Tag: oil painting commission

After my customer sent me a chart of colors to include, it was time to try it with Photoshop Junior to see how it would look. Looking at her list of colors within the Coat of Arms, I saw that green was missing, so that became the background. 

This is actually the 2nd or 3rd iteration from many conversations and adjustments as we worked out the design together.

The pointy-pokey waving arms didn’t please her, so she sent many other design to consider. I developed a more ribbon-like look on the left side.

The symbolic Farewell Gap needed simplification too.

We had a few more discussions about black outlines, smoothing out some of the bends in the purple ribbon.

 

Everything is now ironed out, so it time to move to canvas. 

Tomorrow. . . 

P.S. I am guest posting once a week on the Mineral King Preservation Society website, under the topic of “An Artist’s Inspiration”. The first post went live yesterday. www.mineralking.org

This is how the painting of the odd oval job progressed, with mind changing throughout as it came into being.

There was a sign of this label along Freeway 5 in Norwalk, a landmark to watch for as kids on a car trip to Southern California. Our name was (and still is) Marshburn, and my parents said that this is “the other side of the family”.

In college, I had the pleasure of meeting some of those “other siders”, my third cousins. One of them got in touch with me a few years ago, so I had his contact information. He graciously put me in touch with his dad, who sent me the more usable version of the label. In the process, we got to visit via email, and I learned that contrary to the information I received while growing up, my family actually was “the other side”!

All of this happened because my first cousin’s wife commissioned this painting as a gift for their anniversary.

Congratulations, Bruce and Shellie, on your many years of marriage! (and thank you for the privilege of painting this for you.)

The painting was a hit, and Bruce gave permission to show this picture.

 

Last week I left you hanging on the cliff of Why Is The Central California Artist Doing Such an Odd Job?

More will be revealed in the fullness of time. Besides, this was a fun challenge.

I began tracing the design on the oval, which was a little different shape than the design. This required a bit more adjusting.

It is the first time I’ve used graphite paper to transfer and trace onto canvas so I wasn’t sure it would work.It did, so I finished with the lettering.

Then I saw that the farmer needed to be larger on the canvas than on the actual label so there wouldn’t be so much blank space.

Yep, hard to see. Let’s add some oil paint, a first layer, and think about what colors should be used in the painting. The customer and I agreed that the colors in the actual labels weren’t going to look good on a painting.

Let’s continue this tomorrow.