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Day 11 of the 50 Day painting challenge - We Need A Goose - by George De Chiara

We Need A Goose

 After yesterday's painting, I was still in the mood today to paint ducks. Only this time, I wanted to paint some real ones rather than a rubber ducky like yesterday. We are lucky to have two small ponds close to our house. Both of them attract a lot of duck, geese, swans and birds of all kinds. In the fall and winter, the population expands to close to 100 of them. With a constant supply of people willing to bring them bread, it's no wonder we have so many. We love to take our daughter there with some bread, too. The ducks will practically eat it out of your hands if you let them. Our daughter just laughs and laughs and then does her best duck quack! It's priceless. For today's painting, I looked through the photo reference I've taken at these ponds. I couldn't quite find one photograph that I liked, so I took three different images and combined a few of the ducks together in Photoshop. For an artist, a basic knowledge of Photoshop or some other photo editing software is very handy. I'm lucky to have used Photoshop for the last 16 years, so combining these images and getting things arranged is a pretty quick task. Once I had a new image to work from I was able to get started. Here's how the painting came to life today.

This is the image I'm working from today. You'll notice that the combining of my images is not perfect, but I think it's good enough to work from.

Stage 1 - The block in. I'm always amazed at how just a few strokes of color and swipes of a paper towel can resemble what I'm painting. It's one of the reasons why I favor this approach so much. In just a few minutes, I have a pretty good idea of what my painting will look like. It if doesn't look exciting to me at this point I can make changes, rearrange things or flat-out wipe it off and start over. Since I have very little time and paint invested at this stage, I don't hesitate to do any of the above.

Well, I'm not sure why I didn't more photographs between the first stage and now, but I didn't. I know I was struggling a bit with the ducks and got caught up trying to get things worked out. When I finally got to a point where I thought I had things going in a positive direction, this is where I was at. I really enjoyed painting the reflections in waters. The patterns can be quite abstract and offer a lot of color variation.

I'm just about done with the ducks now. At this point, I must have scrapped off the mallards head about 6 times trying to get it right. I still think it needs a little work, but other than that I'm pretty happy with the ducks and need to get started on the background. This is the last image I took of my progress, but I can tell you I finished the painting and placed it on my fireplace mantel to look at for a while. After about an hour or so I decided to take it back into the studio and work on the water behind the ducks and the background and it's reflection. I felt it was all a little too flat and didn't have enough value variation in it. Below is the final painting after all of my tweaking.

The finished painting.

We Need A Goose

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 10 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Ducky Tea - by George De Chiara

Ducky Tea

I started my morning taking our little girl to the doctor. She came home from daycare yesterday with a nasty fever. My wife and I spent the night caring for her and managed to get her fever down a bit, but we still wanted her to get checked out today. After I got home with her, she was feeling a little better and even managed to play a little. When she went down for a nap, I spent some time looking through her toys for ideas. Now, I should have most of them committed to memory at this point, since I spend a portion of each night picking them up and putting them away, a chore I can't wait for her to take over soon, but at 20 months I just don't think she grasps this concept quite yet. At any rate, I really like the colorful quirky little things some of her toys come with. These little tea cups are one such example. Great color and smily faces on them to boot. I already had picked out the rubber duck and thought the two of them would go together well. When I set up this still life I wanted to have some drama to the light, so I used one of the many toy bins we have to block some of the light and give the background some depth and mystery. At least I hope I did:)

Here's an image of what I'm looking at while painting this still life. Like all the other still life demo's in this blog, this is just to show you what I'm looking at while working. I painted this still life from life, which, in my opinion, lets me see much more accurate color.

Like a lot of my paintings, I start out by washing on very thin color and use a paper towel to wipe out areas of light. This helps give the very loose brush work at this point some definition and form. After I'm happy with this initial layout, I'll let everything dry for just a few minutes. It doesn't take long for the turpentine to evaporate and the paint to dry enough so it doesn't lift with the next layer.

Every painting needs to start somewhere, so for this one I started with the duck. I like the way that shadow goes across the tail and back of the duck. I feel this helps give him some depth and mystery as the duck emerges from the shadow.

