Monday, August 30, 2010

Phil and Kayley's Wedding Portrait

P & K, August 27th (9x12" acrylic on canvas)

Yo!! Wow, what a busy couple weeks for me, lots of work got done, including this wedding portrait, a garage mural inspired by the iconic Scottish artist and architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh, and a bunch of work on R.O.C. #5! This is the portrait I did for my cousin Phil's wedding - this was my second attempt at a portrait in acrylic, the first being earlier this month for my cousin Kevin's wedding (see a few posts back). I didn't have any of my own photos of both Phil and his wife Kayley together, so I decided to snoop on Facebook and see what I could find. I don't think I'll use that approach again because the quality of the photos just isn't high enough to convey the level of detail I'd like to include. It was definitely a big challenge to try to create something expressive and realistic from a pretty grainy and pixelated photo, and I ended up spending about 30 hours on this piece. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the results, but I feel that I still have a lot of work to do and tons more to learn.
I included a few symbols within the painting, something I've been doing more and more, and I'll share a few. The dove represents the people from our family who couldn't be there and are watching from above - Phil's Papa Ken just recently passed away (RIP), and it was a huge loss for the family. The dove is presenting interlocked wedding rings to show that Phil and Kayley's union is being blessed by all those who couldn't be there. I painted the background a calm blue to represent the clear blue skies I wish for their future, and I lined the banner in gold to signify the prosperity I hope they have together. Like in Kevin and Maria's painting, I chose to change a few minor elements to aid the composition - for example I took the pattern off of Phil's shirt, 'trimmed' his hair a bit, abstracted some portions of Kayley's hair, and made a few small changes to the folds in Phil's collar.

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