Commissioned painting
Commissioned painting is always pleasure to paint no really what subject matter is. And inspiration is very important thing to do in a good way, so your customer will be happy with a painting! In this case the commission is to paint a kids. Absolutely no necessary to love children to be able to paint them nice, all what need for the inspiration is to remember yourself as a child, remember how was world looking around you when you was little? Everything is big, unknown and the sun is so bright and colors so vibrant! Remember? And from there you start. For this particular painting I was given an very poor resolution photograph, it was a screenshot from iPad, it was very pixelated image when I was trying to see the details. But my technique is not surrealistic and doesn’t required much details to see. The canvas I got for this painting is 30 by 40 inch. First I made a sketch painting on art board 18 by 24, this need for composition and colors palette, it also nice to show to customer what they can expect.
After small sketch was approved, I started big canvas. Using spray bottle I made it wet and applied very transparent paint all over the canvas, I started it as watercolor wet on wet.
After wet paint drips and dries a little bit I started with some shadows and details on faces.
When working on the big canvas it is important to see the whole picture plane and your eyes constantly have to browsing from small to big, from first plane to a background. Work on eyes of the face and right away place several large brushstrokes on leaves and trees.
Do not leave white canvas, paint everything at once, leave highlights to the real end of your work. Never paint object but impression of it. There is no leaves to paint, but there is a sunlight coming through greenery.
