Bouquet (Ellis)

by Godfrey J. Ellis – Sept 2020 acrylic 16×20

Our 20-year-old granddaughter, Sarah, was married on Aug 22nd. I took two wedding photographs and couldn’t decide which one to paint. So, I asked my artist friends from a FaceBook painting group and they convinced me to paint BOTH of them. So this is one of two.

One of the difficulties of this painting was that David has deep-set eyes. When I painted them close to how they appeared in the reference photo (see below) people said it looked like he had two black eyes. “Not yet,” I said. Just kidding. I lightened the eyes as much as I could while still trying to stay true to the reference photo. Sarah had anemone flowers in her bouquet, made by her aunt. They had used that bouquet for bridal photos a couple of days earlier. She loved those flowers, but they had wilted and been replaced by the time of the wedding. I added two anemones to the portrait.

I’ve included three shots of the painting as it progressed (see below):