Portraits of buildings as gifts

I received an email today from someone asking about a portrait with several homes on it. It's a great gift idea to have a drawing (or several drawings) showing different houses someone has lived in over the years.

That reminded me of this custom pencil drawing I did for Parrish-Hare Electrical Supply, located in Dallas, Texas. They wanted a work of art for their company lobby that would portray the company's various locations. I was a bit intimidated by drawing the logo at first, but once I started the logo, it wasn't as scary as I thought, but it did take a lot of time. This was my largest artwork ever - measuring about 3-feet by 3-feet at least, if memory serves. I ordered a huge roll of Strathmore paper so I could do this art commission.

One of the difficulties in this project was trying to train the paper to stay flat. I usually work with paper that comes in pads - this size paper of course didn't come in a pad, so once I cut the paper to the right size, I used painter's tape to tape it to my wall for several days. ( I know the more obvious solution would be to put the paper in between stacks of books on the floor to flatten it...but that doesn't work for someone who has young children!)

So up onto the wall it went. I still had to fight the paper's tendency to roll up unexpectedly and bop my hand as I worked. Again, the painter's low-tack tape came in handy. I loved working with the folks from Parrish-Hare. It was a great experience and everybody I dealt with was very nice.

But back to house portraits - I can do drawings of buildings together on one sheet of paper as I did in this case, or I can do them separately. If you want to honor someone with portraits of their previous homes and there are several to be done, you could order one or two to be done each year - for a birthday or for Christmas gifts.

It's still very thoughtful, no matter how you decide to do it.