Painting Sessions II

This painting session is the result of a commission project.  The customer requested that I create a portrait of a house he used to own, raising his family many years ago.  I took several photo compositions of the house as it looks today and he picked out the photo he liked best.  The main challenge I had with this project was in making changes to the current photo so that it would appear as it was about 40 years ago, based only on what he told me through email, as he lives out of the area.

This is the photo the customer decided on for the house portrait.  One of the main difficulties I had was in order to sketch the house properly, getting the proper perspective of the west side of the house which is hidden behind the tree to the left, replacing the back porch with limestone steps, inserting a lime stone bench, adding a large maple tree on the left, a limestone sidewalk, several flowerboxes, eliminating the asphalt driveway with a creek gravel driveway, eliminating the front trees and large trees in the back of the house,  the neighbor's house across the street, creating a space underneath the east side of the back porch, inserting a Virginia Garden Cart in that space, creating an atmosphere and landscape of spring instead of the current autumn. setting.

This is my first pencil sketch, based on the customer's description, based on his memory, of what he wanted changed.  After studying the sketch, he wanted me to make some adjustments which follows.  As you can see, when one creates a sketch with pencil on canvas, it's almost impossible to erase without smearing.

The changes in the pencil sketch I had to make were the limestone bench position changed, the pipe rails on the limestone back steps changed, two pine trees behind the house, and the underside of the east side of the back porch uncovered and a Virginia Garden Cart inserted in that space.

The change made from the previous sketch  was adding an additional flower box between the house and the driveway.

The customer requested that I change the shape of the flower box, adjust the distance of the flower box from the long flower box and add some decorative rocks in the long flower box.

For this session, I had to elongate the oval flowerbox, add a young popular tulip tree about six inches in diameter and a small round flower box near the end of the sidewalk.

The customer recalled that there was not two pipe rails on the porch steps but one, just on the north side of the steps.

The customer was now satisfied with the accuracy of the sketch and gave me the go-ahead to start the painting.  I started the painting by painting some background colors and values of the sky,

Here, I painted in the neighbor's house across the street to the north, painted a base color of the large maple tree on the left and painted some of the trim of the house.

I painted most of the roof of the house and continued painting the trim of the house, along with the white siding.

I continued painting the white siding of the house and painted the foundation of the house, along with the porch screens.

Here, I started defining the wood siding of the house, painted the block shed and started painting some base colors of the tree leaves.  I also painted the garden cart.

Here, I add a base color for the grass, flowerboxes and driveway.

I started defining the grass, driveway and flowerboxes and added flowers.

Here, I started modeling the grass and tree leaves, along with the driveway.  I also decided to eliminate the shadows on top of the block shed.

Here, I added some flowers in the small flower box at the end of the sidewalk and the oval flower box where the tulip tree was also painted.

Here, I made on some minor adjustments.

Here, I corrected an error in describing the wood siding lines on the south wall of the second level and blocked in the space under the east side of the front porch with a wall.

I made some minor adjustments in values.

I made some minor adjustments in the sky and tree leaves.

The customer decided that the color and texture of the flower boxes were the same as the block shed.

I made some minor adjustments in various areas around the scene.

Here, I changed the color of the foundational blocks supporting the house and the steps.

Here, I changed the color of the limestone steps to match the foundational blocks and added the decorative rocks in the long flower box.  The customer stated that everything in the scene looks like the house they lived in many years ago and were very happy with the results.