Sarah D. Silvey

It’s a crazy world. I have somehow gotten myself involved in live wedding painting.

When my sister heard about it, she drafted me into it. To my endless surprise, I have spent the last year working on opening a business with her, and practicing watercolor portraits. The imposter syndrome is real. Aren’t I a writer? Why is art so hard? I don’t remember it being this hard before. I think now, if someone is going to be paying for it, I want to be really sure that they are happy. It adds an element of pressure, whereas before, the art could all be on post-its, of silly people with pants on their heads, or whatever.

What is live wedding painting, you ask? You are not alone in asking.

A live wedding painter is entertainment at the wedding. They will paint anything the couple hired them to paint: usually the venue, and the couple at the altar, or the first kiss, or the first dance. Often certain family members will be requested to be added in, like the grandparents, or someone who has recently passed. It’s really fun to watch the painting happen at the venue. My sister will be doing that part, in oils.

My specialty will be watercolors. I’ll be painting little guest portrait favors, as fast as I can, all night. It’s going to be fun to see and draw all the different faces at the weddings. If someone doesn’t like their own face, they could ask me to draw a picture of their dog, or any other photo in their phone, or their phone. I try to keep them all under six minutes, and I know I can do them faster with a little more practice. This is faster than a lot of wedding portrait favor painters, and a personal point of pride. The more people I can draw in a short amount of time, the more fun everyone will have.

I’m proud that my watercolor guest portraits don’t look like anyone else’s. On the other hand… my portraits don’t look like anyone else’s, lol. They have an edge. I’m wondering if it will even fly with the wedding crowd. The trend seems to be (admittedly) cute little faceless fashion portraits. Yeah. But I like people, and all their wonderful little faces! Not fashion. So there.

One interesting thing is, if you practice two kinds of art, you can cross-apply the skills from one toward the other. Sometimes, when I get stuck writing, I’ll close my eyes and keep typing. This allows me to turn off my critic and just stream of consciousness. Staying in motion is the hardest part, and this greases the tracks.

I’ve applied similar strategies to art. No, I don’t close my eyes and draw, haha. Sometimes I wish I could, heh. However, I’ve found that if I work in dim lighting, interesting things happen. When I turn the lights back up, there’s always a fun surprise in the linework that I hadn’t noticed and probably would not have intentionally made.

Also, thanks to ADD, novelty keeps me going. A new brush, a new paper, a new medium, and new subject. Today, we practice writing poems about our toes. Tomorrow, we practice drawing toes. In the end, it all comes back around to toes.

Did you know that Victor Hugo, aside from being a great writer, also made excellent creepy art? All those hours he spent describing sewers and castle battlements? I thought it was just because he was paid by the word. As it turns out, he spent the rest of his free time drawing sewers and castle battlements. He was really, actually into sewers and castle battlements. A true creative, he would cobble together art from his spilled drink, the ashes from the fire, whatever was at hand.

Do you think there’s a common quality to art by writers? All I know is, their art, although not always beautiful, is almost always interesting. As for me, I’ve found that there’s still a little bit of storytelling quality to what I do.

So that’s why I haven’t been doing a whole lot of creative writing, except, you can bet we have the best-damn-written wedding painter website in the neighborhood: www.silveysistersfineart.com.

I’m so grateful to you, my safe little bubble of writers and readers. I wanted to tell you about this and post about it, but I didn’t want to spam you either.

That being said… I do take commissions 😀 Think about Christmas. Think about maybe if you like my art, or writing. If you mention Fresh Hell in your request, I would do something special for you. I would take a percentage off any of my part of the regular live wedding painting services or custom commissions from photos. Or, even though it’s not advertised, I could write out one of my poems for you, on fine paper… in shimmer ink. Oh my gosh shimmer ink. Please ask me to do anything in shimmer ink. I could pour it in my eyeballs, or drink it. I wouldn’t do that for you, though. I would do that for myself.

You are my special peoples and I love you forever.