Latest Commission: In Somnis Veritas A.K.A. The Chess in the Park Dream

Latest commission: Patron wanted me to depict a dream he once had, which as you can see was PRETTY elaborate!

I was happy with the theme, because dreams are also VERY important to me. I do not consider them to be mere gibberish produced by our unconscious because our mind is ‘dumping’ information from our daily lives –at least not ALL of them, anyway…

The patron described the scene as two young girls sitting at a wooden park bench, with trees in the background, playing chess. The girl on the left had black hair and brown eyes and next to her was a shield; the girl on the right had blonde girl and blue eyes, and there was a sword placed by her side.

I had the inspiration of adding an old Latin phrase on the shield: In Somnis Veritas (there is truth in dreams) which I think was a fitting touch and resonated with the theme of the piece.

For some reason I decided from the beginning that I wanted to go for a more realistic look, instead of my usual ‘cartoony’ style. Thanks to the Internet one can find a plethora of reference images which you can use in many different ways. For this piece I almost did a preliminary ‘collage’ placing bits and pieces of those reference images (the bench, the shield, the sword, the chess pieces, model girls sitting on a bench in a fitting position for the composition, etc) and manipulating them until they fit all in place.

Mind you, this was no mere ‘tracing’ of a photo underneath! A lot of changes and alterations were made so everything looked just the way the patron described his dream.

The piece also proved challenging not only because of the many little debtails it contained –the chess set, the shield, the sword, etc– but also the backgroung because I wanted the park to also look realistic(ish) enough –painting grass is HARD, yo! In the end it looks more ‘impressionistic’ than photo-realistic and I find that very pleasing.

I also realized something else: I need to learn about women makeup! –something a cisgen male would probably not admit in public, but there ya go 😉

If you’re interested in an art commission, leave me a comment. And even if you’re not interested yourself, P-L-E-A-S-E share this post with your friends.