Quick Two Day Job is Done :-)

I was able to finish that Master Bedroom and a little vine over the front entry door yesterday. The client was always at work when I was there painting, and she is a new client to me, so a few issues did arise. When this happens, I do keep in mind that their expectations/visualization of the finished work may differ from mine. Also, it’s difficult to get to know a client when I only meet them for the consultation and then they are not home at all while I am actually doing the work. I leave notes and sometimes give them a phone call in the early evening if I feel it is necessary. After a long day at work, and once I get home from enduring rush hour traffic, I have my own life to live and just need some down time, so I know I am not at my best to engage with clients at that time. Anyway, back to the point here… It is not cost effective for the client to have me do a full color rendering of small jobs. I do this for murals, but I also do charge for this rendering, since it’s quite time consuming. It doesn’t make sense to do this for small jobs. I always have a lot of reference material that shows the concept, and I do a quick pencil sketch. For this job, I had an exact picture of the bow and the trumpet vine flowers. The two were not together, but I did a quick sketch right there when we first met to show the layout/placement. For the alcove, the client picked out some assorted wildflowers from reference materials I had and showed me where she wanted them painted. After my first day there, I had completed the one tall wall with the bow, ribbons, trumpet flowers and birds. The client called me when she got home to tell me she loved it. I also spent about 1 hour that day sketching in the flowers w/a watercolor pencil in the alcove and painting in 2 of the plants. The client said she did not like them and decided that because she loved the trumpet vine flowers so much she now wanted those in the alcove vs. the wildflowers. She said she was going to paint over what I had just done that day so the walls would be ready for me when I return on Monday to finish! I was a bit taken aback by this since I did spend an hour working on that space. I wanted her to be happy once the room was done though, so the loss of an hour of my time, would be written off. I was still getting to know this client. Today I received an email stating that she loves her finished bedroom, but the vine over her entry door ‘just didn’t end up having the effect she was looking for.’ We had discussed this vine quite a bit, and settled on copying a real vine she had tacked up elsewhere in her home, changing out the berry colors and modifying the design a bit. I emailed her back, expressing my concern over her disappointment, but also explaining I did execute the job as discussed. I gave her the suggestion that she could add a ribbon that would wrap around this vine to bring in some color if she would like. The explicit instructions for this vine were to keep it light and airy, only a few light green leaves and a few berries, a small nest and trail it down on that one side of the door. She is now looking for more branches and some suggestions to "improve it". I was told no dark green leaves, no dark colors, so from a distance, you see little detail. I explained that in order to get this effect, darks would have to be brought in to contrast with the lights. Well, we’ll see what happens with this one. I will add that I always work with a contract that does spell out the cost, what I will be doing and a lot of other specifics.

Here are the final pics for that job: