This painting is one of many landscape paintings I worked on to date. It is painted from a photograph taken from the Killarney Lake Hotel overlooking the Killarney Lakes. It not only features the lakes themselves but also a beautiful view of The MacGillycuddy’s Reeks mountain range. The lighting in the image is what makes it interesting. It creates light and dark shapes in the background mountains and interesting long shadows in the foreground. I love mountains and having grown up hiking all my childhood, they are a pleasure for me to paint.
The painting was commissioned by two sisters from Ballinteer in Dublin. Because of the format of the photo, a wide landscape worked really well. The size here is 50 x 100 cm. I painted it with acrylics on fine grain stretched canvas.
The photo itself was not one offering a huge amount of detail, however this was compensated by the atmosphere I feel it captures. The image brings some sentiment for the sisters and they wanted it captured in a painted format. I was only too happy to oblige. It is now hanging in their home and I hope they are enjoying looking at it as much as I enjoyed painting it.
Therese and her sister were very happy with the resulting painting:
Hi Ivana! The painting is just amazing; I am absolutely thrilled! You have a great talent. Thank you so much!
Therese upon seeing a scanned image of the painting, Dublin, August 2025
I had one photograph to work from. This is featured on the Killarney Lake Hotel’s website. I cropped it slightly to allow for the panoramic view.
I used artist quality acrylic paints by Winsor and Newton mostly, including some by Old Holland too. The first step in the process was a painted sketch of the scene. I used watered down yellow ochre for this. I feel it creates a warm base for the layers to follow.
Once all the elements were in place, I added the basic colours in blocks. I moved around the entire canvas and covered it fully with paint. I layered paint several times returning to areas that needed more structure and detail more than once.
I started the process with a small round brush for sketching and a large flat brush for initial colour blocking. I then picked up my smaller flat brush to define areas closer to the foreground. Most of the detail is concentrated in the front to add depth to the painting.
Contact me anytime if you have ideas for your own commissioned artwork, be it landscape, house, portrait of a pet or person. I am looking forward to hearing all the exciting projects down the line. Please email me your photos to info@trueimage.ie