This is a landscape painting I worked on a couple of months ago. It is from an older photograph that brought a lot of memories to the client who commissioned the painting. It was a gift to her mother. The painting is painted with acrylics on stretched canvas at 20 x 30 cm.
I loved the warmth the terracotta wall brought to the painting and I used venetian red in the mix. I used then throughout the painting to bring in colour harmony. The background was worked in lighter shades of blue and I strengthened the hues as I moved towards the bottom of the canvas. I really wanted to capture the warm sun. The client was very happy with the result and sent me a lovely email:
Hi Ivana! It looks wonderful, thank you so much! We are very excited to receive it (the painting) as it is a gift for our Mom. Thank you for making the photo come to life in the painting.
Aisling, Dublin, Ireland
As always, I took some photographs of the finished painting on my studio shelf, which has come very handy since I put it up a few months ago.
I work on standard edge stretched canvas. Most of my canvases are made by Belle Arti in Italy, but with the current situation I am not able to get all the sizes I usually use. So I have been stretching my own, which has been great fun I must admit. I am really enjoying not only the stretching process but also the priming. I use 4 coats of white gesso with some fine sanding in between coats and I can get the surface the way I really want it – nice a fine 🙂 The standard edge is 18 mm and you can see it in the photo above.
This photo I took when I was about mid-way in the painting process, just starting the second layer of paint. I usually add more layers to the foreground to create more depth in the painting. Below is the reference photo I used to create this landscape painting commission. We decided to remove the gate as it is the view the client wanted most to be captured in the painting.
