St Mary`s Lighthouse

 I love this lighthouse, I must have painted it at least 6 times by now. Every time I`m feeling un-inspired, this is the place that always gets my creative juices flowing again.

This is the first stage.

I started off by drawing a quite detailed sketch, in 2b pencil.

 A 2b pencil is dark enough to see without damaging your paper, and providing you sketch lightly, it is easy to erase too. Just remember not to press hard, you don`t need to.

After I`d done the initial sketch I covered the lighthouse, the white walls and the white house in masking fluid, then once that was completely dry, I wet the whole paper.

I let the water soak into the paper, while I mixed my colour for the background,( A watery wash of raw sienna) then I re-wet the paper again to make sure that it was throughly soaked..

If just the surface of the paper was wet, then the paint would just run off the surface, rather than soak into the fibres of the paper, and I would have problems with it drying out too quick before I had a chance to paint in my clouds.

I began painting in the whole background using diagonal strokes of raw sienna in a weak wash. The reason the I painted it all over the paper and not just the sky area, is because I want the sky reflected in the puddle at the bottom of the painting, that and the fact that by having the same colour running through the whole background gives the whole painting a harmonious feel.

 I used a thicker mix of ultramarine blue with burnt sienna, this made a light grey, which I used to paint in the darker area of the sky, and not forgetting the reflection at the bottom too

I used the same two colours in a slightly thicker mix again for my cloud shapes.

Then I left the paper to dry completely.

The whole background and sky needs to be painted with in 2-5 minutes, so that your colours blend together nicely, so you have soft wet in wet washes, that fuse together without any hard edges.

This is how my background and sky looked once it was dry.

Now remove your masking fluid.

The above photograph shows how the painting looked after I used the cloud colour to paint the shadow areas of the lighthouse and building.

To create the rounded shape of the lighthouse, I painted the shadow down the darkest side, then softened the edge with a damp brush. On the other side I painted raw sienna along the edge, then softened that colour and dragged it towards the centre. This gave the lighthouse shape, and the illusion of reflected light coming from the sky. Don`t forget to repeat this in your reflection in the foreground.( notice, I did forget).

Again using the ultramarine blue and burnt sienna, I painted in the windows on the building, and some texture on the wall.

Again using ultramarine blue and burnt sienna, but using more sienna than blue this time, I painted in the building on the right.

For the rocks.

I scrubbed on some candle wax. This acts as a resist to the watercolour, and so gives your rocks a textured appearence when you paint over the top.

I splodged on ultramarine blue, and burnt sienna ( surprised, surpise!!) with raw sienna all over the rock areas, I let all the colours bleed and blend together, sometimes using a wet brush to encourage the colours to mingle.

While these were still damp, I used the edge of a credit type card to scrape out some colour. It also gives the rocks some shape.

Almost at the final.

I used the same colours only darker, to deepen the colours on the rocks, and to paint in some shadows, to give the rocks shape. I used RAW sienna, with ultramarine blue to mix a green colour for the moss, and seaweed etc on some of the rocks.

Notice, I finally remembered to paint my reflection in the water, at last.

I used U.blue and B.sienna again, to paint in the muddy area, and the stones in the water.

I left the whole thing to thoroughly dry, then using a weak, watery wash of the cloud colour, I painted in the puddle in the foreground.

All that`s left to do now, is paint the railings at the top of the walls, and just check around for any touch ups that may be needed.

Notice, I used a limited palette of only 3 colours to paint this whole picture, you wouldn`t believe it, would you?

I`ll sort my railings, and try and get a decent photograph to post here.