Commissions

After posting some of my paintings on eBay I was approached by a colleague, and asked if I would paint a picture of her daughter's dog which she could give to her for Christmas. I'll be honest, I had never started putting my paintings on Facebook to tout for business, but the fact that my colleague liked my paintings enough to want me to do one for her was very appealing. We printed off a small photo from her phone to use a reference for this painting.

Commission 1

There's very little fiddly work on this, and so it didn't take a huge amount of time. What I'd said to my colleague was that I would only do the painting on the understanding that she said if she didn't like it, since I wouldn't be offended. If she liked it, and if she wanted it when it was finished, then I said we could negotiate afterwards. She did want it, and so we negotiated, as in I asked her what she wanted to pay for it, and accepted her offer. I don't feel comfortable discussing money here and now, but if you are interested in a commission, email me at londinius@yahoo.co.uk, and I will let you know how much I usually ask.

That was a straightforward commission since it was on my usual sized 12x10inch canvas board, and it was basically a matter of using the one reference photograph. This led, though, to a rather more complicated commission. Another colleague wanted a painting for her daughter, who had recently been married in Las Vegas. She wanted it to incorporate the name of the place they were married, a banner with her daughter and son in law's names, and pictures of some of the places they visited during their honeymoon. I've blanked out their names and the date in the interests of privacy, but here is what I came up with: -

Honeymoon Wedding Commission

As it's a complicated commission, this was the first time that I felt I needed to design the whole thing on paper before starting. The finished painting is actually pretty faithful to the original design. My idea was to use a bold, rather stylised Stars and Stripes as the background, with pictures of the Hollywood Sign, the Golden Gate, Alcatraz and Laguna Beach all surrounding the Las Vegas sign. I tried to blend the images into each other, and I don't think I did a terrible job. The Golden Gate is particularly striking, as is the desert sky around the Las Vegas sign. when I painted this I soon realised I was going to need a bigger board than my usual 12x10 inch, and so opted for 14x18in. As it's larger, and took hours more work it was a little more expensive than the first. again, email me for details.

A couple of days before the end of term another colleague approached me, asking if I could paint a Christmas present. She wanted a bright and colourful painting of an Amsterdam scene. I'll be honest, I thought it was going to be a push to get it done in time for Christmas, but then again I like a challenge. After a fairly intensive weekend's work, it was ready : -

Commission 3

Hours of work went into it , those buildings are very intricate. But I have to say that I'm very pleased with what I managed. The sky and the water are good, and those are the best trees I've managed so far. It's on another big canvas board. My colleague was pleased, and that's the main thing.