Sketches for a Commissioned Painting

Working with a client to create a painting on commission is a rewarding process.  Nothing satisfies me more as an artist than to be able to understand and interpret a clients wishes and produce an artwork that meets expectations.  This little gem is a good example.  My client wanted a painting of a newly built boat house to give as a gift to her son who was instrumental in the construction.  We discussed possible point of views, and settled on the perspective as seen from the water.

I spent quite a bit of time in my kayak finding the ideal vantage point and taking photos.  A sunny mid-morning was perfect for strong diagonal shadows, good light is the key to a successful landscape painting.  Sketch #1 at the top is my first proposal.  Rough sketches are the best time for client input, changes are easy to make.  The son had strong ideas about the scene, he expressed his vision of the boat house as a place for the whole family to gather and play on the lake and wanted to include figures of mom and sister in a canoe, brother-in-law, brother and future sister-in-law sitting on the dock accompanied by their big, furry pet dog, and dad walking with a fishing pole and the two grandchildren holding a string of fish.  Oh, yes, he wanted the mountains shown above the trees.  A delightful Norman Rockwell type of scene, and an exciting opportunity for me to use my illustration skills.  Sketch #2 above was created on the spot in the presence of the clients to confirm my understanding of the concept.

Sketch #3 is the finished drawing (minus a two figures and the dog) on the dock.  It took more than a month to pin all the members of this busy family down to pose for photos, and at one point we used stand-ins.  The biggest challenge was to incorporate all of these very tiny figures into the composition, the tallest person is about 1 1/2″ leaving no room for detail.  The clients were satisfied and gave the go ahead to begin painting.  I still needed to photograph the missing people but that could be arranged on their next visit.

A 14″ x 18″ canvas was selected for the grounds with gallery wrapped sides.  This would allow me to continue the painting around the edges and not require a frame.  I set about making photo prints from my digital images to use as reference; the building in the sunshine, distant mountains in the same light, images of each of the figures most taken on different days but always shot from the same vantage point on the lake.  Oh, I forgot about the flag on a pole, it wasn’t installed yet because the family had not made a decision on the location.  For the sake of a completed painting I made an executive decision and placed the flag in some negative space on the right using the principals of good composition.

I’ll post the progress of this commission over the next few days.

Gail Niebrugge, Alaska landscape artist