We have no shortage of "familial nepotism" around here, and one of my current stone painting commissions is to create 20 stones to commemorate the 20th anniversary of The White Light Express, my wife's non-profit organization.
One of the finished stones. Pretty happy with the final result
The purpose in doing so was both to commemorate the Anniversary, as well as to have the organization sell those stones as a fundraiser.
I thought it would be a good opportunity to share part of the process behind the occasional (quite rare, actually) special commission I take on.
Since I don't actually do "figurative" work, my starting point tends to be the use of color in a client's web presence or logos.
Screen shot of the White Light Express' web site, showing one set of colors
Screen shot of White Light Express' Hive header
Since the 8-petaled stylized lotus is a central part of all White Light Express "livery," starting with an 8-pointed star-like design seemed like the best approach.
The photo below shows a partially painted "prototype" stone, just playing with the colors. Yes, a lot of time goes into this!
Early experiments with using this color set
Since that seemed to be working fairly well on this smaller stone, I went back and strengthened the colors, and finished off the design with the outermost ring being in white, something I felt I should keep consistent for the entire 20 stones.
There were a couple of "flubs" that I am not going to share here, but the below was the first successfully finished stone for the project.
First finished "prototype" stone
The request was to be able to offer stones for sale in several different sizes, corresponding to different levels of donations.
The next part of the task becomes to create *"variations" on the design for different scales, keeping certain elements and the colors consistent, while still making each stone quite unique.
In time, the first six stones were completed, ranging in sizes from about 2 1/4" (55mm) to about 3 1/2" (85mm) in diameter.
The first six finished stones ready to get their finish coat
Ideally, these would correspond to being gifts for a $20-$50 donation (small stone), a $50-$100 donation (medium stone) and a $100+ donation (large stone, which I have not yet made).
Below, you can see those same six stones, with their finish coats applied.
...And the first six stones all ready to deliver!
Now I just need to paint 14 more stones along roughly the same lines, with the intention of ultimately ending up with maybe 12 "small," 5 "medium" and 3 "large" stones.
The project will actually finish with a 21st stone, in a very large size that will end up permanently on the White Light Express altar.
For the most part, I don't like doing "custom" orders due to time pressures and the number of clients needing literally dozens of prototypes before they are happy. This this one is an "inside job," I don't mind too much!
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2021.12.17 AS-TXT-074/040