This commission piece is of the wedding of some friends of mine. They were married in New Orleans in January of 2019. The bride’s mother and sister had asked me at the rehearsal dinner if I would be willing to make a painting after the wedding, and I agreed to!
I decided with this painting, since there were so many figures, to draw it first. Which ended up saving me a lot of time and energy.
The next step was to do a general color block in, I left some parts unpainted because they were incredibly dark in the photo reference I was using and I wasn’t sure how I wanted to handle those areas yet. I used very thinned out paint at this stage because I wasn’t working on any details yet just getting color put in.
Once there’s a general color block in I began to focus on the getting a background laid in, literally brick by brick. Once I felt good about the background I began to work on the figures, at this point I am just starting in on Dave, the groom.
Once I feel like I have a good block in of the groom I moved over to Georgia, the bride. At this stage I am still not focusing on too much detail I’m more focused on getting a second, thicker layer of paint as well as a bit of detail. I like to jump around as it helps me not get too bogged down on any particular area for too long. Once I have a skin tone on Georgia I move over to the bridesmaids.
Working from left to right I slowly start building up each of the figures. As I said above I was not getting too detailed at first and you can see in the faces I am just putting an indication of where their facial features are going to go but not trying to make it look like the actual person.
Once I had a bit of detail on each of the figures in the bridal party I began working on the figures in the audience, again starting on the left side. I started getting frustrated at this point with all of the figures so I decided to jump back into the background and get the flower pieces put in as well as the bridesmaid’s bouquets and the finishing detail on the bride’s dress. All those little things, especially the bright white of the dress, ended up making a huge difference in the piece as it feels like its starting to come together.
I struggled a bit with deciding how much detail to include on each of the figures faces. I knew that naturally, I wanted the bride and groom to be the focus of the piece, but I also wanted each of the important people in their lives to be recognizable to them. I initially began with including different values to create more of a facial structure with the goal being to have each face to have a likeness to the actual person.
Once I finished up all of the wedding party I moved back into the people in the audience. I was still struggling a bit with the bride’s profile. She has this cute little button nose that I was having a hard time getting it to look right. At this point I am basically doing everything else that needs to be done and saving her for last. I also did a few things to tie the background in with the figures more including a white wash on the bricks and darkening between each of the figures, mainly the men.
Finally when there was nothing left to do I tackled Georgia’s profile. After many wipe outs and a slight emotional break down I finally felt good about it. I immediately put my paint away because I knew if I kept working on it I would end up ruining it.
Here’s the couple with their piece shortly after I surprised them with it!