INTERCOASTAL SUNRISE • 24 inches x 36 inches • in progress
Here's where I began this morning.
I started working on the trees, and then the shadows they were casting in the water.
Still working in the water. I gave up on that shadow area in the top right corner of the water. It needs to dry before I can do anything else to it.
Now I've been working on the water behind the fence. It's rather tedious to make a smooth transition of colors when there is something like this fence to paint around.
Once I got that fairly smoothed out, I started with the grass that's between the fence boards.
Once that was all outlined, I added some of the different colored grass blades. At this point, I'm just crossing my fingers, hoping this is a good idea. (I'm still in the IS THIS UGLY? stage.)
I got those blended and then moved onto the grass in the foreground.
I'm added all these funky colors to the grass to help give the feeling that the sunrise is reflecting off the grass as well as the water. I don't think it really does this in real life. We'll just call this my artistic license.
Purple grass!!? What am I thinking?
Hm. I think I've turned a corner... this might just be turning out!
Every artist I’ve ever talked to agrees. It’s so much harder to paint a commissioned piece than just a painting you feel like doing as part of your body of work.
The voice of the client is always lurking in the back of your head, saying “that is NOT at all what I had in mind.”
Over the years, I’ve been able to ignore that voice more and more, but it still takes some work. Of all the 32 commissions I’ve painted for various people, I’ve actually only had one client who wasn’t totally in love with the piece I created for them. So hopefully that means the odds are pretty good that this piece will be just what my client has in mind.
Anyway… I spent most of the day trying to ignore the “IS THIS UGLY??” question, that was running through my head while I was painting.
I’m still not sure that this is what Ron had in mind when he gave me his photo. But hopefully this painting won’t break my string of good luck with commissioned paintings. I do think it’s starting to “turn out.”
Looks really great. The colors are certainly precious and, although it is hard to see critically in a picture, it really seems to be snapping together. Lovely.
Thanks for your encouraging words….It definitely does look much better in person.