Vermont House Commission

 Around Thanksgiving a good friend commissioned me to paint her son and daughter-in-law's new ski house in Vermont. At the time she only had one photo of it, but promised to send me more photos after they were up there for Thanksgiving. She sent me photos of the house, the shed, and the mailbox and wanted all of them in the painting if possible. The house sat on a large piece of land and needed some foreground detail. I used artistic license (with her approval) to move the shed and mailbox within reasonable distance and move the few foreground trees closer into the scene. Of course there were no shadows on the snow and that took me the longest time to approach that because it was so important to the look of the painting. I was happy with the result and my friend was thrilled. 

The final painting was 11 x 14.

Hamilton Ave House Commission

A while ago I was contacted by a woman who had seen the commission of the the red house in the snow that I painted back in March. The new client's mother's house was the subject this time and it was a house with multiple angles that wasn't easy to sketch out. Added to that the shingles were those brown, textured ones that I wasn't sure how to paint...and there were a lot of them. That was the first thing I practiced before beginning the commission. I ended up using a very light grey Tombow marker to create most of the texture on the shingles and then added a little watercolor. The house had shutters and canopies over the windows and lots of foliage. I was working from photos because it was going to be a Christmas gift for her mom, so I really couldn't go there to look at the house unless as she said, "The car wasn't in the driveway." The staircase was missing from her photos so I was able to take a few more photos that included that area. Then I was faced with the area behind the stairs. In real life what you saw was mostly the neighbor's driveway with a motor home parked there as well as the neighbor's house being very prominent. When I took the photos and loaded them onto my computer I was happy to see that there was a small streetlamp with a sign having the house number. So I included that and did a lot of foliage and just a hint of the other house.

The client asked if the painting could be done by Thanksgiving weekend because she would be home visiting from Pittsburg. I met her and her family and they were all thrilled with the result. She said it was better than she ever expected. I'm so glad!

The client posted a photo of the painting on the Sayville Artists FB page and wrote such a nice compliment. I was thrilled to say the least.