Taking Advice from Richard Diebenkorn and David Ohlerking

Current State of Commission after changes, 12/22/10

I'm currently working til the bitter deadline to finish a Christmas commission. Painting commissions first of all are challenging just in the fact that you are trying to please someone else. This one is also trying because it's all from photo reference and I'm trying to pull a lot of different ideas together into one piece.

My mission: to commemorate a client's culinary food tour in Italy, from photos supplied, and some key points mentioned by the client, and to work within the scale / dimensions agreed upon.

Page from my sketchbook featuring the selected sketch (top)

Ok, so the aspects gleaned from my conversation with the client were the factors of Mt. Vesuvius always being in view throughout their trip, the amazing pizza, and all the fresh produce and fish. So I went to work on the composition my client selected, but as I've been working in actual scale with paint and color, I'm not happy about how the lower portion is working out. The scale just wasn't working for me; all the produce appearing much smaller than the pizza itself just didn't seem right to me.

In Progress Painting, 12/21/10

So, after feeling a few moments of frustration, I looked at some of the work by TraillWorks' exhibiting artist, David Ohlerking, then went and read the notes on starting a painting by Richard Diebenkorn reminding me about the importance of moving past pretty, destroying things, and starting again. This brought me back to the point of the process of painting, making the painting work. I returned to my easel, scraped away most of the bottom portion and started again, changing scale, painting directly over the streaked remaining paint. Already I'm happier with the direction.The first image in the post is the current state, as of this evening. This must be done by Friday, my plan is to finish tomorrow.