Take-off (Danielson)

by Godfrey J. Ellis

This wedding portrait was of the maternal grandparents of a friend from Church. The young groom was then a first lieutenant pilot in the US Air Force around 1942. At the time, they were not yet assigned the tradition dark blue dress jackets. This young pilot was about to “take off” both in a plane and a marriage with his new and lovely bride. As you can see below, the reference photo I was given was small, black and white, and blurry. It is impossible to know, for example, what flowers she had in her bouquet, so I had to do the best I could. I wanted some blue flowers to provide color harmony with the background.

This is a photo of the couple’s granddaughter-in-law as she picked up the painting to give to her husband as a Christmas present.

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One problem was the groom’s left eye (our right). In the reference photo, it appears out of sync with his right eye and I painted it that way. That causes some consternation and the final painting corrected that. Below are three photos of the painting as it took shape.