A New Wedding Painting

 

I recently finished the only wedding painting started in 2020.  All my plans for the year collapsed in March, along with everybody else's, when the lockdowns began.  Some of my clients rescheduled their weddings to 2021.  Some of them went ahead with their scheduled 2020 weddings, and for those, I canceled out.  Weddings are superspreader events and I didn't want to have anyone superspread to me.  Frankly, I was very surprised at the number of events that were held.  I had more inquiries for wedding paintings in 2020 than I had in any year before.  And I said no to all of them.  That is, until I got a note from Jessica.  She asked if I'd be interested in a virtual wedding.  A what?

Yes, that was right: a virtual wedding.  Their plan was to have an event where they, the officiant, the photographer, and the venue manager were the only ones onsite.  Everybody else, all family members and friends, were to be on Zoom.  Including me.  Well, there's a new idea.

So that's what we did.  On the Big Day, I was in my studio, working on creating their wedding painting, just like I would have been if I'd been at the event.  I had my iPhone set up on a tripod to record the painting's development and share it on Zoom.  Everybody watched what I was doing until the ceremony started, then again for a bit after the ceremony, First Dance, and online toasts.  Very cool!

A day or two later in the studio, I decided that my initial composition was crap.  So I got out my Painter's Emergency Repair Kit (a jar of white oil primer), painted over everything, and started from scratch.  Essentially, I zoomed way in, making them and the fireplace much larger and cropping out all the irrelevant sky, trees, and lawn.  Much mo' better.  I worked up the composition in drawings, transferred it to the canvas, and went to work.  The result is what you see here.

Since I wasn't physically onsite, I had to rely on some photographic resources.  The Old Edwards Inn provided me with some photos of the location.   And Jeff and Jessica's photographer, Abby Byrd, allowed me to use some of her photos as reference.  Without those two, this painting couldn't have happened.  Many many thanks to those two!

I'm really happy with the way this one turned out.  And, best of all, so are Jeff and Jessica.