Once the duck is in good shape, I can move on and work on the rest of the painting. These plastic tea cups turned out to be both fun and frustrating to paint. The colors in them are very saturated and I'm finding myself struggling to accurately capture them. This is one of the reasons I wanted to challenge myself to paint these. They force me to stretch and learn while painting. With my daughter being sick today and painting in-between her naps, I didn't take a lot of progress pictures today. Sorry about that. Hopefully tomorrow will go a little smoother.

The final image.

Ducky Tea

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 9 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Everywhere A Chick Chick - by George De Chiara

Everywhere A Chick Chick

 My wife's grandparents started to raise chickens a few years ago and now have quite a flock running around the yard. I think they started off with just a few chickens, maybe 5 or 6 and now they must have over 30! And let me tell you, 30 chickens lay a lot of eggs. Every time we visit with them, we bring home six or seven dozen eggs and now we are thoroughly spoiled.  We'd like to have a constant supply of the eggs, but, unfortunately, her grandparents live about six hours away.  

In any case, every time we go there I like to go out back and take some pictures of the chickens. I love painting them, but can't do it from life. They just move around way too much. Now, to be fair, I'm not sure if they just like to move around or if it's my 20 month old daughter trying to hug them that makes them move.  Either way, I'm forced to use photo reference when painting them. For today's painting, I looked through the many photographs I've taken until I found one that I felt had a good pose. Why did I choose this one? I thought it would work well with the square format I'm using for my painting challenge. I like the profile view of this chicken and I was really drawn to the color of this one. She's been in the coop since almost the beginning and lays the prettiest red/brown eggs. By the way, does anyone know any good recipes that use a lot of eggs?

Here's how my chicken started out. I doubt this answers the age-old question of which came first, the chicken or the egg, but this is what came first for this chicken. I'm just using a little paint with a lot of turpentine to wash in the larger shapes. Since I don't have much paint or time invested at this stage I can easily make changes and refine the placement of my shapes.

At this stage, I'm still using thinned paint. It's not as thin as the previous stage, but still very thin. I'm trying to get a nice wash of color into the chicken. My thought is that I can build on this to create the feeling of feathers without having to paint each feather. You can see around the head I've started to use a little thicker paint. Thicker may not be the correct word, really, I've just stopped using turpentine in my mixtures.

I think you can see in this image how I'm building up the feathers on top of the loose color I laid down earlier. I've also started on the background. Since it's going to be a pretty large dark shape, I wanted to get some of its color in now so I can better judge my values in rest of the painting.

I'm just about finished at this point. This is about where the painting is when I start to finalize everything in it and finish up the foreground. The feathers on the tail need a little more work, but for the most part I'm done with the chicken.

The finished painting.

Everywhere A Chick Chick

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 8 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Today's Harvest - by George De Chiara

Today's Harvest

 My wife and I started our garden the first spring after we bought our home. Every since then, it's been a constant learning experience for us because in the beginning we had very little idea of when to plant, what to plant, and how often to fertilize and water. This year, our yields way up, but now we have to learn to keep the raccoons from eating all of our veggies.  (I am open to suggestions, by the way.) It's been a great hobby for both of us, and, slowly but surely, we are getting better at it. Marcie used to joke that we grow $80 tomatoes, since we use to get so few of them and spent so much money on the garden. This year that joke is down to $5 dollar tomatoes, but I'm not sure that's very accurate any longer since we are picking more than we can eat right now. Our peppers are also starting to produce lots of colorful fruit of all kinds, we have a couple of pumpkins on the vine, both Italian and purple basil, corn, squash, and even a few watermelon plants. So for today's painting, all I had to do was walk out to the garden and harvest what ever was ready to eat. I brought everything straight into the studio and started setting up this still life. I adjusted and removed some of the items I just picked until I was happy with my arrangement. Then I started painting. Here's how it came to life.

Here's a picture of what I'm looking at while painting. This is just to show you what I'm seeing while working. For this painting, I worked directly from my set up. If you like to grow tomatoes, those yellow bell's produce a lot of fruit. Beware though, they tend to spread out a lot. Ours is planted almost in the center of one of our 4'x10' beds and it's vines have just about woven themselves from end to end in both directions.

