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Wash Day - An original oil painting by George De Chiara

Wash Day

 I'm always on the look out for running water. It's by far one of my favorite subjects to paint so I very excited to discover a new little river just a few miles from our house. After spending a few minutes looking at different compositions of the running water and rocks, I choose this view, which, of course, turned out to be one of the more difficult locations to paint from. I had to set my easel up on top of a pile of rocks laying on the river bank and balance on one of the rocks to paint. Whenever I wanted to step back and see my progress, I had to carefully step down the pile of rocks to a little clearing so I could study my painting and then climb back up and make my adjustments. It's things like this that make painting outdoors interesting and a lot of fun.

Wash Day © 

 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.

Last Leaves - An original oil painting by George De Chiara

Last Leaves

  So far, we are having a very mild winter down here in Texas with lots of rain and relatively warm weather. After a record-breaking dry and hot summer, this has been a most welcome change. It's also made for some great weather to get out and paint and that's exactly what I did for this painting. I went to a near by wildlife area and found this scene. I was immediately struck by the quality of light striking the very last leaves on this oak tree. It's late January and this tree is still not giving up the last of its leaves without a fight. Plus with all the rain we've had over the last 2 months, there's actually lots of fresh green growth in the grassy foreground and even a few green saplings coming up in the brush. When I noticed the long cast shadows running across the foreground, I knew I wanted to paint this scene. This is a very old composition trick with landscapes, although I also try to do this my still life paintings too, called a threshold or a door jamb. The idea is the dark foreground stops the eye from exiting the bottom of the canvas, and, instead, causes it to wander back up to the midground. Even when I don't see this when I'm out painting, I'll often put one in any way. With a little creative design, I can lead the eye more or less to the area I want the viewer to look.

Last Leaves © 

 Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 8x6 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.

Abandoned Shadows - An original oil painting by George De Chiara

Abandoned Shadows

 Whenever I go to Fort Worth, I pass by this old abandoned church that's just off the highway. Each time I pass it, I think to myself that I really need to stop and paint this place. There's just something about the way the light hits this old building that makes me want to put it on canvas. Well, just before the year ended, I finally made my trip to paint this old church. It was a nice sunny day with just a little chill in the air. After looking around at a few different views, I chose this one because of the shadows. I loved the color in them as the went across the once white walls. The little bit of green grass and shrub sealed the deal for me and I got to painting. I had to paint quickly before the shadows changed too much. By the time I finished this piece, the shadows coming down the boarded up windows along the top had reached the bottom of the windows.

 A few days ago, I found out that this painting was juried into the 2012 Plein Air Southwest Salon at the Southwest Gallery in Dallas. This is my first time in this exhibition and I'm very happy to be included with such a great line up of artists. I'll be posting more information about this show as we closer to it in April. This painting will be available for purchase at this show.

Abandoned Shadows © 

 Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 8x10 inches on linen panel.  
Medium: Original Oil Painting 
Frame: none
Availability: Available at the Southwest Gallery this April.

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Westworth Falls - An original oil painting by George De Chiara

Westworth Falls

 I did this painting a few days after Christmas, between groups of company stopping by the house for the holidays. We had a few good days of some much-needed rain, and, on the first sunny day afterwards, I headed out to one of the best kept secrets in the DFW area, The Falls at Westworth Village. This is a wonderful little area that was once owned by the Naval Air Station. This is the second time I've painted at these falls. The first time was in the fall when they had a lot less water running through them. This time, though, there was plenty of water running over them along with unseasonably warm weather made for a great day of painting.

Westworth Falls © 

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 9x12 inches on canvas panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: Contact me to purchase ($230)

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.

Hanz and Franz - An original oil painting by George De Chiara

Hans and Franz

 Well, it's official. Christmas is over. The last bell has jingled and all the decorations are put away. Things here are finally returning to some form of normal. Or at least as normal as they can be with a 2-year-old and a 5 month old. My wife is a college instructor and her schedule changes ever semester, so normal around here is always a temporary thing at best, but for now we are back on track. For the last few weeks, we've had a steady stream of visitors here at the house and now that the last one has gone back home, I'm looking forward to updating this blog and website. I've got a lot of exciting news to share over the next week or so, along with a few new paintings and tips and tricks, so be sure to stop back often.

 A few weeks before Christmas, I got a phone call from one of my very first collectors. I hadn't spoken to him in many years and had a great time catching up. Towards the end of the call, he asked if I could paint him another portrait of his latest dogs, who are two wonderful looking Saint Bernards. After a few emails following our phone call, we reach an agreement on two paintings, both of which would be Christmas presents. With time running out, I got to work painting. Below are a few step-by-step images of one of the paintings coming to life. I also will have another post on how I used Photoshop to work on my initial composition and a few other tips on how I used the program to help work on this painting.

Here is the original image my client sent me. Normally, I would have prefered to take my own reference material, but in this case that simply wasn't possible. In order to give my client a better idea of what I wanted the painting to look like, I took this image into Photoshop and adjusted the posititioning of the dogs and simplified the background.

This is what I came up with in Photoshop. You can see I cropped in on the dogs to get them a little larger in frame and moved them closer together. I also eliminated all the background since none of it really supported the image of the dogs. From this post on, this is the image I based my painting on. In fact, I never looked at the original image again until I started writing this blog today.

Here is my initial wash and drawing on the canvas. Since I had adjusted my reference image to be the same proportion as the painting, I used a simple grid method translate the image. Once I was happy with the drawing, I let it dry for a day or two. This wasn't really by choice, I had a few other things to do and couldn't get back to the painting for a day or two. This did have a great unexpected benefit. The drawing had completely dried so once I started painting I was free to wipe off areas I didn't like and not lose my initial drawing. This came in handy, since about an hour into the painting I wiped off everything I had started and started over.

You can see in this image some of the evidence of where I wiped off my initial work and the dried drawing showing though on the right side of the dog's head. At this point, I'm trying to nail down some the drawing and establish my light and dark colors.

At this stage, I'm just about done with the dog on the left. As I worked on the one of the right, I did occasionally go back and make a few adjustments to the other dog. Notice too how I'm trying to leave as much of the original wash in for the background as I can. I am adding slightly thicker paint, but for the most part I want as much of the wash to show through as possible. I didn't take any images of the other dog in progress. I got really into painting him and sort of lost track of time. I basically painted him in much the same manner as I did the first dog, starting the nose and eyes and working out from there.

The finished painting.

Hans and Franz © 

Painting Details:
Larger Version available here
Size: 11x14 inches on linen panel. 
Medium: Original Oil Painting
Frame: none
Availability: SOLD

Signed on front. Signed and dated on back.