Here’s this week’s Throwback Thursday piece!
Title: Untitled (The Prinzi House)
Medium: Graphite on paper
Size: 11″ x 14″
When: Late summer/early fall 2013
Purpose: Commissioned by the Shermans
Time to complete: Actual drawing time was 2 weeks; there was a lot of planning and waiting before I could start drawing.
History: This was commissioned by some friends of ours after they won my certificate in our church’s 2013 short term missions auction (see the 2014 piece here!). They were so excited they won, and instead of having me do a drawing for them, they wanted me to draw a mutual friend’s new house that was in the process of being built. This house process had been a huge, stressful ordeal for the friend’s family, and they wanted to do something really special for them as a housewarming gift.
Thought process: This piece was pretty straight forward. We knew we wanted the front of the house, make it sunny with a few happy clouds, and remove the neighboring houses from view in the picture.
Problems I encountered: This piece took a long time to get a concept for. We had to wait for the house to be built, get windows and doors installed, siding put on, roof completed…I worked on the drawing bit by bit, and thankfully my husband works a few minutes away from the house; I sent him over to the house multiple times to get pictures of progress so I could keep working!
Getting the different shades of gray were hard. When I took the digital photos and edited them into gray scale, the sky and siding colors blended in. I had to push the sky a little darker and the siding a little lighter than it should be in order for it to be defined enough.
The windows were a pain as well. All those little lines on the windows were so hard to keep straight and equal width! I’m so thankful for my eraser pencil; I think that’s the only thing that kept me sane while finishing the windows up.
Favorite part: Handing it over to our friends during their housewarming party was the highlight! Seeing their excitement and then having them hang it up right then was just an amazing feeling. They worked so hard to get this house done, and had so many bumps in the road during this journey that having something to commemorate the experience was just awesome.
Lease favorite part: I don’t know if I have a least favorite part. That’s a nice change of pace!
Have you ever had a special photograph or drawing done of your house?
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