In September of last year my parents were in Cyprus in a business capacity and spoke to a couple who seemed infatuated by a semi-impressionist landscape oil painting that they had seen on display in their hotel; the painting in question was depicting Cyprus's iconic rolling hills and Pencil pine trees in a recognisably Mediterranean style. Due to time constraints the couple were unable to organise a purchase of the painting before they were scheduled to depart; sportingly my mum took a photo of the painting and informed the couple that I was an artist and would be able to reproduce a version of the painting for them for a reasonable commission.
That's the version of events I was told anyway, and so I eagerly began work on the piece at the beginning of August, however being a relative novice at oils I decided to instead use coloured pastels - which were in fact very effective during the shading stages.
In my previous artworks I had been hesitant in using excessive colour however on this occasion I was really pleased with the end result of using a greater colour palette and found the contrast of light and dark in the piece quite striking.
The finished work, at a rough size of 40x35cm(I neglected to measure it) was not too imposing in scale but noticeable from a distance, while up close the piece held a distinct physicality as the use of pastels gave it a sense of being multi-textured, seemingly smooth in some areas while corse in others for example.
At the point when my parents handed over this 'Cyprus landscape' a 2nd couple also became interested and commissioned a pare of works in the same exact style for their house that was being modelled or something(again I'm very sketchy on the details as I wasn't present at said event) either way I was happy to get continued interest and since I felt I was so successful in my first instalment of the pastel landscape I showed no hesitance in tackling these two additional ones. There were however some features of these two pieces that I hadn't needed to take into account while producing the first one; namely, while the pair of landscapes would be separate and of slightly differing content, they had been planned to be placed side by side in close proximity on the same wall. In other words the two rectangular pictures(of identical size and frame) would be placed vertically next to each other in order to make up a single square image, the picture on the left showing the left side of a landscape and the one on the right obviously showing the corresponding right side of the landscape.
Unfortunately I forgot to photograph these two pictures before they were sold, but they were of matching style to the first 'Cyprus landscape' however with dimensions of around 2x1 measures in scale.
As of this post the same couple have got in touch again and have requested a larger commission of similar style but instead depicting a literal architectural scene - the location chosen is the Grand Canal in Venice; work on this piece is currently ongoing but it should be finished by the end of August this year and you can be sure this is the first place I'll be putting it on display.
-Wish me luck!
