Trending videos on social media shine a spotlight on wedding and live-event painters
By: Aliya Karimjee
Ontario wedding painter, Emily Bransfield, at work painting a ceremony at a wedding. (Photography by @joeeandtyler via @emilypaintsevents on Instagram)
Caught on camera, a painter gently places a canvas on an easel as a bride and groom take their first dance, ready to begin their new life together. The first brush stroke is placed and, by the end of the condensed 30-second video, the scene of the newlyweds in front is meticulously transferred onto canvas. Its beauty and intricacy unveil every detail of the profound and melodic love of a newly married couple.
Often accompanied by beautiful and touching orchestral music, time-lapse videos of live-event wedding painting have made waves on social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram.
Perhaps it’s how impressively fast the artist works or how realistic the paintings end up being, these videos have gained massive popularity and pushed the art of wedding painting to the platform’s forefront.
One of Emily Bransfield’s wedding paintings portraying a couple’s first dance. (Photography by @goldhousestudios via @emilypaintsevents on Instagram)
Ontario wedding painter Emily Bransfield has garnered over 3,000 followers and hundreds of thousands of likes on her TikTok account where she posts live footage of her painting at weddings. According to Bransfield, wedding painting has been around long before its contemporary popularity on social media.
“Some people might think that wedding painting is like a trend or a fad, but it definitely isn’t,” Bransfield said. “It's just something that's been rediscovered.”
Bransfield spontaneously unearthed her passion for live-event painting five years ago when she was brainstorming unique gift ideas for her friends’ engagement. As a self-taught artist always painting portraits, she realized she could put her artistic talent to another use.
“I was like, ‘what if I painted one of their wedding photos?’” said Bransfield. “[Each painting] is super special to the person and that’s what makes it special to me.”
Newlyweds’ reaction to Bransfield’s painting of their wedding. (Photography by @mariahrothphotogrpahy via @emilypaintsevents on Instagram)
Wedding dates that were postponed due to the pandemic have piled up for this past summer 2022 wedding season, making it busier than ever for wedding painters, according to Shauna Umney-Gray, a live-wedding painter based in Barrie, Ont. She says it took a lot of planning on both ends to make a pandemic-wedding work.
A consultation between the artist and clients is the essential first step in preparation for a wedding painting, she notes, as the two parties work together to determine which special moment to capture.
Umney-Gray said she keeps an eye out for alternative magical moments that her clients might appreciate. “Usually, I’m taking a video to get the most movements in the moment so I can work from that throughout the night.”
The pressure that comes with capturing the once-in-a-life-time, fairytale moment comes with the territory, but these artists are determined to persevere through it because the end result is always worth it, says Umney-Gray.
“I’ve had a couple of times where I’m not seeing it happen as quickly as I want it to. But then all of a sudden, I do one last brushstroke and it comes to life — and that’s very rewarding,” Umney-Gray explained.
Bransfield says she understands the significance of painting a couple’s special day, which is exemplified by her own wedding’s painting hanging proudly in her dining room.
“There is this timeless, everlasting quality to a painting,” said Bransfield. “It has a very sentimental, rooted feeling.”