posted: May 30, 2012

Here is my latest private commission for a Southern California couple. It started out pretty basic with, "We like your work and want something for our dining room, something modern and colorful". Modern? hmmm, that threw me a bit so I  emailed the client a page of my favorite 20th century modern artists just to figure out a starting point and the response was, "We like your "Couples" paintings but we don't want a "Couples" piece in our dining room." Understood, So I went through a bunch of surreal figurative designs and the response was, "We don't want the figure and we want a color centric piece". Understood, so I went back to the drawing board completely stumped for a direction and I did what hundreds of artists do when grasping to find a contemporary style they start drawing seed pods, leaves and branches. So I made the drawing below and took an objective look at it and laughed because it was so bad, "I can't show this to anybody!".
 
I am completely frustrated at this point and thinking, "I have to get this sketch approved so I can get my installment, get it together!". So I took another look at the seed pods and thought, "I spent some time on drawing the shapes and maybe that is all I wanted, the exterior contours?" So, I took all of the drawings and broke them down into forms, rearranged the elements and bingo! I had a direction. 
 
 

 
So at this point I had 2 solid design solutions to present to the client and I was confident that one would be selected. I'll think about color later...