The Wedding Painting

This weekend, Nancy-the-Insightful's son, Daniel is getting married to Elizabeth. And as it turns out, Daniel and Elizabeth had an unusual request.

Rather than a unity candle, they wanted to stand in front of a painting. Something they could complete with two strokes of a paintbrush that would capture the moment as they begin their new family. Then, they asked me to paint it.

I wish I could say I had a wonderful idea when asked, then ran out to translate a perfect mental image to canvas, but instead there was fear and trepidation. After all, what if they didn't like it? Or if it turned out goofy? Or if they weren't happy with the colors? (Yada. Yada.)

Luckily, Sunny-the-City-Girl (who also happens to be an artist) stayed with me this weekend and gave me the following advice: "paint the canvas tan and let God paint the red." Heartened by this instruction, I went to Michael's Sunday to pick out a canvas, set up my workspace and began to paint. I layered the tans and the browns to give texture and was fairly happy with it. Then I put a bit of red on the brush, hovered over the painting and made a few lightly placed strokes. Then some bigger ones. Then more.

Okay, clearly this is some sort of thing that only works for Sunny because the red went all pink and just like when you are cutting your moustache and one side isn't even so you shorten it then the other side isn't even then you shorten that, then eventually you look like Hitler and have to shave the whole thing off...Not that this has ever happened to anyone I am married to (grin). I wound up starting over. The colors went too cold so I dipped a couple of rose leaves into copper paint and played with that. The strokes over the leaf prints provided that little Talavera folk art thing that is my painting style.

Last night at 8pm, I took it all to Nancy's house because I was afraid I would keep tweaking and lose the definition. Her's and Ben's responses were encouraging. My advice to Daniel is for he and Elizabeth to practice on newspaper. Black paint on a white satin dress would not be advisable.