Farm House Painting

I just finished framing this farm house painting featuring a lovely old homestead. It’s a wedding gift for a lovely couple, and I hope they like it as much as I do.

Of course I had to tell them what I planned to paint as their gift, the house is his family homestead in another state. I asked for photographs to use as reference material. I got several photos, some were quite old since the home is well over 100 years old! The home itself is not unusual in architecture, so I did some research on line to fill in the blanks where I did not have a good photo to use. Mostly I studied the photos, trying to piece them together in my mind so that I could fit the place into a composition correctly.

Initially I drew out a plan of the place- how the house sits on the lot, where the driveway is, garden, arbor and fruit cellar. I even drew out where the barn is, corral and a few other things that would not really be in the painting. After I got a feel for the location, I determined the best angle to create a good composition and sketched out my idea for the work.

After the sketch came the painting- layers of paints, glazes and strokes that create a work of art and a lovely memory of a time and a place.