In this image, I'm working out the placement of all of my objects. I'm thinning my oils with a lot of turpentine at this stage and using a paper towel to wipe out areas that I want lighter. A good example of this is in the bowl. I blocked the whole thing in with the shadow color and then wiped out the lighter areas. At this stage, there's very little actual paint on the canvas.

Now that I'm happy with my block in, I can start to layer in thicker paint to build up the form and color of my objects. I usually try to start with something around my center of interest, which, in this case, is the largest tomato. I'm careful not to get any of the tomato's color on the bowl. Past experience has taught my it's very difficult to cover up a red color with a white color. I'll be just as careful when I paint the bowl color around the tomatoes. If I pick up any of the tomato color on my brush when I'm painting the bowl, it will totally change the color I'm trying to paint.

Once I establish where I'm going to start, I than try to work outward from that point. You can see in this picture I've worked on everything that touches that starting tomatoes except the little yellow bell tomatoes. This allows me to get a good start on almost everything in the painting. The sooner I can do this, the better I can judge the colors, edges, temperature and values of everything else I paint.

At this stage, I'm trying to get to the edges of my canvas. Once I can reach an edge, I can start to finalized areas of my painting. I think the peppers are at this stage now as well as most of the green background. From here, I'll work on the remaining areas that I haven't painted yet, like the foreground and the yellow tomatoes. You may also notice that I haven't painted the design on the bowl yet. I'll save that till the end. I want to make sure I have the underlying values correct first.

Everything had a pretty good start now. At this point, I go over everything and make sure I'm happy with the way it looks. I'm checking the color, drawing and the edges. From here, I'll put in the final details like the design on the bowl and the leaves and vines on the tomatoes.

The final painting.

Today's Harvest

Painting Details:
View Larger Version 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 7 of the 50 Day painting challenge - You Think That Means Me? - by George De Chiara

You Think That Means Me?

 Day 7 of my painting challenge. Wow, this first week has flown by! I've wanted to paint this picture for some time. It's from a photograph I took last year while my wife and I where on vacation in Corpus Christi. One day, we stopped at one of the little fishing piers scattered around the bay side of the gulf to do some exploring when I spotted this seagull sitting on top of this gate. I like the way the scene looked with him on the gate and the Keep Out sign, so I got out my camera to take a picture of it. I couldn't believe it when he looked down. It looked like he was actually reading the sign. I quickly snapped off as many photographs as I could to capture this. Luckily for me, my camera will take just over 3 pictures a second. When I started thinking about what I was going to paint today, I remembered this day and immediately found my photo reference from it. The only thing I really had to do was move the sign up so everything fit into this 6x6 inch canvas.

Here's how the painting came together.

Here's the photo reference I used while painting today. You can see I simplified the background and moved the seagull over just a little. I moved the sign up in photoShop.

At this point, I've painted for just a few minutes. I'm mostly using a paper towel to wipe out where I want to put the seagull and the other larger shapes, like the sign and sky. The bit of paint that is on the canvas at this point is thinned out with turpentine.

Once I had the placement worked out, I went back with a bit of Transparent Oxide Red and Viridian and made a bit more of a line drawing. This helps me finalize where things are going to be. It also lets me lay down the darks and lights of the seagull a little easier, since I have a pretty good idea where they are now. I also know where to stop painting the background colors, so I'm not struggling trying to put the lights of the bird over them. This helps me keep my colors clean.

Here, I've painted most of the sky and background. I've also carried a lot of color into the foreground. I'm careful to not get too much paint into the lighter areas of the seagull. I don't mind as much with the dark areas since they will be a darker value than what's there and I shouldn't have any trouble covering them up. If I do think I've got too much paint there, I can always take my palette knife and wipe some of it off.

This is how I started the seagull's body. I started with the average dark value and painted that in. Then, I went back into that color with a darker value for the tail and shadows and a lighter value for the areas that were getting hit by the sun. I repeated this process for the lighter front half of the bird. I think I need to get a head on this guy next. It just looks weird at this point.

Ah, that's better. Now that this little guy has a head and feet he's really coming along. As I work on the seagull, I'm also starting to complete the background colors and the water. I'm on the home stretch now!

And here the finished painting one more time.

You Think That Means Me?

