How Long Does A Painting Take?

One of my top asked questions by couples, guests, suppliers and pretty much anyone who I talk to about live wedding painting is: how long does a painting take you?

Now, any artist will tell you, that very much depends on the emotional journey of the painting because, let’s be honest, we’ve all tried doing an important job when we’re just not in the right mood haven’t we? And we’d be lying if we said it didn’t take 10 times longer when we're just not feeling it!

Because of the nature of my style being fine art realism, naturally it takes time to really capture the depth and detail in my portraits.

Typically, my short answer to this question is 20-25 hours, but this is a loose guideline. Some may take slightly less, others considerably more.

However, here’s a general hourly guide for a typical wedding portrait.

A bride and groom smile happily whilst an artist shows them their painting

On The Wedding Day!

Hour 1 Sketching Once the couple have selected their reference photo/s, I set to work sketching out the composition. Because I want to maximise the amount of painting I get done on the day, I use a grid which I have preprepared, which helps me to quickly achieve an accurate likeness.

Hours 1-2 Background

Once I’m happy with the sketch, I’ll use water to remove the grid lines. I recently discovered a life hack from another artist who suggested drawing the grid using watercolour pencils and that way, you simply brush them away! Genius! Then I start blocking out the background around the couple. My portraits don’t include a huge amount of detail in the background and this is definitely a job for the studio, so a simple block in here is enough at this point.

Hours 2-4 Facial Features & Hair

My priority on the wedding day is to capture a likeness to the couple I’m painting, so my focus now is to lay the foundations for the highlights and shadows on the faces. I used to be scared of going in so soon with dark paint, but I’ve found it helps me to create contrast quicker which in turn allows guests to pick out features more easily when they walk past. I also block in dimensions in the hair focusing mainly on the highlights and shadows to create depth – I’ll worry about the details later!

Hours 4-5 Clothing

Once I’m happy I’ve got the likeness down (always helped if a guest tells me I’ve nailed their expressions!), I’ll move on to blocking out the clothing. I typically switch to a larger brush at this point to get maximum coverage in fewer strokes and concentrate on building dimension (light and dark areas) to create the illusion of the fabric. I particularly love doing this on suits, especially with the folds you can get in the arms and across the body. I apply the same technique to wedding dresses and loosely block in any details like lace, beading etc.

Hours 5-6 Final Details

In the final hour before the reveal to the couple, I’ll spend this time adding any final details that will help to bring the painting to life. This might include blocking out the bouquet if that’s been included, adding stronger shadows where the couple meet to show connection, as well as ensuring my highlights are consistent with the direction of sunlight.

Reveal to couple

Back In The Studio!

Hour 6

As soon as I get home, I place the painting on my mantlepiece in my living room where it stays for the next few days. This may seem an insignificant part of the process but what I’m doing here is constantly re-evaluating my work and deciding on the next steps and mapping it out in my head. By placing it somewhere I walk past several times a day, I’m constantly looking, studying, evaluating and preparing for what’s coming next, so that I can be the most efficient with my time.

Hours 7-10

Typically, I’ll focus on the background first and start layering paint to create that fuzzy, blurry texture. I may use several reference photos for this and may even paint in a completely different background! This can be quite a lengthy process due to the amount of layers needed to build up the soft out of focus effect.

Hours 10-14

I’ll now go back to the facial features to add several more layers of paint, building up the highlights and shadows. I like to get the facial features locked in as early as possible, giving me time to tweak if needed.

Hours 14-18

These hours are spent adding several layers of paint to the clothing, building the richness and depth to the fabrics

Hours 18-23

These hours are spent adding the finer detail to the clothing, in particular the wedding dress. This is where I use my teeny tiny brushes to create the lace or beading details, adding in patterns to ties and pocket squares and painting the bouquet if included.

Hours 23-25

This final chunk of time is spent finessing and refining any areas that are not up to standard. It’s likely I will send the couple a reference photo at this point for them to review and sign off ready for framing. If there is any area that the couple are not completely happy with, I will action this and make amendments.

And that's it!