Wedding MBA, Las Vegas, Sept 13-15, 2011

I've been graciously invited to paint at the Wedding MBA convention at the Las Vegas Convention Center, September 13-15, 2011. This happened very quickly, after I met Peter Merry, author of The Best Wedding Reception Ever! just last weekend at a wedding. Much thanks to him, Shannon Underwood, and Andy Ebon for including me on such a level.

A Wedding at the W Hotel, Seattle

The Lemon-McAllister Wedding, 24 x 40 inches, oil on canvas, August 27, 2011, at the W Hotel in Seattle.

I love painting a beautiful bride. Of course, all brides are beautiful, and they should be the radiant focus of every wedding painting.

How do I decide where to put the couple in the painting? When I started painting weddings, this was something we pre-arranged. I'm happy to discuss this with the couple before the big day. But as I've become more experienced, most couples now trust me to decide as the evening unfolds. I've learned to recognize opportunities as they present themselves.

In many of my paintings, the bride and groom stand for a few minutes in front of me (as time allows), and are thus at the front of the crowd. In some paintings I manage to paint the couple in their first dance. In that case I have to paint quickly, and perhaps add details later in the evening. At this reception there were long toasts, which kept the couple in a handy pose for a good amount of time. The view was from quite a ways across the room, but the placing ended up making for a pleasing composition.

This painting is wider (24 x 40) than the smaller sizes I more commonly sell (24 x 30, 24 x 36), and allows for a more expansive view of the ballroom.

A Bainbridge Island Birthday Party

These people know how to throw a party.

Over a year ago, the wife contacted me to do a caricature of her, which she then personally copied onto her own handmade china plates for more than fifty guests for her 70th birthday. It would take her a year to create the ceramics. When she came to the studio for her caricature, she saw examples of my wedding paintings, which I often keep at the studio and deliver after they've dried. She loved the idea, and immediately booked me for the date.

The couple live on Bainbridge Island, looking across Puget Sound at Seattle, Washington. The party was set on their expansive, many terraced lawns, amid lush flowering gardens and ancient cedar trees. A well kept path led down the bluff to the sandy beach. A dance floor was laid for the occasion, and a cover band played classic rock. There were fire dancers, belly dancers, and exquisite food. The guests came dressed to the nines, but also in extraordinary costumes (note the elephant on a stick in the lower center of the painting.) Desserts included fresh spun cotton candy.

And since the event was at the client's home, I was able to leave the painting there, for a change!

I'm hoping to be invited back for her 80th.

Museum Quality Reprints

I don't know why I didn't think of this before. A groom recently asked me if it would be possible to make reprints of my painting of their wedding. As a matter of fact, I have an excellent source for that. The guy who make giclée prints on canvas of my religious paintings is right here in the neighborhood (Pioneer Square, Seattle), and can print individual copies on demand. These are archival, museum quality prints, canvas stretched over wood, just like the original oil. In the case of my client who thought of it first, prints were made for the grooms' parents. But a couple might also consider reprints as thank-you cards, using traditional offset printing.

Having an artist painting live at a wedding tends to be a great entertainment for the guests. It goes without saying that the couple will enjoy the painting in their home, happily ever after. With today's technology, so can their guests!

The Barron-Coles Wedding, The Canal, Seattle

For the Barron-Coles wedding, I was privileged to return to one of the very first venues at which I have created a live painting. The Canal overlooks the Hiram M. Chittenden Locks, a.k.a. the Ballard Locks, on the ship canal connecting Lakes Washington and Union with Puget Sound. It's the site of the infamous, nearly perennial battles between the Washington State Department of Fisheries and and certain lox-eating California sea lions. The view is entrancing, especially for lovers of yachts and other maritime comings and goings. But because the event venue is a stone's throw downstream from the actual locks that raise and lower vessels between lake and sea level, the crowds of tourists which gawk there are kept at a distance. There is actually a sense of privacy where we were perched. And this was a family gathering.

Pan Pacific Hotel Bridal Open House

It's a pleasure to participate in several bridal shows a year. This one on February 17, 2011, was at the Pan Pacific Hotel-Seattle.

The Pan Pacific-Seattle is the international hotel chain's first location in the United States, having established its luxury mark throughout Asia and the Pacific Rim from its base in Singapore. It is indeed grand, richly paneled in lightly stained wenge, my favorite tropical hardwood. (Look closely at the walls in the painting. They have horizontal stripes. If you go to this hotel, be bold enough to run your fingers along the wall; you can feel the age lines of these trees.)

The Grow Your Love Bridal Open House was not your typical sprawling convention center trade show. It was a more intimate affair, hosted as a mock wedding, with 200 brides-to-be as the invited guests. Actors were hired as the bride and groom of the evening, whose gregarious mothers warbled an amusingly altered version of "Sunrise, Sunset" from Fiddler on the Roof. They were married by a nice Reverend and toasted by their shy, proud fathers, all local actors. They even tossed the bouquet and cut the cake. I've immortalized them in this painting as I would any real couple.

My friend BreeAnn Gale of Pink Blossom Events orchestrated this fair, and I would have painted her into the scene, but she didn't stand still long enough. And frankly, I have a lot of experience painting people who aren't standing still.

I get asked about this a lot:

"Are you going to take photos and paint from the pictures?"

"If I give you photos of my [already transpired] wedding, can you paint from that?"

My specialty is painting live. This is the ancient art of looking at things and painting them as they happen. I do need a few minutes with the bride and groom, generally.

A lot of my wedding paintings can be a bit dark, as they are paintings of receptions in romantically dimmed rooms. This one is brightened by spring green fabrics from Aría|Style, whose talented owner wore a coat of matching silk, embroidered with pink flowers to evoke the accent lighting that uplit the corners of the room. She appears mid-painting, against the wall. For me, this green theme evoked my parents' dining room, which is trimmed in a similar shade of tulip stem, against walls of just barely minter-than-white— my father's design.

But I digress.

Did I mention the few from deck, with its veriegated pebble garden and teak lounge chairs?

Live Auction Painting at the Heart Ball 2011

The Tacoma chapter of the American Heart Association held their 2011 Heart Ball at the Hotel Murano, Tacoma Washington. This is the second year I've been asked to paint at this auction. The 1930 Packard in the corner is courtesy of the LeMay Museum.

Host Hospitality Party and Event Planning put me in the center of the Bicentennial Plaza on a riser the size of a small stage, between the entrance and the ballroom. In the wings to either side of me were the displays for the silent auction. As has become the custom when I paint at auctions, I painted the crowd as they browsed and bidded on the silent items. When the live auction began, I took off my apron, put on my tux coat, and carried my painting to the main stage to parade it around, Vanna White style, during the bidding. After the auction, the buyer and spouse came back to my easel to pose for their quick portrait.

This is not like a presidential portrait, with the smooth finish of a John Singer Sargent— although I can do that too. This is an impressionistic portrait; an oil painting version of the caricatures I honed at events for 20+ years.