First Wedding Painting of 2022

 

My new year started off with a bang, studio-wise.  I had my first wedding of the year on New Year's Day.  This was an older couple who got married at the Diana venue on the Biltmore Estate.  They're quite a lovely couple.  He is very distinguished and she reminds me of Dolly Parton, in a very good way: small, voluptuous, big blonde hair, and a very definite (and very positive) personality.  They're quite a lot of fun to be around.  

New Year's Day around here is pretty iffy, but we lucked out with temperatures in the upper 60's, of all things.  The bride, though, liked the idea of snow on the ground, and since this is a painting and not a photograph, that's no problem at all.  The most important thing that they wanted me to capture was the connection between them.  And I think I did.  It's hard to see on the small image here, but if you click on it, it will show you a larger version.

One thing that I did NOT do this time was paint at the reception.  There wasn't a "reception" per se, rather a dinner for about 20 people in the Private Dining Room at the Inn on Biltmore.  With the omicron covid variant spreading like wildfire, I did not feel comfortable being in a small room with a lot of unmasked people.  Instead, I offered a small price reduction to the couple since they and their guests wouldn't be able to see the painting get started, to which they readily agreed. 

And it was a good thing, too.  This painting had a couple of false starts.  Getting the sizes and proportions right was, for some reason, difficult.  My first block-in had the couple too small, so I had to rework them the next day.  Then there were a lot of little technical issues, the kind that most people would never see but would bug the hell out of me.  They're fixed now.  Actually, I'm very happy with the way this one turned out.  The couple will be back in town soon to retrieve it personally.

Now I'm working on a large and complicated painting for my upcoming solo exhibition.  I think the painting is pretty well started.  Now I have to go over every square inch and bring it up to a high level of finish.  That'll take a while and will be the subject of my next post.