commission a large painting

The last time I was in SF with Kev I saw the painting about 90% complete in the basement. I’m thinking of just telling him to send it to me as is. When is a painting done anyway?

This is a print framed version of the image we commissioned the artist to paint on the bathroom wall.

This is what it looks like on the wall:

When we were trying to sell the house, a stager came in and went through the entire place with ideas of how to make it look its very best. She thought the nipple in the painting could be a problem. So I took artist chalk and drew the gown over the nipple.

If that seems bad, even worse is I’ve seriously thought of painting over the entire mural, and then putting up a glass tile mosaic. In fact, if I find NaNoWriMo doesn’t work out for me, I will do just that. If my honey agrees, and will do the part I can’t reach…

We had quite a bit of fun with the tile mosaic we did earlier.

Some years back, I had money to do fanciful things with. I had a large empty wall. It seemed the perfect opportunity to commission a large painting.

I picked out the artist, who does such things, and suggested that I wanted a Buddha in bamboo with a faint city skyline background, and the painting should be “Urban Oasis”.

The artist told me I was nuts. The painting would be way too intimidating, she said. It would look like it was going to come down on people, she insisted.

So I told her to go ahead and do the abstract Buddha she wanted to do for me. I pointed out the colors in the water outside, and asked her to think about those colors. She wanted to use the colors from inside the salt water aquarium beneath where the painting would go. OK, maybe both? She said she would go ahead and do color studies.

She came around several months later with some deep blue and purple color splotches on paint board. I thought, hmmm, those are really intense colors. But she insisted.

This saga continued over many months. Not surprisingly, the end result was that she did not want me to have the painting once it was finished. I did very much like the Buddha part, which was a small figure down in the blue, in the corner. There was however a very large five pointed white star up in the corner that reminded me of the star that was neither blue nor red from grammar school the teacher would put on your papers if you turned in something so-so. I had asked her to paint that out, which may have been why she did not want me to have the painting I had commissioned.

And I have a mural I commissioned on my bathroom wall. That is another story.

So, although I did commission a large painting, the end result is that in order to have art that does what I want for my wall, the better solution appears to have a triptych printed from my views of kelp. This is one kelp view.

Here’s what the painting looks like photoshopped onto my living room wall by Kevin (the painter).

Talked to Ellis this week. He just finished up a buch of paintings for a submission or a show (not sure which) in the Bay Area and that took a lot of his attention. Plus he’s having a baby boy soon. And he was completely satisfied with the final state of my painting so he’s going to hold onto it for another round of output. Which is just fine by me as I want his best effort on my living room wall.

That’s always a funny puzzle with paintings or songs or websites—deciding when they’re ready to be released into the wild.

I bought an air float system painting box for shipping the painting securely from SF to SEA. It’s $100, but well worth it after I was trying to figure out how to get the painting from there to here without damaging it. I’ll ship it via FedEx and call it good. All in, it should be about $150-$175 to box and ship the painting.

A little over 9 months ago I commissioned a painting from Kevin Ellis in SF. It looks like he’ll complete the painting in the next couple days. Now I have to figure out how to get a 4’ x 5’ painting from SF to SEA.

Anybody driving this way that would be interested in taking it along? It would need to not be crushed on the way up—but I could kick in some money for gas. It’s that or I pay UPS about $200 to ship it to my house.

Either way I’m excited! I think it would be cool if you’d drive it up here—I’ll even buy you a coffee.

Kevin emailed me tonight with more progress on the painting …

“Here’s another check in after another sweet night at the studio… Mind you, the painting can change from what you see here. I’m laying on some thicker paint now, having been inspired by a Wayne Thiebaud book Susan gave me for father’s day”

Thought this was an interesting view of how the painting is progressing. The final painting will be 4ft x 5ft. I’m pretty damn excited.

Kevin emailed me the morning with an update on his new studio—and his progress on the painting! It’s looking great. I’ve seen many of his paintings evolve over the years so I know the best is yet to come. A lot of this is underpainting (is that what it’s called?).