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 6 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Sweet and Sour - by George De Chiara

Sweet and Sour

For today's painting, I wanted to continue to explore the compositional possibilities of the fruit I used yesterday. I changed out the apple for an orange - just for a change of color and texture. I also did not use the pear again, but something close to the same shape, a sugar bowl. The sugar bowl caught my eye this morning sitting in our cupboard. I knew as soon as I saw it sitting in the cabinet that I wanted to use it in my painting today. I really like the color and design of it. With my battery fully recharged for my camera, I took a few extra step-by-step photographs today to make up for the lack of them yesterday.

This is approximately what I'm looking at while I painted today. You might notice I didn't totally get rid of the apple like I said earlier, but I'm using so little of it I might as well have.  Like the other step-by-step blogs, this image is just to show you what I'm painting. I painted this from life.

My initial wash and drawing. I'm using a lot of turpentine to thin down my oil colors. I also try to use colors close to the actual colors. You can see this in the orange pretty clearly. Notice how even in this stage, I've blocked in some of the shadow color already. I find if I can leave some of these areas in the final painting, it helps to give the painting a sense of air to it. It's not always possible, but I always keep my eye out for the possibility.

Once I'm happy with my block in, I can start to refine my colors and shapes. I'm painting thick over thin, meaning I build up my painting layers with each one containing more paint, and, thus, being more opaque. I try to keep the shadow areas thin and the lighter areas thick.

From the initial area, I can now work outward. In this case, I'm working mostly front to back. I enjoy working like this since by starting one object, I can bring the previous object to an almost complete start. Notice how by painting the orange, I can pretty much finish off the plum in front of it and get a pretty good idea of where the plate is that the plums sit on.

At this point, I try to get most of the object the foreground blocked in further. The plums are at a pretty finished state at this point, but I'll continue to refine the plate as I work on the objects behind it and the green striped portion of the foreground.

 Now I continue to work on the objects in the background. First the sugar cup, and then the little hand fans that make up the back most objects. I leave out just about all the details in both of these objects until I'm completely happy with their shapes and values.

I'm just about done at this stage. I've even started to add in some of the details in the background objects. From this point, I try to go over everything in the painting making any final adjustments to the shapes, colors and edges of each object.

Here's the final painting one last time. I hope you enjoyed seeing how I painted this painting and reading some of my thoughts about each stage of the work. I'm never sure how much detail to go into with these things, so if there's something I'm not talking about that you would like to know, let me know. I'd be happy to answer any questions I can.

Sweet and Sour

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 5 of the 50 Day painting challenge - On The Spot - by George De Chiara

On The Spot

We seem to have a lot of fruit in the house these days. Our 20 month old daughter just can't get enough, so we keep things well stocked. I don't mind since I like to use fruit in my still life paintings and it's nice to have lots of models to choose from. For today's painting, I grabbed some of the many plums we have along with the last apple and pear. This is the first traditional still life arrangement I've tried with this square format. It presents some interesting compositional challenges. I kept finding that I had edges falling on the center mark if I wasn't careful. To avoid this, I used my view finder that has hash marks on the center to constantly view my arrangement and make adjustments. Once I was happy with my set up, I was able to start painting. I have to warn you, my camera battery died half way into this painting today so the demo is going to be a little short. Sorry...

Here's the arrangement, more or less from the angel I was viewing it at. Like all the other challenge paintings so far, I painted this from life and this photo it just to give you an idea of what I was seeing.

My initial drawing stage. This is just some very thin oil paint pushed around with a brush and paper towel. I don't use very much color at this stage as I'm mostly concerned with getting the placement of the objects correct. Once I'm happy with this, I let the painting dry for a few minutes. This lets the turpentine evaporate and the canvas is more or less totally dry when I start to paint again. By doing this, I avoid getting my next layer of color to thinned from the turp's on the canvas.

Now I start to lay down some color. Nothing is at its final stage yet. I'm just trying to work out some value changes and get some basic color down. Right after I took this photograph, I scraped off the pear and most of the blue paint behind it. I felt the color was starting to get a little muddy. Rather than add clean color on top of the muddy color, I wanted to remove it first.

