For the past several months, I have been working on a commission and I just completed it!   It is the backyard view of the house of a friend.   This was both fun and challenging for me and took me far longer to complete than I anticipated, for several reasons.

First off, I have done many portrait paintings but not many architectural paintings...and there are no straight lines on a face!  Look how many straight lines there are on this house!  I had to develop new skills to render a straight line in a way that made it read as straight but without such precision as with using a ruler.  I still wanted a painterly feel and not a photographic  feel...because why not just look at the photograph then!

There is also much information in the reference photo that had to be culled down and selected as worthy of being in the painting.  I  needed to make the judgement call and hope that the family agreed with what I included.

Finally, I spent a lot of time working the shadows under the porches.  To get those tones was really a challenge.  I feel that it helped me study color and that is so good!

My thanks to Anthony, my friend for giving me this opportunity to spend time with his home.