A Covered Bridge Painting-Commision

Posted by on Aug 18, 2014 in Blog | No Comments
Covered Bridge Commission 2014

Covered Bridge Commission 2014

I was recently commissioned to do a covered bridge painting. I love a covered bridge-whether in person, or in a photograph or a painting. Give me the chance to paint one, and pay me for it…YES PLEASE!

A covered bridge in the mountains of North Carolina in the Fall? WOW-could I get a better subject?

I love to paint landscapes, and so this should have been “all in a days work”. But it was actually more challenging than expected. One reason is that I could not get to the bridge to paint it in person. It was in the Western part of North Carolina, but still not a quick trip. My wonderful customer did provide me with quite a few photos. However, all those photos were taken on an overcast and somewhat rainy day.  The pictures were taken in the fall when the colors were brilliant, but with the weather-the photos themselves were just about black and white-or like a gray scale.  They were also taken in a horizontal format- all pretty close up. My customer wanted a vertical painting with lots of color.

So, here is the test for me the artist-to paint what I DONT see. I started with lots and lots of sketches. When I finally settled on a drawn composition, I began to work on some value studies. Since the photos I was working from were all basically one value…I found another challenge. However, in a way it was freeing, in that I could design and choose to do exactly what I wanted.  I am very fortunate that this customer knew my work very well, and had given me total and complete artistic freedom. She even said I could throw in a waterfall, or people. 🙂 Well, this is a rare opportunity, and took a great deal of stress off of me. Commissions can be scary-if you are a people pleaser, which I am. You hope and pray they will love it and that they will see all the love you put into their painting. I am fortunate that I have had great success so far with commissions (knock on wood!). In this situation, it was a special gift for someone she loved-I knew she was happy, but it made my day when I heard HE loved it too.

When someone loves what you painted and enjoys looking at it everyday-it is a wonderful feeling!

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