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Grape Leaves with Fruit - Daily Painting by George De Chiara

Grape Leaves with Fruit

 
First off, let me apologize for the title of this one. It's not very original or catchy, but it's the best I could come up with tonight. I really wanted to challenge myself today by practicing painting very small and detailed by placing a lot of objects into the still life.  The goal is to get simple shapes of color with the largest brush I could get away with.  By going with a small canvas, it made all of my brushes a size or two larger by comparison.

Lake Weatherford Boat Dock - Daily Painting by George De Chiara

Lake Weatherford Boat Dock

My wife works in Weatherford, an up-and-coming little burg just outside of the metroplex. For most of it's life, Weatherford has been a town that served the ranches that surround it.  You can't stop progress though and slowly, but surely, this place seems like it is on the verge of being swallowed by DFW.  So this morning I joined Marcie for the ride to work intent on painting the rural sights before they all get developed away.  After dropping her off at the college and looking at different areas, I finally settled on Lake Weatherford to paint this view of some of the private boat docks. There's a little curve in the lake where the land goes out a bit and offers this view of these docks. This little spot is public access to the lake, so I was able to set up there and have a great view. I even had a large tree to give me some shade while I painted, so what more could you ask for? 

Peaches and Plums - Daily Painting by George De Chiara

Peaches and Plums

 This isn't what I set out to paint today. I was really in the mood to do a landscape, so I packed up the car with all of my painting supplies and headed out to a spot that I thought would be good for painting. After driving around for an hour looking at different places, I didn't find anything that really struck me so I headed home. I found this bowl of fruit sitting on the kitchen counter that I was playing around with last night and decided to paint it instead. I'm not sure how they managed to grow peaches so large, but these are almost the size of a softball. I prefer the both the look and taste of smaller ones because they seem more natural, but these are what were at the store this week. In order to keep them from looking disproportionate to the plum, I shrunk their size a little, making them a touch smaller then they are in real life.

Along the Shore - Daily Painting by George De Chiara

Along the Shore

  This is the last painting in the current commission I'm working on. I've really enjoyed working on this commission. It gave me the opportunity to paint some things that I haven't used a lot in my other still life paintings, like money, branches, and foliage, which I can't wait to use in future paintings.  Unexpectedly, I found there is something I really enjoy about painting money. It reminds me of collecting coins as a kid. I still remember the thrill of finding a special coin mixed in with my change from the day, like a silver quarter or a wheat penny and running off to add it to my collection. It's a wonderful thing when I can spend an afternoon painting and be reminded of what it's like to be 12 again.

Mums and Daughter - Daily Painting by George De Chiara

Mums and Daughter

 
I really wanted to take another stab at painting the flowers that we had for our daughter's birthday party (see yesterday's post). This time, I wanted to have fewer flowers so I could give each one a bit more attention. For me, paintings like this require a lot of concentration and having fewer flowers helps. I need to remind myself to go slowly and paint what I'm seeing.  Don't rush it! When I rush things, I notice I tend to have to wipe off and start again. In the great Richard Schmid's video demonstrations, he talks about how a painting should appear loose, but not necessarily painted loosely. In other words, it should be painted with purpose. I find myself thinking about this while I work and it reminds me to slow down and paint what I want my result to look like.

Birthday Flowers - Daily Painting by George De Chiara

Birthday Flowers

 
My daughter had her first birthday this weekend and we used a lot of pink and white flowers to decorate the house for her party. Actually, we had a lot of pink and white everything.  We had quite the family celebration complete with streamers, balloons, and a cake shaped like a teddy bear wearing a tutu.  Normally, my wife and I aren't into the sea of pink that seems to surround baby girls, but the color really suits her.  Also, my wife thought it would be terribly cute to put the baby in a tutu to continue the theme of the cake.  So we did and now we have a lot of roses and alstroemeria in vases, left over from the celebration. Like any practical daddy/artist, I decided that I would paint a few of them.   It's nice to have a lingering touch of spring color, especially as the season morphs into the more prevalent russets and golds of fall.

Which way did he go? Scouting plein air locations.

  For me, one of the most frustrating things about plein air painting is finding a good location. Some of this has to do with the fact that I live in the middle of the DFW metroplex, so I'm surrounded by concrete and housing subdivisions. I have to admit that this is not what I find inspiring to paint, which is probably why I paint so many still lifes. I do enjoy myself when I'm painting outdoors, and, thankfully, the weather is finally cooling off enough here in Texas to really spend sometime outside.  It's just too nice not to take advantage of the weather, so I've been trying to get out as much as possible.

 Which brings me back to my point, where to go paint?

 The first thing I must determine is what type of subject I'm looking for. I enjoy painting landscapes, trees, hillsides, lakes and rivers, barns and out buildings (or any structure with some characters to it), boats, docks, etc. My first obstacle is that I prefer locations are close enough to drive to and that are somewhat secluded. The next challenge is to actually find that perfect combination. I could just hop in the car and start driving, only stopping when I see something that looks interesting to paint. The problem with this method is I can waste a lot of time and gas. When I lived in less urban areas, this method served me well since finding a place to paint was just about as easy as throwing a rock in any direction and committing to whatever it hit.

Now that I have a family and time is at a premium, I want to be more efficient in my search. Thanks to some great (and free) web sites this has never been easier. Now I just fire up Google maps to scout out places to go to and how to get there. By using both the satellite and Google earth views, I can get a feel for the place and decide if it looks like a place I want to paint. I can also scout out views that I may want to paint before I ever get there. If I'm really lucky there is a street view for part of where I'm considering, although this only seems to happen for the roads surrounding some of the local parks. By using these simple tools before my last few painting trips I've been able to really focus in on one location and not spend precious time (and gas) going from place to place looking for something to paint.
 

