Bay of Bengal (Jolley)

by Godfrey J. Ellis – 15×30 Acrylic Dec 2019

Our good friends, Allen and Janine Jolley, spent 18 months on a service mission in far-off India. Of the thousands of photos that they took while there, I loved this one the most (once cropped). It is a photo of them standing on the shore of the Bay of Bengal. I wanted to paint it for them as a gift. 

Everyone thought the water came out very well and I was pleased with the white shirt (white is difficult to paint). However, even though this was the largest painting I had attempted to date (15×30), the two faces were still very small in the composition (less than 2 inches). That was far too small to get a good resemblance of the two of them. I was pleased that they even looked human! The Jolleys appreciated the love that went into the painting and the making of the frame. A year later, when Allen saw the improvement in my painting skills, he asked me to work on his face a little more, which I did. Yes, it did come out a little better. Below is a close-up of the faces after I reworked his:

Below is the original reference photo.

A frame for this unusual size portrait could not be just purchased off the shelf from a hobby store. To have one made would be well over $100. I worked with our friend, Steve Brunson, to build one myself. We were able to use wall molding, which I painted with acrylic paint. It ended up costing only $14 for materials. Below is a photo of our friends holding the completed painting.

The Jolleys chose to display this painting on top of their antique player piano.

The Jolleys were so sweet. They made up and printed, then framed, a “certificate of excellence,” which we hung on our wall (see below).