Painting at the Baltimore Country Club Black Tie

Baltimore Country Club Black Tie Ball, painted by Patricia Bennett

Below is the painting which the guests saw at the end of the night.  I cleaned up the chandeliers and added a figure, otherwise there is little difference.

Baltimore Country Club Black Tie, December 7, 2013, painted by Patricia Bennett

and a copy, commissioned by one of the attendees:

Baltimore Country Club copy, painted by Patricia Bennett

The copy took me a month to paint.  I had to use rulers to be accurate.  It was extremely challenging.  The copy took more than ten times longer to paint than the original.  I left the added figure out, because the painting was better without it, and I further cleaned up the chandeliers.  I also used a ruler to draw the perspective lines, although they were pretty accurate.

Process:

I arrived at the Club around 1pm, and spoke to the General Manager about where they wanted me to paint.  There are two main rooms: the Dining Room, and the Dancing Room (those are my names for them).  The Event Coordinator had suggested I set up in the Dining Room, however, the GM preferred the Dancing Room, as there would be a large fire, the Christmas tree was there, and people would be dancing.  

I found a corner out of the way, yet visible to guests so they could see the painting.  I wanted to see the bar, and the tree and the fire.  I realized that I needed to compress the room spatially in order to show a nice size for the tree, so I left out an archway or two.  That was the hardest part.  I am so literal that it confuses me to not paint what I see.  I also compressed the bar in order to fit in the remaining archways.  Then I painted and painted until 7pm, when the event began.  As I painted, the bar was set up, then the lights were dimmed, and the band arrived.  The fire was started, and a large pile of firewood stacked.  The sun went down, and candles were lit.

First was cocktails, and then dinner, which was in the other room, and then dancing.  During the dinner, I cleaned up the chandeliers and other fixtures.  I took no breaks, because there wasn't time.  When I got tired one of the servers brought me a giant cup of coffee.  At midnight I packed up and took the painting with me.