Here you can get a better idea of how I worked on this. Notice the plum on the right just has some basic color right now and the objects I started with are now a little more complete. It's sort of a 2 steps forward, one step back approach. I block in an object or two, then go back and refine what I have painted before. I continue in this manner until I'm happy with the whole painting. Right after I took this photograph, my camera battery died. It takes a few hours to charge and I didn't have the time to wait before finishing this painting, so I pushed on.

Here is the completed painting once more:

On The Spot

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.

Day 4 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Hay Bales - by George De Chiara

Hay Bales

Today, my wife and I went to our sonogram appointment to see our impending baby girl one last time before her birth this August. After the appointment, I drove Marcie to work and ran a few other errands that I needed to take care of today. I also brought along my painting equipment so I could do some work outdoors. When I originally thought of this idea to do 50 paintings in 50 days, one of my first ideas was to do them all en plein air. When I started to narrow down a time frame when I would do this challenge, I got to thinking that it might be a little too hot in the summer in Texas to do this. Well, I'm here to tell you I was right about that. It was HOT today. After each brush stroke I not only wiped my brush clean, but had to wipe the sweat out of my eyes so I could see what I had just painted. I also noticed that the heat made my oil paints very soft, affecting my ability to layer colors onto my canvas. I actually wiped off most of this painting several times while working on it, but I stayed out in the heat working until I had something I was happy with. Unfortunately, I didn't take very many step-by-step photographs of today's work. Between the heat, the mussy paint and wiping large portions of the canvas several time, I forgot to take pictures. I will try to do better tomorrow.

Please note: I noticed this picture has a lot of glare on it. I will take a better picture as soon as I can and re-post it. I'll update this blog when I do.

Hay Bales

 
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.

Day 3 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Bobbers - by George De Chiara

Bobbers

 After yesterday's painting, I'm still in the mood to use the contents of my tackle box for my models.  I thought it might be fun today to paint all the different bobbers that I have. While I'm sure there are many more varieties out there, I've been happy with these the few times I use a bobber. I usually prefer to just use lures when fishing, but I imagine that when I start to take my little girls out fishing, the bobbers will spend more time in the water and less time safe and sound in the tackle box.

 Here is how today's painting came to life...

Like in the previous posts, I did this block in with very loose brush work and thinned down paints. This is a bit more of a visual way to draw rather than using lines of color, although that's a perfectly valid way to start a painting and one I use when I feel I need to. With this type of block in, I just use my brush to sculpt the shapes I'm looking at. I use a paper towel to wipe out areas I want to remain white or just a lighter value than what's there.  This is a pretty quick process most of the time. I usually get to this stage within the first few minutes of painting.

I started with this bobber since both of the other bobbers touch it. By starting with this one, I'm able to better judge the size and shape of the other bobbers by comparing where they touch. Once this one is worked out, the others should go pretty quickly.

Once I'm happy with the orange and white bobber, I can start to spread out and paint the other shapes. I tend to think of this stage like a drop of water falling into a still pond and paint in a radiating fashion from the first object I start with. This helps in determining how much detail each section of the painting needs since I get a large view of the whole painting very early in the process.

I'm pretty much done at this point. I have a little work to do on the top of the painting and a few little details to put in, but for the most part all the major decisions have been made and now it's just a matter of finishing things up. It's at this stage that I like to go over everything and make any little adjustments I need, like the edges or a slight refinement of color.

Here is an image of what I've been looking at the whole time. Like in all my previous posts, I painted this from life and this picture was just taken to show you what I was seeing; well, as much as a camera can show you what I was seeing. You'll notice I left out that little piece of putty I left on the top of the board. I sometimes use this to hold objects in place.

Here's the finished painting. What do you think? Is there anything you would have done differently?

Bobbers

 
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.

Day 2 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Hanging Around - by George De Chiara

Hanging Around

Okay, so far so good. Two days down and two paintings done. Just 48 to go! For today's painting I turned to my tackle box, a favorite source of inspiration for me. With my wife and I raising one little girl and another on the way, I rarely get a chance to use my tackle for fishing anymore. Somehow painting the lures makes not using them a little easier. I know once my girls are a few years older we will all enjoy using these for fishing rather than painting, but, in the mean time, here is how today's painting came to life.

Like yesterday's painting, I start this one with broad loose strokes of color thinned down with turpentine. I also use a paper towel to wipe out areas that I want to remain white or near white. By dipping the paper towel into my turpentine, I can pretty much wipe the canvas completely clean if I wanted to.

