sold my first real commission piece today and i cried in the parking lot
Okay so I've been doing the full-time artist thing for 8 months now and today I shipped my first actual commission. Not a print, not a little piece at a market, an actual person who messaged me asking me to paint their grandmother's garden. Their GRANDMOTHER'S garden. There were reference photos of this old rose bush and a rusty bench and I spent three weeks obsessing over getting the green right because greens are the devil honestly.
Anyway I sent it off this morning and then I just sat in my car outside the post office and cried a little. Not sad crying. Just like. Oh, this is real now. Someone trusted me with their memory and I didn't mess it up.
My dad died when I was 19 and I painted my way through that whole year, and I kept thinking today about how painting someone's garden feels like the exact opposite of that. Like here's a thing that's still alive and growing and someone wanted me to hold onto it for them.
And the grandma apparently cried when she saw the photos I sent before shipping, which made me cry again. My partner just handed me a towel and said "this is your whole personality now huh" and he's not wrong.
Not really asking anything, just wanted to tell people who'd get it. What's the last thing that made you cry in a good way?
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Okay this made me tear up a little and it's not even my piece. That feeling of something with meaning behind it going out into the world is just different. I've only ever sold stuff at local fairs, which is lovely, but someone actually wanting YOU to paint their grandmother's garden? That's a whole other level of trust.
And yes, greens are absolutely the devil. I did a landscape last month with a big tree line and I think I repainted that sky/green transition four times before I gave up and called it close enough. How did you end up getting the green right? Any particular mixes you landed on? I'm always chasing that one. Congrats, seriously. You earned that parking lot cry.
omg the trust thing is exactly it, you put it into words. like a print is just a print, but someone handing you a photo of their grandma's garden and being like "this means something to me" is genuinely terrifying and I loved every second of it haha
as for the greens, okay so the thing that finally unlocked it for me was stopping trying to mix one "correct" green. I did a base of raw sienna + ultramarine, kept it kind of warm and muddy, and then pushed a tiny bit of viridian into the shadowed areas after it dried. the warmth underneath is what made it feel like a real garden instead of like... fake grass. plus I stopped being afraid of letting some of it stay messy, which took three years lol.
what did you land on for your tree line? I've got a landscape I keep circling back to and I'm always curious how other people break that green transition