Domestic Scenes: House portrait; pond painting

  A client asked for a house portrait. Customarily, when doing a house portrait I interview the residents of the house to determine their interests and what unique things they would like in the completed image. In this instance they told me the location from which the house was to be painted.

Yet during an interview and a site visit it was evident that a key feature of the property, a koi pond, lovingly built over time by one of the couple, would not be clearly visible from the preferred vantage point. Additionally, on the site visit I could see that much of the family's outdoor entertaining and visiting was conducted from a deck overlook above the pond.  It seemed certain that providing a portrait without the pond was as if one did a portrait of a couple with only one person in the picture.

So I elected to include, as part of the original agreed upon commission price, the pond. 

 The house was painted in acrylic 22"x28". For many reasons, this one was more of a challenge, from how to make the base of the pond look like more than a pile of rocks to angles and quirky add-ons and how to make them appear as a cohesive image. The personalization make the complete picture easier.  

The koi pond is a watercolor. 12" x 16". This was, for me, a pleasure to paint. During the sketching phase, I observed a Chinese character for "Spring" on a stone plate. In interests of completeness, the other three seasons were added based, clock-wise, with the original siting of Spring. 

Commissions are often a challenge. Sometimes the query isn't clear. But I learn from each of them.