Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending my friends Patrick and Shannon’s beautiful wedding in Calistoga. The ceremony was lovely, the weather was perfect and the reception was good fun. I took my bff Andi as my date and we made some lovely new friends.

As a wedding gift, I painted one of their engagement photos. I found one photo in particular to be such a sweet and tender moment between them that I just had to paint it. I was initially just going for a simple high contrast image with a solid brown background, but once I finished it I wasn’t happy with how stagnant it seemed. I had a tight solid painting all planned out, but the background seemed to call for movement so I did something totally out of character and just went crazy with some red paints. I was really happy with the end result :0)