Hello again,
I’m back with the next instalment of shedding light on the very new world of live wedding painting!
So, we have already covered why you should hire a live wedding artist for your wedding and the personalisation and bespoke, one-of-a-kind result you’ll receive so you might be thinking, yeah, sure this sounds like a great idea – let’s do it!
But now you’re faced with the next question - how the devil do I go about picking the one that’s right for us!?
Well, you’re in a small amount of luck, in that this section of the industry is still very much in its infancy here in the UK and there aren’t that many of us painting live…. at the moment! I’m sure, like with many wedding trends, there will be more in the coming years but for now, your decision should be made slightly easier by numbers if nothing else.
However, what you will find is that across the pool of painters available to you, there will be a range of painting styles and finished results. To ensure you get the best artist for you, you need to consider what style of portrait you would like and then find the artist that really epitomises that style. Try to avoid asking an artist to paint in a style that is completely different to their portfolio as, trust me, both you and the artist will be disappointed with the results.
So what styles of painting are there? Let’s look through them and consider each one’s unique aesthetic and appeal.
First up we have Traditional Realism. This style captures the couple and the scene around them in a true-to-life way, including various features from the venue too such as the floristry, architecture, and décor. In this style you can expect to have reasonably precise representations of facial features as well as recognisable features of your wedding.
As a sub-branch from this style, some artists do lean more into Portraiture which focuses on capturing a true likeness of the couple in a more formal composition. These paintings can often just be focused on the couple and include less of a background.
Next up, is Impressionism. This style has a distinctive feature involving looser and clearer brushstrokes across the painting. Impressionism, as a movement in the 19th Century, was very much about capturing the movement and light within a scene and so with this style, you can expect to have a more ‘suggestive’ result but one that reflects the energy of your day.
A slightly softer style of painting would be to opt for Watercolour. This style is more about the choice of medium, with watercolours typically being a softer, more translucent paint. Usually, watercolour artists will paint with sweeping brush strokes and let some colours bleed together on the paper to create new colours. This style would very much suit a romantic and dreamy styled wedding.
And finally, a style that is becoming increasingly popular at weddings is Illustration and in particular Guest Illustration. With this, you can expect your artist to create miniature portraits of your guests in a timely manner. As such, they may use watercolour or some sort of ink based pens in order to complete the high number of portraits throughout the time allocated. The style of these is often impressionistic in nature and some artists choose to paint their portraits faceless and focus on other identifiable features of the guests, such as outfits.
Whichever style you lean more to, here are my 3 take aways for finding the right artist for your wedding…
1. Take time to research the artists available to you.
2. Look through their portfolio to get a feel for their style – you should see a common theme running throughout all of their work that will tell you something about their distinctive flair.
3. Reach out to them and ask what their style is. They will be able to tell you the type of portraits they typically create.
Disclaimer: all images in post have been generated by AI for the purpose of examples of demonstrative styles.
Comments