When Helen Glispie emailed me and said that she and her husband, Butch, wanted to commission me to do a painting, I gave her a detailed explanation of the process. It is always a process of back and forth, me asking questions about their interests, and they giving me food for thought about what they might want. The photo above was the first thing that they sent me, explaining that the objects were room pass keys and other various momentos that represented their travels. Hawaii seemed to be the overriding image that kept rising to the top, so I headed that direction with my design. One thing that had to be in the painting was their family. Herself and Butch, their daughter and husband and their two grandchildren. I hadn't put more than 4 people in a commissioned painting up this point, so I had a new challenge, which was going to make it fun to design. The Glispies are in Arizona, so the logistics of photographing the family and one momento (the ceramic hula girl) needed to be worked out. I did a surprise commission years ago for a man's 80th birthday, and needed to base it around his ranch in Montana. Fortunately, the ranch's foreman's wife was a professional photographer, so directing her to photograph some cattle and a horse and rider was relatively simple. I elected Helen to handle that task on this project. She had designed the Pono Construction logo for her husband, so she has the eye of a photographer. I worked out my design in Photoshop, popping in elements from my past paintings and using some free images from the internet, soon to be replaced by photos that Helen will take of her family. Helen and I emailed back and forth, adding some new elements that helped tell the story, and sometimes tossing out some of the additions that just didn't work.
Here is the hula doll with her ukulele. 
San Diego is one of their destinations...
...as well as Laguna Beach.
Another Laguna Beach favorite.
Since the Glispies live in Arizona and Butch's construction company has built numerous projects there, it was nice to highlight the Arizona state flag.
I located a couple of vintage decal/stickers of a couple of their destinations.
This vintage Venice decal is very cool.
This was a newer sticker which had the Rwanda flag on it.
Helen has a passion for flying pigs, and pigs that swim in the ocean! The "swimming pigs" of the Bahamas are located on Big Major Cay (Pig Island) in the Exumas.
Here is the final sketch that I put together in photoshop. With all that information, I designed the painting, using all the decals, room keys, post cards etc. as a travel wall, with a window showing Hanalei Bay, Kauai. In the sky, passing by are a "flock" of flying pigs. The two granddaughters, both experienced gymnists, balance across the window ledge as their mom and dad bring the day's beach supplies across the sand to the proud grandparents. As I like to do in my work, I've enlarged the tiki cocktail glasses they are drinking from, and put them in a work truck with Butch's construction company logo on the driver's door. The hula girl stands in the foliage of a beautiful hibiscus, strumming her ukulele.
Here is the first photo taken by Helen of something on her end that I need in the painting. I communicated with her via text message and she sent me photos until we got the lighting, the angle and the position of the ceramic just right. 
With the 40"x50" linen canvas stretched on the stretcher bars, I've begun to draw the image on to the surface with a #2 pencil, following my sketch from an 8"x10" printout of the photoshop image.
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