Now that the block in is done, I start to refine my shapes and colors. With only two objects in this still life, it's really a toss-up as to which one to start with. I chose the larger yellow lure (the jitterbug for you fishermen out there), since it's cast shadow will fall over part of the other lure.

As I refine the lure on the left, the painting naturally progresses with it's case shadow and the background surrounding it. To keep the background and shadow interesting, I make sure to have as much variety in it as possible. Notice how there is still some detail and value changes even in the shadows.

You can see where this is going. With so much of the painting refined, it's time to finally get to that other lure. You'll notice I'm still avoiding all the little details like the hooks and the decals on the lures. Without the larger shapes, colors and edges not being correct there's no point in putting in these details just yet. These will be the finishing touches to the painting and it's what I worked on from the time this picture was taken till the painting was finished. Below is the final image again.

And here's a photograph of what I was looking at the whole time. You can see how much is lost with the photograph. This is why I think it's so important to work from life when ever possible. I only took this picture of my arrangement to show you what I was painting.

Hanging Around

 
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.

Day 1 of the 50 Day painting challenge - Hung Out To Dry - by George De Chiara

Hung Out To Dry

Here we go! Day one of the 50 paintings in 50 days challenge. These fine peppers came from our garden this year. We have Cayenne, Fresno and banana peppers all represented here. The banana's are by far our biggest producer this year, but in all fairness I lost one of the Fresno plants last month. Not sure what happened. One day I went out to check on the garden and it was laying on the ground with its stalk broken. You'll also notice that the Cayenne is not yet red like it's suppose to be. This is one my 20 month old daughters contribution to our gardening. She likes to pick anything she can reach whether it's ready to be picked or not. You should see all the tomatoes we have ripening on our window sill from her. They seem to be her favorite target.

 One of the things I really want to do with this painting challenge is offer more images of the painting process. I am going to try to get into the habit of stopping and taking pictures every so often so you can see the painting come about. Here is how this one started off.

This is a pretty typical block in for me. My oil paint is thinned out with turpentine to the point where it's more like watercolors than oils. I'm not very concerned with getting exact shapes at this stage. I just want to get a pretty good feel for where everything is going to be on the canvas. You can see I've just started to refine the pepper in the upper right corner with a little thicker paint and more careful drawing. My total painting time at this point is under 5 minutes.

Now that I know where all of my large shapes are going to be I can begin to go back and refine them. You can see with the first pepper I started with I try to take things to a pretty complete stage before moving on. With object that are "on their own", this is a little easier to do. This doesn't mean I won't go back and tweak things in this area it just gives me something to judge the rest of the painting with.

I continue to work on the bigger bunch of peppers here. I also try to continue to branch out towards the edges of the canvas as much as I can at this point. This allows me to bring larger pieces of the painting to a more complete stage. I find it helpful to judge one part of the painting against other parts, so the sooner I can get other parts started the better. You can also see how that initial wash of color has helped me to see how complete or incomplete the rest of the painting needs to be before I've made my statement.

Just about done now. Everything is blocked in and I've refined all of my shapes. This is the point where I really start to slow down my painting. I want to make sure everything I do now is going to help me say what I want to say about this arrangement. I'll paint a few brush strokes and step back and look at the overall image before proceeding on. From this point to the complete painting takes almost as long as the first few steps combined.

The completed painting. You can see I've gone back over just about everything in the painting to give them there final touches. I also added a bit of a patteren to the background and added that darker shape or shadow on the left. This is an old landscape trick to push the eye into the painting. In this case I feel it helps break up that larger open space as well as direct the eye into the peppers.

 I forgot to take a picture of the real set up before I broke it down today. I'll try to remember to do that with tomorrow's painting. And of course, let me know if you have any questions about the way I work and feel free to comment!

Hung Out To Dry

 
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.

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!

Announcing the 50 Paintings in 50 Days Challenge by George De Chiara

Starting June 2oth.

 I'm so excited to announce this 50 day challenge, which will start on June 20th. This means that from that day on for the next 50 days, I'll produce one 6x6 inch painting every day and post it on my blog and website. Each painting will be auctioned off on eBay. I'll be sure to post a link to the auction on my blog so it's easy to find. Now here's the best part: all auctions will start at just one cent! Where the price goes from there is up to you.

