Since I was asked to do the fabulously exciting two murals commission about ten days ago, I’ve done two working paintings to email to the clients (since we’re still in lockdown and can’t meet up).
The things I love about this commission is how easy going it is about its requirements. The clients want a specific landscape in it, they want various types of people in it, and those people can be socialising, together, maybe dancing, maybe just sunbathing and drinking together, oh…..and the people are to be naked…which is what makes it even more interesting as far as I am concerned! They can be totally naked.
There is also a swimming pool that could be incorporated in it, and people swimming in the pool.
There is to be trees, and grass, and sunshine in this English landscape.
So to that end I did two working paintings, the first was of a groups of people sunbathing in the specific English setting, in the sunshine, and made a nice scene. The second I incorporated that same version as a third of the painting along with the pool as another third, and the other third was people dancing at night with a strong overhead disco type light, and I was really pleased with that version, even though it was only a rough painting. And the finished painting would be better merged together.
When I emailed it to the clients last weekend they gave me wonderfully uplifting feedback over the phone.
And then they said that they had a quickly drawn out rough sketch done to show me what they were considering, and sent it by email to me to see what I thought…it was a very simple drawing, but I could see all the different aspects that the clients wanted me to put in the finished painting…after a chat on the phone to double check what exactly some parts were..I now have another working painting to do…..
This one will include the same landscape, with some artistic licence to move some parts to fit better in the picture, again with naked people in it, from a different viewpoint from the first idea, and also some wild animals, in particular a badger, squirrel, fox, and an owl, and birds feeding, and some wild flowers…
Its taken me a while to get the source photos together for me to use them for where I need them, to merge them all together..but I now have them, and can start on the third version to see how that will work as an image. Its an exciting one! I love it! Its my job to make it even more exciting so that the clients love it too!