Live Wedding Painting Recap: Tuscany in Texas
The Brief:
The moment: A romantic stairway dip kiss
The venue: Stoney Ridge Villa in Azle, Texas
Notes: Make sure to get a profile view of the faces. Include the couple, the staircase, the background building, and the trees in the painting. It was a bit overcast on the wedding day, and the couple requested a bluer sky.
This is the iconic staircase the couple requested their reference photo be taken at. Unlike with other weddings I’ve painted, this moment wasn’t an organic part of the day (like first look or first kiss). We instead had a little photoshoot between the first look and ceremony where I got my reference.
It’s so worth scoping out your venue for cool spots like this that would make a unique painting. I hear people say sometimes that all wedding paintings look the same, but I don’t think that’s true. If that’s something you’re worried about, though, there are ways to make your painting even more “you”. One of those is picking a really unique backdrop or setting for your painting, like a staircase like this instead of at the altar.
This was the painting at the end of the night! When I tell you painting all those individual steps broke my brain a little bit, I mean it. I’m all about organic forms, like people, dresses, and anything found in nature. Linear perspective is something I always end up fighting with a little bit in paintings. All of this was freehand- although after this wedding I started bringing a T-square with me to weddings so I could easily get perfectly straight perpendicular lines.
This wedding was so beautiful. I was set up just outside the reception hall in a little entryway next to the guestbook and whatnot. So, I got to listen to the speeches, which is always one of my favorite parts of the wedding. The bride’s little brother gave a speech that straight up had me crying and set my expectations VERY high for when I get married (I, too, have a little brother. He better be already planning his speech).
Behold, the finished painting!
Lace? Say less. It’s one of my favorite things to paint, period. I was so pleased with how this painting came out. I would put it on the cover of a romance book, no notes. I ended up adding an extra tree behind the couple for compositional reasons. As any good artist knows, the human eye is drawn to areas of high contrast. I use this fact to always make the couple’s faces the focal point of the painting. Their faces are fairly light in value, as is the wall behind them. Their faces were getting lost. By adding the dark tree behind them, I was able to greatly increase the contrast, making their faces really stand out. This also gave me room to play with the glow on the bride’s face.
Let’s take a closer look at those portraits.
I had so much fun playing with edges in this painting, especially around the couple. I also experimented a bit with building texture. I really built up the paint in the light areas of her dress, while leaving the shadows thinner. I learned this technique from a workshop I took last November with Richard Greathouse. He talked a lot about the “landscape of a painting,” or the idea that even 2 dimensional art exists in 3 dimensions. With oil painting, we have the ability to paint very thickly in some areas. I reserve this for areas that I want to jump out at the viewer. It’s just another tool in an artist’s arsenal to create the art that best represents them.
I also loved playing with the level of focus I gave to different parts of the painting. For example, the hand the bride has wrapped around the groom’s shoulders is more or less 3 brushstrokes: 1 to place in the shadow color, 1 horizontally across the knuckles, and 1 last vertical stroke to denote the middle finger. I did this to emphasize that this hand is moving away from us in space. Contrast this with the detail of the bride’s hand holding the veil. While it is still a bit soft, there is much more detail. Small choices like these are integral to creating depth in paintings.
Ok, that got a bit technical at the end there on the art theory side of things! I am a total art nerd, though, and I hope you might find it interesting to learn what goes on in my head while I’m working on these wedding paintings. Everything is deliberate and intentional. To me, it’s about more than just making a painting that looks like the reference. I want to create a genuine work of art.
I hope this post gave you some inspiration for your own wedding painting! I also hope you learned something about the theory behind these paintings!
Link to the venue website: https://www.stoneyridgevilla.com
