It’s nice to see how my artwork is influencing others. I was contacted by a fiance looking to get his bride a wedding gift. He has seen commissions I had done for another family. The trick was it was last minute. He wanted it in less than 3 weeks and one of those weeks involved a week at the beach for me. So far I haven’t found a deadline I couldn’t meet so I said ,”Sure!” and went to work. We went with a smaller size so that I could get the art done. I had the photos of bulldogs, the couple, and their new house. I added in the landscaping and bench, we worked out the scenario. I did a drawing, got it approved and everything was gravy.
I did have to spend a day on the beach painting and another day on a sunny porch painting but it was all good and fine. The scary part for these detailed illustrations is that there isn’t really a way to see how the painting has come together until the permanent ink has been laid but once that’s done there isn’t a lot that can be done to make changes. I try to be clear on this, I do have the drawing as finished and detailed as possible and I am very clear on the limitations of watercolor in the respect of changes. With all this detail there is always something to change, improve or touch up. I was also worried about my dedication and focus at the beach. Did I really have a professional artist mindset or was I pumping out a piece of artwork just to have it done?
When I sent off the finished image for approval and I got a “call me” as the response I was worried. I went back over and scrutinized the painting and found so many errors that I didn’t know how I would fix if he pointed them out. His knee looks swollen, is his head is too big? Are the dogs too big? Does it not look like the couple enough? Does he want more pink in the dog’s mouth? A longer tongue? I was freaking out – on vacation. In the end the only correction that needed to be made was the white dog’s tail needed to be shortened. Whew. That I can do. It also turns out that Windsor and Newton Payne’s Gray is the perfect cover-up for india ink.
I have a delivered painting and art in another state, Tennessee. Yay! Congratulations to a happy couple!