Prospect Ave

"Prospect Ave" - NFS

9x12 acrylic on canvas board

This is a commissioned home portrait I recently finished. It is from a black & white photo of the home taken in the 1930s. When I received the order for this I was told "have at it" for direction & color choice. Love when I'm given free reign.

Here's the b/w version and you can see, the front shrubs were wildly overgrown, and they hid the door and entrance.
  

I needed to trim those bushes a bit because I like to have the front door visible in all portraits. It makes it more inviting I think. Once I trimmed them in my sketch I had to add in a door that I thought would be appropriate, given the year of the photo. I opted to do a door flanked by two side light windows. I added the lattice to the sidelights to match the lattice on the top attic windows. 

Next challenge was to choose the color. Looking at this you can tell that the house is 2 color - a darker color on top, and lighter color on the bottom. I played with a few options - knowing I wanted creme on the bottom. I went with the green on top - green was a common house color of that time in this area. And to make the door "pop" I chose a red color.

Finally, I added some flowers to those trimmed bushes in front, and added taller pines on each side of the painting. Just enough to frame the image.