Commission Portraits

If you would like to commission your custom wedding or anniversary portrait, please contact me using the drop down form in the upper right (click on the 3 horizontal lines). I will contact you with all the information you need to get your artwork started! Below are just a few of the examples of portraits I have had the pleasure of completing over the years. Many of my commissions are given as a surprise by the wedding party to the lucky couple as a wedding gift or from the groom to the bride as a first anniversary (the traditional "paper" gift) which made them even more special to create.

Graphite Wedding Portrait Commission

Graphite Anniversary Portrait Commission

Graphite Christmas Gift Commission

Graphite & Charcoal Family Portrait Commission

Graphite Portrait

Graphite Couple Portrait Commission

Comments

Tips for Storing Oil Paint Between Sessions

Well, that was fun, well fun like a long workout is when you are done ;) It definitely helps to have good music when paint mixing as sometimes it can seem like it can take forever to get the exact mix you are looking for.

It is so worth it though as there is nothing better than having all of your paint premixed in clean little tubes so that you can squish out fresh paint every time you paint. I have thought of mixing while sipping a glass wine or martini but I am sure I would end up with very sub par mixes ;)

I don't premix all my colors but I find it so helpful to premix a flesh palette as I may not get the chance to paint every day, especially in the summer, and there is nothing worse than mixing up your paint and then having to through it all out because it did not keep between sessions.

Also, as some days I only have an hour to two to paint and if I have all of my colors premixed, I get to spend almost all of the time painting rather than getting ready to paint.…

Graydon Parrish Workshop - Fabric Study

I am so fortunate to have had the opportunity to take another workshop with the amazing, talented, generous, patient...I could go on, Graydon Parrish. This is the third time I have had the opportunity to take one of his workshops (see Workshop 1 and Workshop 2 for more info) and every time I am amazed at how much I learn yet how relaxed and fun the process is. When I learn on my own, it is more like a battle of wills and frustration and as I tend to learn by realizing what not to do....and then learning by the process.

The workshop was two weeks long during which time Graydon walked us through setting up the still life which he set up as a work of art in itself. He showed us how to determine the colors of the fabric and how the light affects the hue, value and chroma. He had us paint half a sphere and cube with the local color to better understand what we were seeing. We then mixed the color strings we needed by matching the munsell chips to what we observed on the fabric. Below…

Sea Shell Closed Grisaille - Work in Progress

This is the second stage of the sea shell painting I started earlier this week. The first session I painted the open grisaille which is just a painting completed entirely using very thin layer of an earth color such as burnt umber, burnt sienna or in this case, asphaltum.The toned or white substrate shows through slightly. I used a flat stiff brush and mineral spirits with the asphaltum to draw out the basic shape of the shell using straight lines and focusing on angles and shapes, trying to not think of the actual object as a shell but as a series of puzzle shapes.

Once the open grisaille was dry, I used my premixed tubes of neutral grays to paint the closed grisaille. The closed grisaille is a painting usually using neutral grays that allows the artist to focus on the value structure without the complexity of color. I have values pre-mixed and tubed from a value 2 neutral gray to a value 9, titanium white is a value 10 which I did not use. Pre-mixing and tubing your oil paints…

Tracey Costescu Fine Art

Search