Carole Russell Art Weblog

A day for friends

I’m expecting a very pleasant day today. Meeting an old friend for lunch, back home and then out for me tea with current friends and someone I haven’t seen in an age. It’s raining at the moment, which I’m not happy about – frizzes my hair!

Hopefully lots of catching up, a little reminising (not too much I hope – live for today and all!), and loads of laughs. Could even be some great food thrown in for good measure. I can’t remember having tea out for years – how nice!

On the painting front I have actually now, officially, got a commission. Now that is exciting. So, the painting is to be of a girlfriend and her sister with a camper van on an Australian beach. Interestingly all three elements are in different photographs – so I’m having to compose the painting rather than just paint from life or an already composed photograph.

Luckily, all photos have the sun at the same angle, so not messing with changing shadows etc which is useful. Colours are to be bright a breezy – no problem there, the Australian sea is beautiful and in this particul photo it has three very distinct layers of colour so painting that will be a pleasure.

I suppose my main concerns are 1. that I capture a good likeness of the two girls (to that end I have requested some more photos so I can see the shapes of their features and 2. the campervan – never drawn or painted one of those – they are a unique shape and as long as I can get that right I think I’ll be OK.

Scale is another issue, perspecvtive too. The photos I have need scaling up and down to ensure the size of the girls in the foreground is believable in terms of them being able to get in the campervan behind them and drive away – I’ve already adjusted the size of the van as before – they would have been too big – hopefully it’s in better scale now.

Price? – No idea what to charge, so for now I am keeping a log of cost (canvas, paints, photo scanning and printing) and labour (time I spend sketching, painting etc) and from there I hope to be able to come up with a figure acceptable to us both. I’ve already spent £32 on photos, canvas etc so it’s going to be interesting. Fortunately I didn’t have to say how much it would cost in the initial discussion as my commissionee (is that right?) said – let’s wait and see how much work you have to do first – which I thought was fair.

The painting is a birthday present (May) and is suppose to help cheer his girlfriend up as she is from Australia and missing it badly – not surprise with this weather in the UK at the moment. He has already seen a rough sketch on the canvas (24 x 18 inch) and is ok with it so far. I’ll call him over (he’s a neighbour so that makes it nice and easy) next week to see what he thinks of the progress.

Back to today, off to get ready and enjoy, will post updates on the commission and my painting of Marco, Salvatore and Franco – nice to have two very different paintings to work on. – Ciao