Tom's Commission

Tom contacted me by email to inquire if I take comissions. And yes, I do. So he sent a photo he had taken. It was really interesting and I loved the contrast of light and shadow so I seriously thought about accepting this comission.

I have two concerns when agreeing to take on a comission. The first is ownership of the photo I'd be painting from. I don't want to violate anyone's copyright so I need to know who owns the rights to the image, who created it. Luckily, Tom took this photo himself and so that question was answered positively and I would be free to paint it with his permission.

The secod issue is whether or not I had been there before so that I could have a personal connection to that location. It's vertually impossible for me to do justice to a painting from a photo of someplace I haven't been. I have to know how it feels to stand right there, how the air smells, how the sunlight seems, and so on.

Tom told where this spot was - I had sort of guessed where - and I had been there. It's Death Valley. Actually, Tom first emailed to inquire if I painted the desert. Of course living in San Diego as I do I've been to the deseet plenty of times. But I don't know, for some reason I've never painted it. Came close plenty of times and wanted to but was always distracted by the coast or the big oaks in the mountains.

Tom gave me the go-ahead and I was to choose the image I wanted to paint from the 6 photos he sent.

The first stage of the painting.

I begin by toning the canvas with burnt sienna. Hate painting on a white canvas: too much white! Then I carefully sketch the important landmarks in graphite pencil. Many artists just start painting the darks right away but I guess I start with pencil because I love to draw and any excuse to draw something is all the invitiation I need to pick up my pencils:)

After the pencil landmarks are in I paint in the edgesof shapes and dark areas to give more definition. I call this the "bones" of the painting. It tells me in no uncertain terms where everything is. I let this stage dry overnight.

Stage One: The Bones

Stage Two: The Mood of the Day.

OK, so now I'm ready to start painting! Next I put in the sky because I need to see the light. For me the sky sets the mood of the entire painting and I really find that I can't move on until I know what kind of day it is. When the sky goes in I often lose some of the detail of the mountain's ridgeline. It will come back later as the top half of the painting progresses.

Stage Two: Sky Sets the Mood

Stage Three: Setting the Warm and Cool Lights and Shadows

I'm ready to put in the feeling of the bottom of the painging - anything that's not sky. So a light wash of color goes over the rest, using a warm tone for the sunny areas and a cool color for the shadows.

Stage Three: Setting the Warm and Cool Lights and Shadows

Stage Four: Paint!

Now the paint starts to fly! I grab up a handful of brushes and, mixing colors on the fly (I never pre-mix colors), I start painting. Sometimes I work form top to bottom, sometimes from darks to lights, sometimes ... well, whatever it takes! Many painters have a tried-and-true method of approaching all images. I feel that for me, in order to be as creative and inventive as possible, I don't want to get locked into one working method.

In this painting I did work from the mountains to the middleground. I saved the foreground for last because I knew that it would be the most fun to do: the cherry on top of the ice cream sundae!

Stage Four: Top Down

Stage Five: Getting closer

In the above image you can probably see that the mountains have been worked on but the foreground has not yet seen any serious brushwork, so that's what comes next.

Stage Five: Getting There!

Well, it's almost finished at this point. Everything needs to dry and my eye needs a break before I tweek it and bring it into a unified whole. That's the real serious business of painting and to me, makes the difference between a so-so painting and an good one that could hang in any gallery.

I also must mention that it's frustrating to me to see this painting on-line because so much of the brushwork and subtlties of color are lost.

Finished!

I've done everything to this painting that I wanted to do and that my eye told me to do so it's off to Tom it goes. Here's the final version. As you can see the colors pop a bit more and there's even more detail in the mountains and foreground. It was hard to bring this one to a close... I love to paint:)

If you are interested in a commission....

Thinking about a commission for you own photo? Email your photo and I'll take a look to see if it's a subject I want to take on.

As for costs, it's $3 US per square inch, so you can figure it up based on the size you want... or I can do the math for you based on standard canvas and frame sizes.

For example, a 9 by 12 inch canvas would be 108 inches. That multiplied by $3 is $324.

Here's my email:

justpleinair@hotmail.com

Thanks Tom for the opportunity to paint your wonderful photo interpretation of Death Valley!