Painting on commission has its drawbacks. For instance, if you've gone to enormous trouble to paint a hydrangea like the one in my last post for a client with a predominantly beige living room apart from an oblong wall decoration consisting of a coloured photo of Greek vases stuck onto a wooden frame and a lot of decorative whatnots including a huge cushion for her little dog. Actually I had painted the hydrangea darker and decided it would be too dark for her room. But then she didn't get back to me at all so I painted the hydrangea pink as a temporary measure. It livened up my wall so I saw no immediate reason to develop the theme. I tend to paint dark, but I'm learning not to!
Then the day came last week when the client wanted "her" painting to be hung, after all. However, to my utter astonishment, her sofa was no longer a quiet beige homely affair but black leather look-alike with pseudo Japanese flair and orange, black and purple cushions on a bright red seating area. The sofa went round a corner and had seating room for an estimated 6-8 persons!!!!
Now the delicate pink of the painting screamed to be let out of the room (and I with it).
I like the background, though, the client said. Can you leave that as it is? What a relief. A lot of thought went into that background. I liked it and actually liked the painting, so I started two more hydrangea paintings that are coming along quite nicely!
The client saw one of them and is still undecided about whether she wouldn't prefer it to the one she ordered!
The official painting went back on her wall today. Here it is. The background has more depth in reality. I incorporated some orange into the background as a compromise to sort of match the orange sofa cushions and the beige sort of reflects her walls. The flower now matches the sofa seat, for what that's worth.
The sun was very strong this afternoon so the painting got too much light, but I didn't want to tamper with the photo.
The other painting I finished recently looks like this and is entirely out of character:
Back to the drawing board!
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