Mar 01, 2020

A great response to this recent family portrait commission

"Thank you so much for our wonderful portrait picture Ivan. You have achieved, to our delight, just what we wanted including an obvious emotional connection of us and the dogs. With many thanks! Gilli & John"

This is the best response I could have had from what was a challenging commission. The challenges started from the time the photos were taken in mid June 2019 by my wife Cathy through to the end including choosing the best frame to compliment and feature the details of the artwork.....

I had completed a commission previously for Gilli and John back in 2015 and Gilli purchased a hedgehog painting from me in 2019.

Portrait commission and purchased artwork in situ Ivan Jones pastel artist

This time she wanted a "family" portrait with herself and John plus their two dogs. We knew the best reference photographs for such a large commission had to be taken by us, so we went to their home in Malvern in June to take them.

The weather was perfect and we took over 100 photographs of all types - of the family together, everyone individually, indoors, outdoors.....This gave us a range of photos to get the light, the details of eyes, the perfect position of head, body and so on. We then went through all of them with Gilli until the best of each person and dog was chosen.....

Chosen photos of Gilli and John for portrait commission Ivan Jones pastel artist

At home these chosen photos were combined by my wife Cathy into a single collage which was sent to Gilli for her approval.

Reference photos of family combined into a collage. Ivan Jones artist

Once this had been received, the next 70 hours over 8 weeks was dedicated to the portrait. The response to the completed painting, as seen above, made the hard work very worthwhile!

Gilli and John family commissioned portrait Ivan Jones pastel artist