While this challenge is focused on the paintings, there are other benefits for you while you follow me. I'm planning on taking many step-by-step photographs of the paintings as they progress. This will allow you to see how the painting come to life, and, hopefully, make you feel like you're in the studio with me. Plus, if you sign up for my newsletter you can gain access to my special offerings just for my subscribers.  You can sign up by clicking here.

I have two major goals that I want to achieve this year. One is this challenge and the other is to work on larger paintings. So why do this challenge now? Well, my wife and I are expecting our second child this August. With a newborn and a 22 month old running around the house in a few months, I figure it's either now or never. Maybe not never, but at least not this year. I image that once she is born, I'll be able to work on making larger paintings. Since I don't expect to complete one of these larger paintings everyday, I'll be able to spend more time with our newborn and still work. I feel I should qualify what a "larger" painting is for me. I usually paint rather small, 9x12 or less with most of my paintings being 5x7 inches. With my larger painting I hope to do more 8x10 and 9x12 inch works, but I'd really like to take some time and work on more 11x14, 16x20, and larger paintings.

 I am really looking forward to the start of the 50 day challenge, because, as any painter will tell you, the best way to improve is paint, paint and then paint some more. As the saying goes, you need to put miles on your brushes. And while I usually paint almost every day, this will force me to really buckle down and work for a given period of time, day in and day out. Please help me spread the word about this painting challenge by sending this to as many people as you can. The more people we can get involved in this the more fun it will be so be sure to follow along.

The Quick Draw - My first quick draw experience

 Recently, I've had the pleasure of participating in my first plein air festivals. I've always enjoyed working outdoors and have recently made it more of a priority with my work, so entering these festivals seems like a natural progression. Not only do they present a great way to meet new artists and collectors, they also introduce you to many new areas to paint and explore. All of the festivals I've painted in have offered some way to sell the work produced during the alloted time. Some have had auctions on site following the painting time, while others have had exhibitions of the work produced at the end of the festival.

This time I participated in Paint Historic Waxahahie, which had a quick draw to kick off the week-long painting festival. For those of you not familiar with a quick draw, it's pretty simple. All of the participating artists paint in a pre-determined location for a limited amount of time. In this case, we had just 90 minutes. There's a reason it's called a quick draw! At the end of the 90 minutes, all the work was offered for sale at a silent auction. Please keep in mind this is the first quick draw I've painted in, so some of the detail may vary at different events, but I think this is the general idea.

 As a first timer, I learned a great deal at this event and wanted to share some of this with you here.

 Know what you are going to paint ahead of time. I can't stress this one enough. In the quick draw, we had an hour and a half to paint. That's it! Luckily, I had thought about this the day before and spent some time that afternoon exploring the paint-out area. I found two different locations that I thought would make good paintings. I did this just in case the light was not what I was expecting in the morning or if one of the spots didn't inspire me the next day. This turned out to be sound planning because one the areas I thought would make a good painting turned out to look totally different the next day. I had found some construction equipment that looked parked and in place for the weekend. Boy was I wrong. When I got there the next day all the equipment was in a different location and most of what I thought would make a good painting didn't exist any more. There was also a farmers market on two of the main streets designated for the quick draw. We knew about this ahead of time and luckily it didn't interfere with what I wanted to paint, but it could have changed my plans drastically. By having multiple locations picked out, I was able to easily avoid any serious problems when the actual event started, which let me concentrate on getting to work right away.

Get there early. For this quick draw, the painting time was from 8:30 - 10 am. Registration began at 8 am, so that's the time I was shooting for. This would give me plenty of time to check in, set up my easel and get everything ready to go for the 8:30 start. Well, on my way there, I ran into a 12 minute delay waiting on a slow train crossing the road. This got me there at 8:15, leaving just 15 minutes to check in and get set up. While I had  just enough time to get registered, I had to rush on choosing between my two locations from the day before. It was very windy that morning, so I chose the first spot because it offered protection from the strong winds. If I had a bit more time, I think I could have found a better vantage point to paint my subject from and perhaps even have made a better painting. Next time I'm going to try to get there even earlier to guard against the possibilty of traffic, construction, and the inevitable slow moving train.

