.

Daily Painting - Peach Festival

Peach Festival

After trying the Saturn Peaches a few days ago, I wanted to try some regular peaches.These rather simple looking compositions are the hardest for me. I spend more time arranging and re-arranging these than some of the more complicated ones. I guess it's because I have fewer objects to place, so each objects placement becomes even more important. Of course now that the painting is done, I see a few things I wish I had changed. I wonder if that feeling ever goes away. In almost every painting I do, I can make the same statement. Being an artist doesn't have a finish line, there is always further to go and explore and learn. The next painting...it's what keeps me coming back to my easel.

Daily Paintings - Saturn Peaches

Saturn Peaches

 My wife came home from the store with these crazy fruits called Saturn peaches, which is where the title came from. They look like a regular peach except that they are very flat, almost as if someone sat on and flattened them.

 I used another book from my wife's collection in this set up. Mostly, I picked it because I liked the colors of it and thought it would work well within this set up.  As an aside, the fact that it is a copy of What to Eat When You're Expecting seems somehow fitting with the peaches. 

Unfortunately, this photo has a bit of glare to it. I'll have to see if I can get a better photograph of it. If I do manage to get one, I'll update the picture.