A Look Behind

OR how I achieve my look

I did my best to capture myself working during this painting as self-documenting my process is not my strong suit.

I was gifted a lovely commission from my aunt to make a painting for my other aunt's (her sister's) 50th wedding anniversary that was coming up in 3 months. A suggestion was a native wedding vase. Fifty years also meant yellow roses.

Deal. Let's do this.

So I went and hunted down some images to start mocking up a look. I did this in photoshop and made it like a digital magazine-cut-out collage thing. I decided to do five roses, one for each decade. I wanted to scatter them about the vase like flowers scattered around a congratulated bull fighter or an actor on stage. The wedding vase meaning the relationship they had being the real prize. The winner and star of this painting.

This mock up helped get a perspective. I then realized with this look, that I liked the main placement, but the vase was lacking in design. So I went and drew a colored pencil mock up, this time with the vase design I wanted. The colors I wanted. I went with a couple of designs I had found online and combined them. One seemed to show birds next to each other holding up suns together. The handle being like a braided rope connecting the spouts was found on another. The vase was now going to sit on a native colorful striped blanket. The background was an undecided blue. Sky? Wall? Something else? I'll decide later.

Ok. So. I did a perspective digitally. I did a color sketch. What else to do but to start sketching in the lines on to the final canvas. I'm still unsure the best way to do this part as I dislike the messiness of the graphite, but I used pencil on the canvas to get a placement of things started.

I went over the graphite with a dark brown acrylic, like one would do with ink on paper. Messy but it helped to stop the graphite dust mudding up my vibrant colors. I started color blocking in the background and in other places.

So after the color block, I get this flat color version of my painting. It reminds me of coloring books where all you do is color in the sections in flat color. Only the yellow was still getting muddy from the graphite but otherwise, nice solid base to start working the lighting on things.

The main subject was dealt with first. The handle, the shading and lighting of the vase and refinement of a native artist's work on the vase. Getting rid of the coloring book lines was a lot of this step. You can also see the flower petals getting their proper lighting going.

Now all five flowers have better lighting on them. More refinement needed maybe but better than the coloring book look they were in before. Also the yellow in the blanket was fighting with the yellow in the roses so I changed up the stripe colors. I finished refining that blanket and the leaves. And then what to do with this blue background?

How about a lovely brightly painted corrugated aluminum siding? I just felt like the sky would mean I need more harsh daylight sun on this subject matter for that, and I liked the more indoor or shaded-side-of-building light over the harsh shadow lines of a near-cloudless sky. Not for this anyway.

So. This is the finished painting. Five yellow roses tossed in congratulation at the wedding vase of what is the long lasting relationship of my aunt and uncle. Fifty years.

What a bond.

I'm glad I was alive to witness such a thing so close to me in my family. I appreciate that I got to do this for them. And it was all because of my other aunt commissioning me to do so. I appreciate that also. I hope I get the chance to do something like this one day again soon. It was enjoyable for me, for sure.

Also!

I hope you enjoyed the peek into how some of my paintings go.

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