A 60th Birthday Party on Lake Washington

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Ellefson 60th Birthday Party 2016, 30 x 40 in. oil on canvas, by Sam Day

Creative rigging

It’s the same old American Story. Son of immigrants starts out as deck hand, ends up owning tug boat company.

The story of this painting is familiar, too. Family wants to remember milestone event, hires event painter to create heirloom.

The wife of the birthday boy had an idea of where she wanted the painting to hang in the den, in their waterfront home on Mercer Island, where the party was held. So I showed up early with three different sized canvases, and we tried them out on the mantle above the fireplace, where a model boat had been. She chose the 30 x 40 inch canvas, and because it will hang on a tall stone chimney, asked that it be vertical rather than horizontal. I had only done that once before, and it too was also chosen to fit a specific place in the client’s home.

The format worked really well. After surveying the yard, I went out on the dock and looked back at the house. This view allowed me to include both the house and the yacht, the party tent on the lawn, and the core family in the lower center of the painting. The client’s sons, able seamen all, lashed a beam across the L shaped deck to erect an event tent to shield me from the rain. Guests could see the large painting from the tent, but made the trek down the dock throughout the evening to see the progress up close.  I also happened to be a convenient stop on their way to tour the sixty foot boat moored beside me.

The littlest grandson (four years old) was very much at home on the dock, and he was the first figure I sketched into the painting. I asked him if he had taken swimming lessons (yes), but he quickly asked his babysitter if he could go on the boat (yes), and if he could lift the hatch to the engine room (no).  One could easily see that Norwegian seafaring will stay in the family.

Ellefson 60th Birthday Party 2016 (detail)

Ellefson 60th Birthday Party 2016 (detail).

  I always include the dogs.

Stiebers-Edwards Wedding, Alderbrook Resort, Union, Washington, August 17, 2013

This was the fourth time I’ve painted at this great retreat, and I look forward to many more.

The two favorite ways for guests to arrive at Alderbrook Resort are by float plane, or by yacht. We vendors take the third, least expensive option.

We boarded a ferry in Seattle, then drove. The Kitsap Peninsula is shaped like the head of a cuttlefish, cradled on the east by the arms and fingers of Puget Sound, and on the west by the long, bent arm of Hood Canal. Some fifteen miles from Bremerton, we reached the muddy tip of the broad Canal (technically a fjord), and tooled fifteen miles more past the vacation homes that line its oyster caked beaches. It’s a woody, meandering road, smelling of fir, cedar, and saltwater. The hundred year old Alderbrook is suddenly there on the right.

You could say this wedding was a marriage of blondes and beards. I got to paint plenty of both. There were the two year old twin boys, dressed like the little Dutch boy on the paint can, with blue pacifiers, who walked down the path bearing a sign that read “Here Comes the Bride;” there were the blond, freckled flower girls, in sparkly silver-grayish taupe summer dresses that easily accommodated their spontaneous soccer playing, and their sparkly feathery pink flapper skull caps pinned at a tilt. There were feathers in the flower arrangements too— the bride’s family supplies hundreds of thousands of chicken eggs a day for the region’s breakfast tables. I guess with that many chickens, you get feathers everywhere.

The well-whiskered groom, who’s family is in the boat business, turned out to be an amiable conversationalist, as he stood for his portrait. His equally well whiskered best man/brother stated in his toast that the groom could “talk to anybody about anything— he could talk to you for half an hour about your belt buckle.”

It was an unhurried wedding, in an unhurried place. It feels like a vacation every time I paint here. You can bet I swam in the Canal before we left.

Scholten-Howard Wedding: August 11, 2013 The Pickering Barn, Issaquah, Washington

A barn is always a nice place for a wedding.

This particular barn is an important part of the history of Issaquah, a couple of lakes east of Seattle. It is now owned and maintained by the city, which restored it at generous expense.  

The couple were married outside on the lawn, where cocktails followed. The reception then took place in the renovated dairy barn. 

