Probably my favorite portrait commission I’ve ever done.

I painted his hands in one 6 hour sitting and his face in one 7 hour sitting. I wanted to focus on building up the skin in all brushstrokes and very little blending of color. The layering of the shirt was also a favorite part to work on. There is a hot pink post-it in his pocket that I loved getting in paint.

My client said his name is Slim. he was a WWII vet, hobo, all around gentle guy everyone liked and father of 10 kids. My clients husband being #10.

I donated this for a live auction benefiting an LGBTQ film organization in Seattle. The theme of their auction was Xanadu so I painted Olivia Newton John in the film. I wanted a chance to experiment more painting metallic textures, it’s one of my current obsessions and I’ll definitely be including some of it in my own body of work.                 

I made this painting to test out some new materials and try some new techniques to use in some upcoming paintings. After doing mostly solid commissioned work for the past 2 1/2 years, I’m ready to begin building a body of work that’s my own subject matter. Commissions essentially taught me how to paint and sharpen my skills, I pretty much said yes to every commission so I learned a lot mostly by painting so much. Things really clicked for me in the studio recently and so now I’m finally ready to take the leap and focus on my creativity.

I’m not going to post many more commissions for awhile. Taking some time for my own work. The Hamburger Dog Experiment was given to a client as a gift.