art STORY # 1
September 18th 2023

My clients were a newlywed couple from Hungary who had lived in Malta for some years and were now planning to return home to start a family. The husband contacted me through my website with a request for 2 drawings for his wife as a ‘surprise’ birthday present. Both pictures were of locations which were of special meaning to his wife. One was of the famous Mosta Dome which is a building on the lines of the Pantheon in Rome which she felt represented everything about Malta that she loved, and the other, a beautiful early 20th century apartment block in a place called Balluta Bay where she used walk to work from home and stop, each morning, for a coffee (if she wasn’t late!) at a little café called ‘Crudo’.
We agreed a price and I made a start on the Balutta Bay picture in late November in Malta and I took it with me to Aruba when we went on vacation. I completed the picture in January 2020 when back in Malta/Gozo. To be honest it was quite a challenging picture as there were many ‘fiddly’ bits in it, but I was happy with the end-result.
 
Next step was to meet the client and his wife with the 1st part of his ‘surprise’ birthday present…….. which we did, opposite the location of the lovely subject building. What a setting. What excitement……. only to be told, as I was about to hand over the picture, that his wife had been following the ‘progress’ of the drawing that I was posting on the website and on Facebook so, sadly, I had ‘blown’ the surprise!!…….. but she smiled and said it was okay and “show me the picture!!” Her husband unwrapped it and she promptly burst into tears and kept saying how beautiful it was and how I had highlighted the little coffee shop and the sign ‘Crudo’! I think we were all in tears at that point….. this is one reason I adore doing personalized projects that really mean something special to the recipient!

‘MOSTA DOME’ was commission # 2 and was completed and handed over in May and only just in time as they left Malta in early June bound for Hungary!

The progress photographs, along with a short narrative for each stage, can be seen below, along with the completed drawing of Mosta Dome. 
 PPJ

A Surprise Birthday present!!

Commission No. 1 . Ballutta Bay Apartments, Malta

Balluta Bay apartment block
This is progress photo #1.  You will see further on that I did more pencil work than normal as it was quite a challenging subject. Most of the time I worked from my own photographs of the building as I was working remotely but I also took the drawing to the location a couple of times just to check I hadn’t left a balcony out or something!!

Balluta Bay apartment block
Progress photo #2.  Having completed the pencil work after almost 25 hours, I start with pen & ink, which is always my favorite milestone! As you can probably tell, I love to work in ink as I really start to get a true feeling for the drawing. From experience, I know I can only really move to ink once I am very confident that I can complete a good drawing. The moral is: be sure you are happy that the subject is accurate with the pencil work before you move on as it is pretty much impossible to make major corrections when you are in the Pen and ink phase! 

Balluta Bay apartment block
Progress photo #3.  I would normally use my large A1 size fixed drawing board, but as you can see for this drawing, I used a A3 portable board, as I was traveling over the Christmas to the USA and needed to finish the picture before returning to Malta. The client was very keen for it to be ready in time for his wife’s birthday in late January!!

Commission No. 2 . Mosta Dome, Malta

This was the 2nd part of the commission and it is the beautiful Mosta Dome in central Malta. It is also famous for the Second World War bomb that came through the roof and landed in the middle of the congregation during the middle of a service. God was most certainly looking after the congregation on that day. There is a plaque on the front of the building commemorating the incident. Well worth a visit !!