Painting A Vermont Winter During A California Summer

Thanks for checkin' out the Bsombin' blog! Business has been slow, this year, to say the least. I have been the embodiment of the term "starving artist" since the start of the year. But things have been picking up lately... The funny thing is most of the work I have been getting lately has nothing to do with art or photography. But I did get commissioned to paint a canvas last month. So I thought I would quickly share my processes for creating a custom piece of art...

It was the first time in over 3 years that I've painted a large canvas. It was also the first time I've ever painted a landscape painting. And, to pull me even further out of my comfort zone, I was asked to paint it in a more traditional landscape style. My client had an idea of what she was looking for and gave me a good description of the type of scene she wanted. First, I googled some images for reference and drew up the first round of 4 rough sketches for her to look at.

 Once she picked one of the rough sketch, I went back and drew a secondary sketch with more detail, to give her a better feel for what the canvas would look like. She liked the secondary sketch. But she wanted the house to be a different color and she wanted all the trees to be fluffy snow covered pine trees.

With those changes in mind, I got to work on the canvas. I had a few other jobs I was working on while painting it. So it took me a while to finish it. It took a couple of weeks before I was able to deliver the finished piece to my client. But she was very happy when she saw it in person. She had it made as a gift for her assistant (who was out of town) and was going to surprise him with it when he got back.

I've spoken to her since and she said her assistant loved the canvas and wanted another. So now I'm waiting to hear back on some more possible commissions I might be working on in the coming weeks... 

The Journey - pt.5

Thanks for checkin' out Bsombin'! So I've been writing about my creative journey. A quick recap... Through a series of events, I was inspired to begin exploring new "canvas" options. I decided to stray away from the norm & begin looking for new materials to paint on. I began working with glass & acrylic (plexiglass) & soon found myself being pulled into a new world of creative possibilities. My journey has been through this new world in the art universe.

...Along the way, I decided to make some pieces & send them to iconic figures, after reading articles about several artists who grew their careers by doing the same thing to promote their work. I talked to my partner Cory about it & he agreed it would be a great way to promote both my art & Kibatsu Creative. We began reaching out to friends to see who could help us get in touch with celebrities & iconic figures. To our surprise, we found we had more options than we thought & connections to some big names. While we thought about which celebrities we would choose to send work to, I got the idea to design custom frames for the gifts we would be sending out. Fortunately for us, our friend Nick, at N2Metalworks, was able to lend us a hand there. I drew up some plans & showed Nick what I was thinking. After some discussion, I decided to redesign the frames, because of some design flaws which Nick brought to my attention. After a redesign, Nick took the design & brought back some beautiful aluminum frames that were just what I had envisioned to go on the acrylic pieces. Here is a look at the original rough design & the finished frames (after the redesign) before I mounted them on the acrylic pieces.