Garza-Ginther Wedding Reception, The Ruins, Seattle

This couple, both local television producers, tied the knot in a very private ceremony in Paris, in July. But they wanted to bring home a bit of Europe for their family and friends, so they held a stateside reception at The Ruins in Seattle. This hidden venue is tucked away in an old industrial space. Knowing the address, one finds a concrete building with a non-descript metal door, and a doorbell. But once inside, we are transported, as it seems, to a villa in France. There are vine draped courtyards, and room after room of elegant furnishings and art. The most formal of the dining rooms is framed in gilded trim, and features floor to ceiling murals which took artist Jennifer Carrasco three years to create.

 This is the third time I’ve painted in this room, and I hope to do it again. The place is magic.

Having dressed my canvas in some semblance of Ms. Carrasco’s nature scenes, half a dozen chandeliers, and some Venetian lamp posts, I was ready by the time the guests arrived to paint the most important features: the people. As they trickled in from cocktails in the adjacent room (to the right of my canvas), I caught a six year old girl peeking through the curtains. She was the first. Then came the couple’s teen age daughters, preteen son, and the array of parents, grandparents, siblings, and friends. Off in the distance, behind the cake, the Prague-born pianist Luke Doubravsky tickles all the keys. And shimmering in the center are the sophisticated couple. 

McClelland- Miller Wedding, Fort Worth Zoo, Fort Worth, Texas

McClelland-Miller Wedding (detail; click to view full image) November 3, 2012

This was my first trip to Texas. When I called my wife after checking into the hotel, she said I already had an accent. Texas can grow on you that quickly.

Since nothing is small in Texas, this was one of the largest weddings I’ve done, with nearly 500 guests. The soaring, white pavilion at the Fort Worth Zoo was the site of both the wedding and the reception. After a faith-filled service with a gospel choir, guests adjourned to an adjacent pavilion for cocktails while the main space was transformed from chapel to magnificent dining hall. Both spaces were filled with thousands of roses and hydrangea, punctuated with phalaenopsis. 

A band of extraordinary vocal force and suave instrumentality played as the guests came in and found their seats. But the flower girl and ring bearer, twin toddlers belonging to the brides’ brother, found the dance floor first.

As I never know how long children will last at a party, I didn’t waste any time painting them. They appear just to the right of the bride, playing on the stairs to the bridal party’s raised dining stage.

This was a dancing crowd, and the lounge end of the party accommodated enormous participation. White leather couches flanked the dance floor, with the most Texan of all possible coffee tables: diamond plate aluminum truck bed tool boxes. As the spectrum lighting changed the room from purple to magenta and back again, the tool boxes shone like mirrors.

The tall, elegant bride and her all-American groom are seen here surrounded by their friends on the dance floor. The gracious, tuxedoed father of the bride gives his toast. 

Burchardt-Nelson Wedding, Mount Baker Community Club, Seattle

The Mount Baker Community Club was founded in 1909, and continues to serve this gracious Seattle neighborhood. Their Arts and Crafts building, with its high, schoolhouse-style double hung windows surrounded by ancient trees, can be rented for events. (Northwest art and architecture fans, if you visit, be sure to go upstairs to see their original Sydney Laurence.)

My long time figure model, Tessa, and her partner Iowa chose this vintage Seattle hall to exchange their vows.

For almost all my indoor paintings, I begin with a wash of burnt umber— a deep, dark brown when used thickly, it mellows to a sandy amber when thinned. From that I can build the golds and browns that typify most ballrooms. But this ballroom was painted more like a room in my parent’s Craftsman home— something between beige and mauve, barely more than a light gray above the broad, white wainscoting, and a deeper saturation of the same below it. In full daylight, I was seeing a blue shade of purple. In mixing my color, I pushed it rosier. The result created this glow that fit well with the couple’s colors: lavender and sky blue.

Join me at Benaroya for Urban Unveiled!

On Wednesday, October 12, 2011, I’ll be painting at one of my favorite local wedding shows. Urban Unveiled is organized by True Colors Events, the peerless event-designing duo of Jesse Brix and Travis Burney. The venue, every year, is Benaroya Hall, home of the Seattle Symphony, and features a fashion show by Luly Yang. Its an honor and a pleasure to be invited back to paint at this show for the third year.