Bring a watch! I don't know about you, but I stopped wearing a watch many years ago and starting using my cell phone as a pocket watch. The problem relying on a cell phone is that the last thing I wanted to do with such limited time was to continue to reach into my pocket to check it. Next time I'll bring a watch that I can just hang on my easel in plain sight so I can keep track of the time better. Because time grew so short so fast, I literally had to paint the bottom inch of two of my painting with the largest brush I had in just a few strokes to finish my painting in time for the 10 o'clock cut off. Yikes!

Pick something you can paint in the time you have. Again, I know this sounds obvious but it's something I didn't really consider when picking out my subject. Let's see, I have an hour and half. I think I'll paint this really cool building with lots of cool ornamental detail and lots of perspective challenges. Sure, why not?!? I really wish I had thought about this a bit more. For the view I picked, I would need about 3 hours to do it any justice in my mind. An hour and a half barely got me past me block in stage and left little to no time for corrections and finishing brush strokes.  Finding a balance between artistic ambition and reality can be difficult in these situations.

Leave time for the last-minute things. This was again something I didn't think of during the paint out. In fact, I didn't even think to take a picture of what I painted until it was in the auction that followed the quick-draw. At that point the best picture I could get was of the painting sitting on the display table, which was not the best for posting on the blog. I also wish I had taken the time to put all of my contact info on the back of my canvas before I painted on it. I'm not sure why I didn't do this other than I just didn't think of it at the time. Luckily, I was able to meet the collector who won the auction for my painting and give them my card and contact information.

 I'm sure there are a million other things I'm forgetting now that the quick draw is over. I think all the artists that painted had a great time with the challenge. I was able to meet a lot of the other artists participating in the week-long festival that followed. Some had painted in the event before and where able to suggest other locations to paint during the week while others had great suggestions for placed to eat in town. Incidentally, if you are ever in Waxahachie, The College Street Pub make unexpectedly good grub that's quite nice after a intense morning of painting.

Hopefully, this information will help you if you decide to participate in one of these events for yourself. If you have anything of add, I'd love to hear it. I'd also like to encourage you to participate in a quick draw if the opportunity presents itself. I had a great time at this one and can't wait till the next one.

Hazy Afternoon - Original Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Hazy Afternoon

This is one of the pieces I completed for the Waxahachie Plein Air Event this week. I painted this one yesterday after driving around most of the morning looking for something to paint. I'm not sure why, but nothing seemed to really move me until I saw this vista view just past Lake Waxahachie. It was just after noon and the sun was directly overhead causing some great aerial perspective on this view, so I set up in the shade of my car to paint, which offered some relief from the terrible heat of this early June.

 I'm not very happy with the photograph of this one. I'll take a better picture once the exhibition is over this weekend. In the mean time, this painting is available at the show and sale starting Friday, June 3rd at Charauqua Auditorium until Sunday, June 5th.

Hazy Afternoon

 
Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 5 inches x 7 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Boat Docks on Lake Waxahachie - Original Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Boat Docks on Lake Waxahachie

This is the next painting I did during the Waxahachie Plein Air Event. I had found this scene over Memorial Day weekend, but it was too crowded to paint, so I went back on Tuesday. Thankfully, it was a lot less crowded. In fact, I think I was the only one there for a  long while. If you have been paying attention to this blog and the work I've posted, it will come as no surprise that I'm a real sucker for boat docks. It seems I've painted them at almost every lake I've visited in the last year. I love the fact that they so often seem improvised with whatever materials the dock owner had lying around, which creates great character in these structures. These docks attracted me because of the overhangs on the one with the red roof. The light was quite scattered in that morning and it gave this whole scene a sense of depth that was elusive. The thing I learned during this painting is that sometimes I just need to keep at it and only wipe the parts of the painting that I'm not happy with. There where several times I thought about wiping the whole canvas because one or two areas weren't coming out the way I wanted. Boy, am I glad I only wiped off those areas and on kept painting. This painting will be available at the show and sale starting Friday, June 3rd at Charauqua Auditorium until Sunday, June 6th.

Boat Docks on Lake Waxahachie

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