One client · Three photographs painted in oils
Black and White Mountain Oil Painting from a Photo: A 150 × 100 cm Commission
The client wanted their own black-and-white mountain photograph painted in oils on a canvas 150 cm wide × 100 cm high, supplied as rolled canvas. As with the two smaller paintings in the same order, the priorities were a real painted surface and close resemblance to the photograph. Here, matching the image meant working with its gray values, rock shapes and broad bands of cloud. The paintings were commissioned as personal keepsakes.
150 cm wide × 100 cm high · Oil painting · Rolled canvas requested
Stage 1 — The photograph and brief
Matching a photograph without relying on color
The client chose photographs they had taken themselves and wanted them painted in oils as personal keepsakes. The brief focused on preserving resemblance and color while giving each image a real painted surface.
The reference places a rocky summit low in a wide composition, beneath an expansive sky. Pale rock faces meet a deep dark slope at the left, while horizontal bands of cloud stretch across the background. With no bright color to carry the scene, the balance of light, middle gray and near-black becomes especially important to resemblance.
This was the large painting in a three-work photo-to-oil commission. The same client also requested two 18 × 24 cm color paintings. For the mountain, the larger canvas makes the differences between soft cloud edges and angular rock marks particularly visible.
From the same client’s order: see the highway and car in oils and mossy trees and a winding path.
Stage 2 — Painting progress
Building the cloud bands and rocky foreground
In the first studio photograph, the main light and dark areas are already established. The mountain is described in comparatively broad planes, and the sky in long, soft passages. The later photograph contains finer divisions across the rock, sharper small accents and scattered marks that also appear in the reference. The broad cloud structure remains the organizing feature of the sky.
Stage 3 — Painted details
Angular rock marks beside softer cloud passages
Across the summit, short light and dark strokes break the rock into small planes. The sky uses longer, softer passages so the clouds do not read like the stone below. These are painted marks on canvas, rather than a photographic print enlarged to wall size; the close views show how the two kinds of surface are described differently.
Stage 4 — The completed canvas
The finished 150 × 100 cm oil painting
The completed canvas is shown horizontally, at its specified 150 cm width and 100 cm height. The dark foreground slope, bright rocky summit and layered sky retain the principal structure of the source photograph. The full studio photograph preserves the loose canvas edges and wooden floor, so the physical work remains visible as an object.
The client requested rolled canvas. The completed painting is shown laid out flat, before rolling.
Your photograph, painted in oils
Have a photo you would like turned into a painting?
Send your photograph, preferred width and height, and the colors or details you most want to preserve. Tell us whether you would like rolled canvas or another presentation.
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