 Now, I will say this method is not perfect. I usually have a back up location picked out just in case the first place I go to is a bust. Sometimes things just look different once you get there. It's easy to miss a fence that may block with location your trying to get to or I've occasionally picked out a place that turned out to be on private land. Boat docks and marinas seem to be a common example of that here in Texas, since they almost always turns out to be private and for slip holders only. But, ultimately, digitally previewing the area does work better for me then just driving around to see what can I find.

Catalina's Pumpkin - Daily Painting be George De Chiara

Catalina's Pumkin

 
A few weeks ago my wife and I took our daughter, who was almost one, to pick out her first pumpkin.  Usually she dives into new experiences head first, but this time she was just getting over a cold and wasn't very sure what to make of the different pumpkins and hay scattered around the store.  After looking, touching, and considering just about every pumpkin the store, she picked up this tiny pumpkin and held on to it tight. It was hers and she wasn't going to let anyone get it from her. She even took it to lunch with us afterward and fell asleep holding it in the car on the way home.

Little Bass' Picnic - Daily Painting by George De Chiara

Little Bass' Picnic

  This is one more in the current commission I'm working on. This is the third of four paintings that I've been asked to do. You can see the others here and here.  It's been  pretty interesting coming up with different arrangements of the two main lures (the big blue one in the foreground and the little green and white one on the cup's rim). It feels a little bit like the painting equivalent of a Flat Stanley and I've been tempted at times to take the lures out and paint them in front of famous settings, but have resisted so far.



 

Building a small panel holder

  I have been fighting a cold most of the day and haven't been able to paint so I thought I might share a simple painting tip for working with smaller sized canvases (8x8 or smaller). It's called a panel holder and they are super simple to make. In fact, the one I'm using now I made out of a scrap piece of foam board, which is also very easy to cut. Here is what it looks like holding a canvas on my french easel. Notice the top pieces are cut into triangles. (I'll explain this in a minute.)


The way it works is by sliding the top pieces to open or close the opening that holds the canvas. The bottom part is usually stationary, but can be swapped out for a larger or smaller piece depending on the canvas size. I actually keep a taller bottom piece clamped on the back side so I can swap it out as needed.

  The biggest advantage of using this versus just putting canvas in the easel is that I can paint out to all of the edges without any interference. It works really well, assuming the foam board I use is the same thickness as my canvas panels. If I have more than one and a few spacers, I can use them to carry wet paintings by clamping them all together. They are super light if you build them out of foam board, so they don't add much weight to your painting rig if you paint plein air. If you want to build a more durable one, you can use a piece of masonite panel or plywood.

To build one you will need:
 - a piece of foam board
 - a ruler
 - an x-acto knife
 - a straight edge
 - at least 4 clamps

Here's how you build one for yourself.

The first thing you need to do is figure out what the largest canvas is that you want to hold. In my case it's a 5x7. The next size up I use is 8x10 and that's large enough to just just the outside clips on my easel. First, let's figure out how long of a piece of foam board we need. Take the shortest size of your largest canvas that you want to hold , 5 inches in my case and add 16 inches to it. For the length, I just went with whatever size my foam board scrap happened to be. In this case, it's 18 inches. This size has worked very well for me. So for my panel, I needed a piece of foam board that is 18x21 inches.

You need to make 3 cuts to make this. First, cut a piece that 3x18 inches. Then, cut a piece that's 5 x 18 inches.

    18 inches
______________________________
|                                                          |
|                                                          |
| --------------------------------------| <---------- 5 inches
|                                                          |
|                                                          |
|                                                          |
|                                                          |    21 inches (total length)
|                                                          |
|                                                          |
|                                                          |
|---------------------------------------| <---------- 3 inches.
|_____________________________|

Now take the 5x18 inch piece and cut it from corner to corner. This makes two triangles that are 18 inches long and 2 1/2 inches wide at it's broadest point. Clamp the 3x18 inch piece to one edge of the remaining piece of foam board. Then clamp the two triangular pieces on the opposite edge. To fit your canvas into the holder, remove the clamp that holds the lower of the two triangular pieces and slide it to the right to make the opening smaller and to the left to make it larger. Then just clamp it in place to hold your canvas. If you need to make the opening very small, slide the upper triangle as well. By playing with the two triangular pieces you should be able to adjust not only the opening, but where on the panel your canvas will rest. That's it! Oh, one last tip, if you want to work on a vertical format turning the entire panel holder is sometimes easier then trying to get the opening as wide as it needs to be to hold the canvas vertically. And like I mentioned earlier, you can also cut a larger or smaller bottom piece to help with adjusting the opening. I have a three inch and a five inch piece.

 I hope some of you find this useful and make one for yourself. If you have any questions, please let me know.

 

Last Ranch on Ranch Road - Daily Painting by George De Chiara

Last Ranch on Ranch Road

I was still in the mood to paint some sort of structure today when I went out looking for a painting spot. I didn't really have any particular location in mind when I set out, so I drove around for a while scouting out different places when I finally came across this old abandoned ranch boarded up at the end of, appropriately enough, Ranch Road. It's the last one left. The rest of the area has long been bought up and turned into some very nice, very expensive homes. Funny enough, there are still a few cows left to wander around the land, keeping most of the grounds in check except for a whole field that was in bloom with these very tiny yellow wild bushes. Because I refuse to trespass on private property, it was difficult to get a good location to paint from. I had to do this from the side of the road, looking through an opening in the brush growing along the fence line. Luckily, Ranch Road doesn't see a lot of traffic these days.