My first commissioned work...

... except I'm not being paid for it. :) I'm on the Women's Ministry team at my church and we're having a Women's Wellbeing and Wellness Day on 30 May. The fliers and other advertising for the day has a pink gerbera as the logo, so the team asked me to paint a giant pink gerbera to hang in the foyer of the church on the day.

Scary. I've only ever painted things as I felt like it; I've certainly never gone into it with any kind of plan. Hmmm... bit like my life, really. I told them I would give it a go but if I didn't like it, no one would ever see it. Given that I'm paying for the canvas and paints, they agreed that was fair. I warned them that my style is very 'hit and miss' and it might suggest a gerbera rather than look like a real flower.

I haven't finished it yet but the flower itself is pretty much done, apart from a stem. I couldn't bring myself to paint it the Barbie-style hot pink that the other women wanted so it's more purplish than pink... close enough. The colours in the photos aren't entirely accurate.

The paint colour is Matisse Magenta. It's delicious. I like Matisse colours but can't afford them most of the time so I content myself with A2, which is also a nice student quality paint but it doesn't have this yummy magenta shade - and my paint mixing skills are hopeless; I'd never be able to mix it to my satisfaction. The canvas is about 120cm high by 50cm wide. I thought about making the flower bigger to fill more of the canvas but I kind of like it as is.

So there it is - the first thing anyone has ever asked me to paint.

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