Rare Personal Commission

Regular readers of my blog know that I almost never accept personal commissions. This has nothing to do with my not wanting to do them, it’s a simple question of not having enough physical time in a day to do it all. Every once and awhile the stars align and I am able to accept something of that nature… a lull in my work on the drawing board coupled with a stretch of my not traveling anywhere and a commission subject that is intriguing plus a client who is not in a hurry to get the art.

This all happened a few weeks back when I was contacted by someone who was unhappy that I had (long since) sold out of my “Secret Agent Man” James Bond print, and wanted to commission me to do an original, hand painted recreation of the art. This was something I wanted to do at some point anyway because I disliked the caricature of George Lazenby in the original, and wanted to take another try at him. Also, I had several “mistakes” pointed out to me by 007 experts that I could also correct. The resulting painting is seen above. For those interested, here is a list of the mistakes in the first one:

• They are wearing wing-tip tuxedo shirts. Apparently Bond wouldn’t be caught dead in a wing-tip shirt.
• The ruffles in Lazenby’s shirt are supposed to be vertical, not horizontal
• Roger Moore‘s hair part and mole are on the wrong sides of his face (I must have used a reference picture that had been flipped horizontally)

I actually had a lot of fun doing this, not just because I got to fix all those problems, but because it was fun to drag out the old watercolors and do some physical painting for a change. In fact, it was so much fun, I have made it an available commission to order from me at the Studio Store! For a mere $900 (cheap) you can commission me to recreate this artwork in ink and watercolor. It’s 13″ x 19″ on Strathmore 500 series board. Visit here for more details.