Voila Wedding Show, Woodmark Hotel, Kirkland Washington

This was the third year for the Voila! Wedding Show, at the Woodmark Hotel, Yacht Club and Spa at Carillon Point in Kirkland, Washington. I painted at the first Voila, and last year I did caricatures instead. Yesterday I returned with my easel.

Harpist Alishia Joubert tickled my ears throughout the afternoon, and made a lovely centerpiece for the painting. Tania Shepard of Azzura Photography happened to bring her parrot. Outfits by La Belle Reve stand in front of a cut paper backdrop by artist Celeste Cooning, whose work always lifts me into the clouds.

Coming up: Voila! Wedding Show, Kirkland, WA

This Sunday, March 25th, I'll be painting at the Voila! Wedding Show at the Woodmark Hotel, Yacht Club and Spa at Carillon Point in Kirkland, Washington, from 12:30-4:30pm.

This video of last year's show pictures me— wait for it, it's towards the end— doing caricatures.

I'm always pleased to be asked to do caricatures, but the truly rare service I offer is a live oil painting, created during a wedding or reception. The painting I produce on Sunday will be done in just three hours.

Voila! Wedding Show from Lorbaniah Cameography | Cinema on Vimeo.

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.

Story about me in Santa Barbara News-Press

I'm tremendously grateful to Marilyn McMahon for the story she wrote about me in the Santa Barbara News Press, February 25, 2012. A link to the archived story is here.