Hello everyone! After a week, I am back. I had been a little bit feeling under weather, but do not worry. This really has nothing to do with COVID19, the weather is just changing from time to time. Rainy season has started here in the Philippines so it means I get more to time be sleepy and lazy. Yay!
For today, I am going to share to you the recent artwork that was commissioned to me by one of the women that I adore and respect, Engr. Bet. I used to work with her while I was under Mines and Geosciences Bureau 10. I honestly could not believe that she would reach out to me and ask me to paint her something.
I felt so nervous because I might fall short from her expectations.
Materials/Things Used
- 18 x 24in Primed Canvas
- Green Water Colored Pencil so that it would just be disolved or would not blend with the acrylic paint
- flat brushes and round brushes
- neon colors acrylic paints from Art Ranger
- Perma Acrylic
- and loads of patience
Did I say loads of patience? Well, I was not wrong when I included that because of me acrylic is one of the art materials that consumes a lot of my patience. It dries quickly when I needed it to be wet, and it still remains wet when I needed it to be dry. I know I could just use a blower for it to make it dry easily, or another agent to make it wet for a longer period of time but it is just so expensive. I cannot afford to although I want to purchase a lot of those materials.
The first thing that I did was to paint the upper left portion of the canvas with blue mixed with a little amount of white paint. I have considered of including a portion of the sky on the upper left portion of the canvas.
I did not wait for the blue paint to dry for me to continue on painting the background. I took my big flat brush and painted the other three corners (upper right, lower left, and lower right) of the canvas with green (green with a mixture of yellow and white) and yellow ochre. As you could see, I used different of strokes in putting different colors.
Although I wrote a sketch on the placement of the objects on my canvas, I was not able to follow everything. I decided to add few more butterflies and flowers on my work because the initial plan looked so dull for me.
When I have a full idea of the image of my artwork, I decided to paint the left portion of the canvas with crimson red and purple flowers. I just came up with this idea because they look better together since they compliment, and the colors of the flowers look better with the background.
As you can see, I painted most of the butterflies with red acrylic paint. Some of the flowers on the lower right on the other hand were painted with yellow. Flowers near the center were then painted with blue.
If you are going to observe, it took me a couple of tries before I came up with the decision on what colors I would be using for all of the flowers. It also took me a lot of blending colors to check which would suit best for every flower corresponding to its background color. It was more like of what would be better while I was working on this masterpiece.
As you can see, some of the flowers were painting blue. There is also a white butterfly below. The red butterflies on the other hand are not with darker shade anymore since I added different tones of red by mixing it with yellow.
After two days, I was finally done with this commission. As you can observe, I avoided over blending so that my rough strokes would be visible. I am also taking up online art courses and tutorials over youtube to enhance my skills in painting more.
And the freebies!
Of course I would not forget giving freebies when someone asks me for a commission.
I am thankful that she loved all of those. She even took a photo of those and thanked me a couple of time. Indeed, spreading joy to others through my works gave me a sense of fulfillment. I do hope I would be able to spread it to more people. crossing fingers Though someone has commissioned again for another artwork, I still need to wait for the payment of the artwork that she purchased to me. It's been a month already and she hasn't paid me yet. (Sad face here)
If you want to commission me for an artwork, please feel free to comment on this post or email me at mgailtongco@gmail.com. I really do not ask for an expensive payment as of the moment. Thank you and have a great rainy day!
Love,
Johanna Gail
Gaibelga or Johanna Gail H. Tongco has been writing feature articles (her hobbies in particular) online since 2012. She enjoys teaching art to children and young adults. She has served as a young leader and volunteer of different youth organizations. She is also a licensed professional teacher.
Furthermore, she took up Bachelor of Arts in International Studies, Masters in Public Administration, and Professional Education in two different universities in Cagayan de Oro City.
