A neighborly commission!
This is my sweet neighbor Kim Bennett! She has a love for gardening that rivals my own! I always see her working in her yard...planting and weeding! Her yard is beautiful. But, she still misses the bulb garden from her old house where she had planted literally hundreds of tulips and daffodils. She gave me some pictures of that garden, and I painted it up for her in a 36 x 18. This is the finished result. It took a couple of revisions (absolutely no oranges!) before Kim dubbed it "perfect"! Now her twin daughters will know how lovely their Mother's garden was and be able to enjoy it for years to come--without having to water or weed! :)
posted by Jennifer Vranes at
10:35 AM
0 Comments
Here is another example of 'reworking' a piece until it works. I've decided sunflower fields are just not my thing! I tried to make it work...but it wasn't happening. For 2 years, I had the first version, then the second, sit in several of my Galleries--and it wouldn't sell! The first piece, I think we'll agree, had too much of that 'weird' green in the distant mountains. That's just the sort of green that will never sell--because who on earth has that color in their home? And the yellow/green combo isn't good--especially when that's the entire painting! The second version is much better. I brought in some more colors like oranges and nice browns. I made the distant hill more interesting. But sunflowers are a tough sell these days. Maybe 10 years ago this wasn't the case! So when in doubt, make it a lavender field, and it will be fantastic! I brightened up the yellows, and the house, and painted a lavender field right over the sunflowers! Paintings are all about layers, afterall. This particular piece is quite heavy with all the paint I keep adding to it! Both new lavender fields were snatched up immediately by my Laguna Beach Gallery. Hopefully now they will find a loving home! :)
What many people don't know, is that we artists sometimes re-work a painting several times until we get it right! This one, for example, started off as a poppy field...then turned into a vineyard, and just last week it became a lavender field! Which version do you like best? I think you will agree that the last rendition is by far the strongest. When I get a painting that just doesn't sell, after sending it through my Gallery circuit, I request the painting come back to me, and I then evaluate what the problem is. In most cases, it is due to color. If a painting is too green...or too yellow, it will sit. People love color! Anything with reds, purples, blues with accents of yellows and greens sells immediately. Those are the colors in which most people decorate their homes. It is true, that the second painting has lots of red, but it just wasn't exciting enough. The background was faded and "blah". The sky, boring. With the third piece, I "brightened" everything up. I made the yellows "pop", and added some interesting clouds to the sky. I even changed the sky color from a weird blue to a wonderful cobalt. I felt it needed more depth, so I added mountains. And the purple against the yellow is always a winning color combo! Using complimentary colors always makes a piece into a WOW!
