Painting for Times Square’s Hotel Edison
The Sketches
The Rendering
As part of my contract, the client asked that I do a 9”x12” rendering of the painting. This rendering would be presented for approval before the official painting began. I made the rendering digitally so it was easier to include a high-density of detail in a small space.
The client asked me to use greens and golds in the color scheme to go with the hues used in the hotel rooms’ wallpaper. As I worked on the image, I made a few changes. I transformed the awnings in the sketch into Broadway marquees and added a glow around the hotel to lend a sense of excitement and importance to the hotel. I also added flags to the hotel’s front and additional text, as per the client’s request.
The owner of the Hotel Edison asked if I could make a painting of his hotel. The painting was to be reproduced and put in each of the hotel’s hundreds of rooms. (The image will be in the rooms starting mid 2026!)
The client wanted the painting to be full of New York City imagery and the energy of Times Square. He also wanted the hotel to feel like it was the center of everything. Lastly, the hotelier wanted me to incorporate a retro aesthetic to celebrate the Hotel Edison’s historied past.
We went through several sketches to pin down the hotelier’s vision for the piece.
The top-left concept the put the hotel at the center of billboards filled with NYC imagery. Fun shapes radiated out from the hotel to capture to evoke the dynamism and energy felt of Times Square. Below is an edited sketch that included cars and variants of the hotel’s logo as shapes, as per the client’s request.
The second concept was based on vintage postcard design. The hotel was at center surrounded by NYC imagery that broke through the image’s borders to make the whole feel dynamic.
The client asked for a new variant on sketch #1 that had no shapes, but added in vintage cars and pedestrians. I gave him two iterations. One was more faithful to the original sketch, but included a sun over the hotel to further make it a focal point. The other was a bit more exploratory. It added a border to make the image feel like a vintage photo. Plus, it created depth by adding the Statue of Liberty and Empire State Building behind the hotel. This is the sketch the client chose.
The final work
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The final work ⁎
The final painting was a 22”x34” acrylic on canvas. The image will be reproduced and put in each of the Hotel Edison’s hotel rooms in mid-2026. The original painting will live in the Hotel’s VIP longue.