A Great Idea for Wedding Favors...Mini Paintings

'Kiawah Gold'      2x2  acrylic on canvas

I love commissions.  I enjoy working with art lovers to create the perfect painting.  I have many stories of fun and interesting commissions.  It would actually make a fun book with the paintings and their stories. The paintings often push me out of my comfort zone but it is always fun trying to paint what my client is imagining.  Of course the best commissions are the ones where I am given free reign to paint with a minimum of guidelines....like these mini acrylics.

The Collection of Kiawah Paintings

I was asked if I could paint six 2x2 inch paintings of Kiawah Island to be used as wedding favors. What a great idea!  I offered the bride to be a choice of mini pastels which would need to be framed or acrylic on canvas which could be placed on mini wooden easels. She chose the acrylics and shared a few of the Lowcountry marsh paintings of mine that she liked.

I used Interactive Acrylic paints which are slower to dry than regular acrylics (though I found that the Golden Open acrylics stayed wet much longer. In fact they took a couple of days to dry!)  I used a small brush and a tiny palette knife.  They were a lot of fun to paint and I hope I get more of these commissions!

Interested in trying some of these mins? Here are some tips:

• Keep it simple. I used a limited palette of alizarin crimson, ultramarine blue, cad yellow medium and white.
• For reference material I used photos of my previously finished paintings on my ipad. This way I had already worked out colors and composition.
• I worked on all 6 at the same time. I began by blocking in the darks with a thin mix of the alizarin and ultramarine
• I then worked on each one individually until it was finished. I started with a thin layer of color and finished with some thicker paint applied with a palette knife. 
• I wrapped the paintings around the edges. Another option would be to paint the edges black or a dark color. 

'Kiawah Summer'    2x2   acrylic

'Kiawah Twilight'      2x2     acrylic

'Kiawah Marsh'    2x2     acrylic

'Kiawah Dawn'      2x2     acrylic

'Kiawah Dreams'       2x2      acrylic