Day 11 of the 50 Paintings in 50 Days Challenge - We Need A Goose by George De Chiara

We Need A Goose 6x6 inches Oil on Canvas Panel by George De Chiara Click here to bid. Opening bid just one cent! 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. To see a complete step-by-step demo of how this painting came to life visit my blog here. To see more of my paintings and all of the 50 Paintings in 50 Days Challenge Paintings visit my web site here.

Day 10 of the 50 Paintings in 50 Days Challenge - Ducky Tea by George De Chiara

Ducky Tea 6x6 inches Oil on Canvas Panel by George De Chiara Click here to bid. Opening bid just one cent! 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:) To see a complete step-by-step demo of how this painting came to life visit my blog here. To see more of my paintings and all of the 50 Paintings in 50 Days Challenge Paintings visit my web site here.

Day 9 of the 50 Paintings in 50 Days Challenge - Everywhere A Chick Chick by George De Chiara

Everywhere A Chick Chick 6x6 inches Oil on Canvas Panel by George De Chiara Click here to bid. Opening bid just one cent!  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? To see a complete step-by-step demo of how this painting came to life visit my blog here. To see more of my paintings and all of the 50 Paintings in 50 Days Challenge Paintings visit my web site here.

Day 8 of the 50 Paintings in 50 Days Challenge - Today's Harvest by George De Chiara

Today's Harvest 6x6 inches Oil on Canvas Panel by George De Chiara Click here to bid. Opening bid just one cent! 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. To see a complete step-by-step demo of how this painting came to life visit my blog here. To see more of my paintings and all of the 50 Paintings in 50 Days Challenge Paintings visit my web site here.

Day 7 of the 50 Paintings in 50 Days Challenge - You Think That Means Me? by George De Chiara

You Think That Means Me? 6x6 inches Oil on Canvas Panel by George De Chiara Click here to bid. Opening bid just ONE CENT! 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. To see my step-by-step demo of this painting coming to life visit my blog here. To see more of my work and all of the challenge paintings so far visit my website. http://georgedechiara.com/

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

Sweet and Sour 6x6 inches Oil on Canvas Panel by George De Chiara Click here to bid. Opening bid just ONE penny. 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. To see complete step-by-step pictures of this painting coming to life, visit my blog. To see more of my work and all of the challenge paintings so far, visit my web site at http://georgedechiara.com/

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

On the Spot 6x6 inches Oil on Canvas Panel by George De Chiara Click here to bid. Opening bid is ONE CENT! 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 short step-by-step demo of this painting coming to life on my blog. To see more of my work and view my blog, please visit my web site at: http://georgedechiara.com/

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

Hay Bales 6x6 inches Oil on Canvas Panel by George De Chiara Click here to bid. Opening bid just one cent. 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: This image has a lot of glare on it. Try as I might today, this was the best one I could get. I'll update my blog with a better image over the weekend. Visit my web site and blog to see more of my work. http://georgedechiara.com

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

Bobbers 6x6 inches Oil on Canvas Panel by George De Chiara Click here to bid. (opening bid just ONE PENNY)  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. Check out my blog to see complete step-by-step pictures of this painting coming to life. Click here to see it. To see more of my work visit my web site: http://georgedechiara.com/

Day 2 of the 50 day painting challenge by George De Chiara

Hanging Around 6x6 inches Oil on Canvas Panel by George De Chiara Click here to bid. (opening bid just ONE cent). 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, I'll just have to paint them. Visit my blog to see complete step by step pictures of this painting coming to life. Click here to see. Visit my web site to see more of my work. http://georgedechiara.com

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

Hung Out To Dry 6x6 inches Oil on Canvas Panel by George De Chiara Click here to bid. (All opening bids for this challenge will be ONE CENT!) Here we go! Day one of the 50 paintings in 50 days challenge.To read more about my challenge click here.  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. Go to my blog to see all of these with a brief explanation of my painting process. Visit my web site and blog to see more of my work. http://georgedechiara.com

Hazy Afternoon - Original Oil Painting by George De Chiara

Hazy Afternoon 5x7 inches Oil on Canvas Panel by George De Chiara 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. Visit my web site and blog to see more of my work. http://georgedechiara.com

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

Boat Docks on Lake Waxahachie 9x12 inches Oil on Canvas Panel by George De Chiara 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. Visit my web site and blog to see more of my work. http://georgedechiara.com