Wedding Portrait Art

I recently was asked to produce a painting as a wedding gift. The painting was commissioned by the brother of the groom who, in his own words, could not get excited by the standard items on the wedding gift list. So, although his gift was a little late for the wedding itself, it was hopefully one of the more original presents that the bride and groom received.

The painting was based on one of the wedding photographer's photos. The original photo had more going on in the background, with guests excitedly watching the couple's first dance. However, I thought it would make for a nicer painting if the only focus was the newly married couple - as if they were the only people in the world for that one special moment. 

Consequently, I kept things simple and went for a black background with the spotlight on the couple's warm embrace.

To commission your own portrait painting as a wedding gift, please get in touch here or through artbylukebennett.com

2b or not 2b? Actually, mainly 4b and 5b... Pencil Portraiture.

Above is a recently completed pencil portrait. It proved relatively challenging as the photo that I was using for reference was very small, blurry and lacked detail. Normally I'd avoid doing artwork from photos of a certain size or image quality, but sometimes as an artist you don't have the luxury of choice.

Hampton-in-Arden Arts, Crafts and Photography Exhibition, October 2012.

Once again I will be displaying work at the annual Hampton-in-Arden Arts, Crafts and Photography Exhibition, this coming weekend. 

Taking place on Saturday the 20th and Sunday the 21st of October 2012, between 10am and 5pm.

The Exhibition is held at Fentham Hall, Marsh Lane, Hampton in Arden, B92 0AH.
Entry costs just £1 and children get in free.

I will be exhibiting two pieces of original work; 'Here Comes the Sun' and 'Tiger Tiger', (more details here). Both pieces are available to buy via my website, as well as open edition prints on archival paper or box canvas.

Solihull, Hampton and Warwickshire residents wishing to commission a painting (pet portraits, human portraits or other), please feel free to approach me if you attend the exhibition! Or get in touch via the contact form to the right or on artbylukebennett.com.

Welcome! Again.

Welcome to the new look Memoirs of a Visible man. As regular readers (I suspect I have a few) may have noticed, I've revamped the presentation of this blog, bringing it more in line with the look of my new website, visually, as well as the URL. Formerly known as lukusaurus.blogspot, it is now artbylukebennett.blogspot.

After weeks of hard work the website is now live. Please check it out- www.artbylukebennett.com
It's full of original, high quality artwork to buy, as well as fine art and photographic Giclée prints.

There's also a commissioning service where people can arrange to have a nice picture of themselves painted. Or their pet cat, or their dog, or their horse, or their pet crow, or their hamster, or their granny, or their baby, or their house, or their car.

Basically, anything legal, I'm willing to paint it. For money.

Before and After

Sadly, before Christmas, Lucy, one of the two family cats (sister to Minnie) passed away after struggling gallantly with heart disease for several months. She has been sorely missed as she was part of the family for over 16 years and a constant joy to be around. I always looked forward to seeing her when returning home and she always made me laugh and smile. She had one of the most gentle, sweet, playful and loving characters I've ever seen in an animal.

As a tribute, of sorts, I have revisited an earlier painting of Lucy I'd previously 'finished', with the intention of completing it properly in her memory.

This link shows the original blog post I made a few years ago concerning the initial painting. Below is a side by side comparison of the two cat portraits.

Spot the difference! Which one do you prefer?

The medium is acrylic paint on canvas textured board. The painting has been framed and given as a gift to my parents who have it hanging in their dining room.

Keep to the Path!

A noble message, an amusing one too, displayed along the track leading up to the church near Baddesley Clinton encountered on my weekend walk.

But in terms of getting the best photographs, not the best advice God has ever decreed...
The best photos are often taken when you stray from the path and start to see things from a new perspective. As evidenced by a wander through nearby Hay Wood. It was a lovely frosty morning and the sky was clear, full of that excellent winter light which makes everything look so very fresh and picturesque.


I must have walked about three or four miles in and around the small one or two square mile section of woodland and taken over 200 pictures, and with almost every push of the shutter release I thought to myself "it's impossible to take a bad photo here". To the point where I felt I might be going a bit mad, like when you get a tiny section of a song you hate stuck in your head on a seemingly infinite loop.

Getting off the main pathways and into the heart of the forest provided the best photo opportunities. Unfortunately, a lot of them looked better through my viewfinder than they do on my 27 inch monitor... I'm certain this is God's way of punishing me for straying from the path. That or my 9 year old camera is starting to show its age. One of the two.

Here are some of the better ones-

Happy New Year!

Happy New Year readers. Now it's 2012 you get to say twenty twelve all the time because it's four whole syllables quicker than saying two thousand and eleven, and space year twenty twelve is going to be pretty jam packed. Ain't got time to waste on unnecessary syllable pronunciation. No Sir. No way... A little tip: You can save even more valuable time by leaving out the second T in 'twenty' and adding an N. Twenny twelve! It takes just as long to type, but saying it saves the annoying additional tongue articulation required by the T.

YOU'RE WELCOME.

I haven't done any more painting since my last update, Christmas break and all that, but I've been contemplating my next work. I'm thinking bigger, better and involving more of a scene, rather than just portrait based. Perhaps a horse in the country side. I took some cool photos towards the end of the summer back in September last year, which will make for great reference material. They can currently be seen on my Flickr account (link to the right).

Speaking of Flickr; yesterday I took some spur of the moment photos of a nice refraction of light on my carpet. It wasn't intentional, but on placing a glass of water onto my desk it happened to be in the right position for the sunlight to hit it at such an angle that the beam diffused out into all the colours of the rainbow. After experimenting with an Xbox controller I placed my glasses in its path instead.

