BOWL, Acrylic on Panel, 20x30

A few months ago, my friends Chris and Jenny asked if I was interested in doing another painting of the Bear Creek Lanes sign for their new home. I was very interested but felt I should ask Jason (the now owner of the original painting I did earlier). I'm  not sure on the protocol of this kind of thing, but I wanted to make sure he was cool with it before I committed. Luckily he enthusiastically gave his blessing, so it was up to me to figure out how to do it differently enough to keep challenging myself but not too differently that my friends would still be pleased. The original was cropped and was only 5x10 inches and the Schells wanted a painting that would be many times that size. It would be my largest painting yet!

The challenge of this particular sign is that it’s an elongated L shape and could possibly leave a lot of empty space in one of the corners if I painted it straight on - I needed a different angle. 

I decided to make a simple 3D model of the sign that I could manipulate to give me a rough idea of what the best angle would be to shoot a reference photo. 

I didn’t want to spend a lot of time shooting on location, because I know people can get weird about someone taking photos of their stuff. I (quickly) took a day shot and an early evening shot with the neon on, and we decided that the daytime photo looked the best. 

So with that, I got to work.