My Model/Muse...

I have not known my model for very long, but have photographed her many times, and currently have painted 7 paintings of her.  Two are finished, and 5 are in varying degrees of being finished.  There is something about her face, and modeling ability that infatuate me.
I have a feeling that I should call another model, but can't seem to do it....lol.  I do like to "exhaust" a "theme" before I move forward, so I guess I will see how the path unfolds before me......

Last week my beautiful model came over to have her picture taken with the commissioned painting I painted of her.  My husband was not there to photograph us together with the painting, but I had some plumbers working on our vents, so I enlisted one of them to come in and photograph us....I should have checked the photos before he went back to work, because they are pretty blurred.  But since they are the only ones I have, I am posting some of them.

"Cakes"

If you have been reading my blog posts you know I have been working on a large (72" x 30") painting for the past several months.  I have been hesitant to post work in progress since it is a commission, and I didn't want to spoil the "big reveal". 

Having said that I think I am ready to post the painting!  The whole process, from beginning to end has been pretty much a joy!  My client is the one who came up with the idea for the painting, and it was just such an incredible idea, that I was glad we could bring it to reality.

My client is an avid art collector, and has recently ventured into Pop and Modern art.  He is lucky enough to own a Wayne Thiebaud painting; "One and 1/2 Cakes".  After seeing my paintings that include a Wayne Thiebaud reproduction behind my nudes, he visited my gallery in San Francisco; Modernism, and purchased my painting "Cakes".

I asked him if I could see a photo of his Wayne Thiebaud, and he emailed it to me, along with the suggestion that perhaps I could paint a nude holding a tray with cakes on it, welcoming people who enter his San Francisco apartment, where his painting "One and 1/2 Cakes" is hung.  I said I thought that sounded great, and called my model, baked 2 3-layer cakes to replicate the painting's cakes, and had a photo shoot as a "jumping off" point  Since the real cakes were kind of a mess, (lol) my client suggested maybe I try painting the cakes to look like his painting.

That is what I did, and I am amazed at how it turned out, and without too much trouble....I can say now.  Because the painting is taller than I am, I had to stand on boxes and a board to paint the head, and it was difficult to get a sense of the whole painting when I was painting the lower legs, but other than that, it went rather smoothly.

In the end, I decided to keep the painting in a kind of "pinup" style, keeping the figure light, and I think it really works.  Photographing the painting has proven problematic, in that the head (hair) is photographing dark, and I haven't quite figured out how to shoot it perfectly yet. So now I have to let the painting dry, varnish it, come up with a title, and ship it to San Francisco!