I think they look quite nice.

Keep an eye out for my next update, where I'll be sharing even more useful time saving tips. I also intend to upload a video time-lapse of me painting Ella the dog (See last entry). It should be interesting!

Until then, all the best for TWENNY TWELVE!

It's a Dog's Life

As promised in my last update, here is a photo of the last painting I completed, a commission no less, of Ella. A dog. (Just in case you were wondering which particular animal it was.)

The person who commissioned the painting (as a birthday gift) and the recipient were both delighted with the final product. -Always a relief. They said I'd captured her spirit and essence and said how closely it resembled her.

I was fairly sure I'd captured her look accurately enough, but if anyone should know, it's going to be the dog's owners, so having that confirmed was great.

Phew!

*Exhales*

It's been a very busy couple of months of late, what with setting up multiple online gallery/shop spaces and entering several exhibitions locally. On top of that I've been writing applications for various jobs, plus one university course that I would very much like to get on. I came to the process relatively late, so doing my research and getting everything organised has been a little bit hectic.

I've also been working away on a commission which is due for completion very soon. It is of a pet dog called Ella and is intended as a surprise birthday present for the husband of the commission maker.

As soon as it's completed I'll upload a scan here. In the meantime, here's a photo of a lion mug. ROAR!

Available to order at all good LukoStores!

The Hard Sell

BUY MY THINGS! BUY MY THINGS! BUY MY THINGS! BUY MY THINGS! BUY MY THINGS! BUY MY THINGS! BUY MY THINGS! BUY MY THINGS! BUY MY THINGS! BUY MY THINGS! BUY MY THINGS! BUY MY THINGS! BUY MY THINGS! BUY MY THINGS! BUY MY THINGS! BUY MY THINGS! BUY MY THINGS!

BUY THEM! NOW!

I've been busy lately researching and setting up the infrastructure to hopefully start selling more of my work- original paintings, prints, etc. and also to publish my artwork and to take commissions.

As such I have stores on various sites such as Zazzle, BigCartel and Etsy, amongst other online galleries. Why not check them out! :) I'll be updating them regularly with new work and products.

http://www.zazzle.co.uk/LukoStore
http://www.etsy.com/shop/LukoStore
http://www.LukoStore.bigcartel.com/

Eventually I hope to have a dedicated website, showcasing my work and providing an ordering system too. It'll be useful for promotional purposes, to put on business cards and the like.

What's the time Mr. Wolf?

I took the opportunity this week to re-work the wolf painting that I originally posted a good many months ago. I was not happy with it at the time or afterwards as I felt it could do with some more detail and better colour balancing.

I'm reasonably happy with it now. The edges look more like how I wanted them to the first time round, with more definition against the background. I also took some time to improve the eyes, as they looked a little bit too intense before, like the wolf was tripping rather heavily or something. Now he just looks mildly drunk.

Something Something Tiger

Another painting, another deliberation over the title.

The tiger was done in record time, compared to the other paintings, which I'm quite happy about. I intend to keep on lessening the time it takes whilst maintaining the same or higher quality in future output.

The tiger, gorilla and wolf are now framed and ready for exhibiting at the Reading Rooms in Berkswell over this coming weekend (Saturday 30th and Sunday 31st July), so it will be interesting to see what happens...

Mother and Child!

'Mother and Child'. Or something. I really struggle to come up with good titles for finished paintings. I seem to want to just say what the painting is of, like 'Lion'. 'Tiger'. 'Wolf'. 'Paint on canvas, applied by a brush over a number of hours, whilst listening to the inane babble of ITV's Loose Women'.

I really tried with this painting, but all I could come up with (before Mother and Child, which is pretty rubbish really) was 'The Universal'. Which is incredibly pretentious. Ha. Oh well, something to work at...

The painting itself, I'm quite happy with. Again, I feel like I could have done more, as usual, but it was becoming a case of ever diminishing returns the more I worked on it. I'm still learning what works and what doesn't. I still haven't mastered what brush to use and when, instead sticking to the same one or two brushes, which probably aren't always best suited.

Ideally I'd like a really, really fine and stiff brush to get the really fine details on, but I can't seem to find any for sale.

To Post or Not to Post

I've been in two minds for a while now as to whether or not to make this post. The reason being; I'm not all that happy with they way the above painting has turned out. But then I decided there's no point in only showing things when you're happy with them. If I did that, I'd probably never ever post on here. I almost always feel that there's more I could have done with a painting or sketch. Most artists probably think that way. It's what drives us on as human beings- the eternal search for perfection.

Actually, that probably gives the wrong idea about what I'm aiming for in my work. It's definitely not perfection. Not in a photo-real sense anyway.

Unfortunately with the wolf painting I ended up leaving it too late, and being as I had a deadline for its completion- the hand in date at the gallery in which it is now hanging- to me it appears unsatisfactory. I know that if I had managed my time slightly more effectively I could have achieved a higher degree of detail and finish. As it is, to me at least, it looks incomplete and lacks detail, which is a shame as I can see its potential.

At this moment I should point out to any future potential employers or clients, that on a professional basis my time management and ability to reach deadlines satisfactorily is impeccable :) The wolf however was done purely for personal reasons, so I'm allowed to slack off.

Officially a Professional?

Great news, I've sold my first painting. In fact it actually sold a few months ago. I'm now working on another. Stay tuned.

It's flattering to know that people are prepared to part with their hard-earned in order to have something I've created. It also provides a nice confidence boost and incentive to keep doing more. Hopefully, quicker, better and more often.