Now that it is officially Christmas, I can finally show off the painting that I created for Dakota! He was very surprised by my gift to him and his reaction to it is something I will cherish forever.
There is a story behind the important people in the painting that are fishing and the truck that they drove in. Dakota recognized these things right away and I was so worried about it! What kind of painter/illustrator would I be if the viewer in mind didn't understand what was going on?
It absolutely killed me that I couldn't tell Dakota all of the struggles throughout the painting, so I took lots of in progress photos so I could easily show him all that had gone wrong. First there was a tree that I loved, but just didn't seem right.
So I had to paint over it. Then those mountains in the back just didn't seem far away enough. But the biggest, most horrifying mistake I made was the color of the truck. He still owns the truck and from what I know of it, it is blue.
BUT the time that this story takes place, the truck was brown. And I only found out by accident four days ago! I'm thankful that I found out but when I did, my heart sunk. All that work... but it was easily fixed and I am so happy with this. My first oil painting in a few years!
