I just finished my largest commissioned painting yet! At 4 feet square, this landscape was commissioned to celebrate the 10-year anniversary of my clients Monique and Eric.
When Monique reached out to me, she mentioned that she has been looking at my work on Facebook and was waiting for the opportunity to have me do a piece for their home. With their anniversary coming up, she and Eric decided now was that opportunity!
Monique and Eric were married at Mirror Lake in Lake Placid, New York and wanted the painting to be about this special spot. Monique shared several pictures of the vista across the lake, but they also wanted to add some details in the foreground that were not in their pictures. First, Monique and Eric love to paddle and wanted a kayak in the scene as that is how they most enjoy experiencing the lake. Second, Monique liked being able to see rocks through the water in some of my fine art paintings (particularly “Twilight”) and wanted to include this as well. Since I love to paint the view through water and I am avid paddler myself – this was all music to my ears!
To start the collaboration process on how the final image would be compiled, I set out in my own kayak on a local lake to take some pictures. Spending the first few hours of my “work” day paddling and taking pictures is about as good as it gets!! When I got back to my studio, I did sketches showing how some of my photos would look as options for a foreground to combine with the background of Mirror Lake from their photos. Below is the Mirror lake image we chose – and following that are my sketches together with the corresponding foreground photos.
Monique and Eric's picture of Mirror Lake
Foreground option 1
Sketch for option 1
Foreground option 2
Sketch for option 2
Foreground option 3
Sketch for option 3
I met with Monique and Eric to review the options and all the photos, and we pretty quickly settled on the first option. With this done, my next step was to do a small “sketch version of the painting before moving on the final big painting to make sure I was capturing everything they wanted. Below is a picture of the 10”x10” “sketch” painting:
10"x10" "sketch" painting
Once this was done, we met again to review the painting and Monique and Eric were happy with the direction I was heading for their special piece! With their approval, I was on to painting the final work.
I thoroughly enjoyed painting this. Working with water is right up my alley, but it was also fun to do some things that I don’t do as often, like the distant trees and mountains. Most importantly, when I delivered it, Monique and Eric were thrilled with the result!!
Enjoy, Jason
The final painting!