A Commissioned Piece: "Football 39 Hero"

Just before Christmas, I was approached by a friend who wanted to have a special painting done for his son as a present.  His son had been working towards his Eagle Scout for sometime and an award ceremony would be coming up to celebrate this wonderful accomplishment in February.  His son also happens to play football and plays well too.  Just an amazing kid that is respectful, hard working, and accomplished.  I think it says a lot about his parents and they should be deservedly proud.

At the time, when I talked with my friend I was working on Christmas paintings of the "Dogs Resting" (for friend's) and the "Meen Green Machine" (for my boyfriend, Mr. Motorhead).  I told him we could talk about it at the beginning of the New Year.  I must admit that I still have not gotten use to the idea of doing commissioned paintings.  I rather find it stressful in that what I may picture in my head will be something completely different than a client.  But ever since I met this friend, we've always been on the same kind of "wave length" when it came to communicating so I felt a bit easier doing this commissioned artwork.

My friend emailed me with a couple of photos and we talked about some ideas over the phone.  I sketched a few options of layouts.  He decided on the one layout that I would have chosen and was my first choice.  We also talked about colors, and etc... and this is what came of it.  I call the watercolor painting "Football 39 Hero"....

"Football 39 Hero"; Watercolor on 11" x 15" paper.

And here's one of the original photos that I was given to work with....

And here's some of the process from the sketch that was approved to the final....

The Approved Sketch...

First, I started with the sky....

Then, I worked a little further on the detail of the front football player...

Then, I worked out from there....

Then, I was almost there....

Then, I finished and emailed a picture to my friend to get his okay that I was in fact really done....which is the final of this painting.

The finished painting!

Enjoy the Ride!

About 3 months ago, I moved into a new place and I'm now finally getting to a point where I want to start hanging things on the wall.  It's not that I have a shortage of paintings to hang on my walls.  But sometimes it's nice to have a variety of things on the wall that have cute sayings or to have other unique items among the paintings on the wall.  Well, in the search for some cute quotes or sayings that I could find on-line for my wall, I found a shortage when it came to bicycles among the quotes.  Most of the quotes had a bicycle and the quote of "Enjoy the Ride!"; which was fine but I just wanted something a bit more.

And so, with drying time happening during a commissioned piece that I'm currently working on, I decided to do my own cute quote with bicycles.  The nice thing is that this way I could plan what I wanted said, choose the colors, and put as much bicycle in it as I wanted.  Little by little, it came together.  I have always enjoyed the quote that "Life is a journey", and I kind of like the "Enjoy the Ride" with the bicycle.  So with those two quotes in mind I laid in a background of a combination of flat washes and alternative methods.  I used a bit of scotch tape here and there to remove color; along with some masking fluid.  I used objects to apply the masking and just kind of played around with it.  I had fun and this is what came of it....

"Enjoy the Ride"; Watercolor on 12" x 18" paper.

I was pretty happy with this and I think it should look good in my living room decor.  Thanks for stopping by and I welcome any comments you may like to share.

A Fountain Angel...

I started this painting back at the beginning of December but then got side tracked with Christmas paintings.  A couple of nights ago, while taking a break from prelim sketches for a commissioned piece I got to looking at it.  I thought to myself that I really need to finish it.  It didn't need that much more done to it.  I quickly went over a small area and then finished with a bit of ink.

"Fountain Angel"; watercolor and ink on 15" x 20" paper.

The painting was inspired by a photo of a fountain that I took during a Fall colors drive one Saturday along the Mississippi River.  There wasn't much color along the river that day, so I started looking at other things in the area when this fountain caught my eye.

I welcome any comment you may have and thanks for stopping by!