Wednesday, March 16, 2011

Wedding "Portrait" gift for my cousin



"Nick & Dina" ink and gouache painting, March 2011
For my cousin's wedding celebration, I decided to make them a custom painting based on their engagement photos and thought it would be fun to draw them as cute animal characters. I drew Dina as my signature bunny that I've been incorporating in a lot of my recent paintings and handpainted dolls, with the patterned ears and tiptoe pose. The Chinese word in the background is traditionally used to represent marriage and I adapted it to the heart shape, and I used the same colors and textile patterns (Dina has great taste in decor) in their living room for the picnic blanket. I loved the colors and patterns of Dina's dress she wore in the photos, and she was wearing cute heart sunglasses in one photo, so I had to draw her wearing those. I believe he proposed to her while they were in the mountains somewhere, so I drew mountains in the background. And since their wedding reception was at a winery, I drew a little picnic basket with wine and two wine glasses, and sitting next to the basket is the small cute cactus in a cup they were holding in one of their photos.  I wanted to put Nick and Dina's Excellent Adventure as the title at the top, but since I was on a time crunch, just put Nick and Dina. I like how it looks both vintage and modern at the same time. My first foray into custom wedding paintings...fun and I like how it turned out. Sometimes once I start drawing I never know how it will come out, but this one I really like.

4 comments:

Dawn in the Forest said...

This is a beautiful painting!

Mekanikku said...

Thank you for your kind comment! I am really enjoying painting more 2D art these days! :)

Anonymous said...

Oh my god, Li! We love this painting so much. We were speechless when we unwrapped it and were first looking at it. We had to put it up right away and we couldn't stop studying it and appreciating all the references to our story. We can never thank you enough for this custom piece of art.

Mekanikku said...

Thank you so much for having me at your celebration and I'm glad you are enjoying the painting! :) I loved painting it for you guys!