Anyway, this week I finally got around to getting out the big blank canvas after all these years. Setting everything up in the laundry, I started with a rough pencil outline of the lighthouse and the major clouds. I'm a little lousy at sketching, so I preserved the lighthouse outline with masking tape to save myself more work later. The background blue was a wash of ultramarine, titanium white and liquol. Cerulean was used to soften the ultramarine in the middle portion of the sky. The corners were darkened with spectrum violet, cerulean, paynes grey and more ultramarine to give the painting a vignette effect. The background was smoothened out by tapping all over it with a thick hog hair brush to give the sky a uniform texture.
The grey of the clouds was composed by mixing indigo and naples yellow with varying amounts of titanium white - applied while the background was still moist to blend the edges to give everything a soft, silky appearance. The sunlight accents on the clouds were added using naples yellow and flesh tint.
The lighthouse itself was painted using indigo, with paynes grey and ultramarine and for the shadows and flesh tint, naples yellow and titanium white for the highlights. I know a better painter would've composed their own grey rather than using paynes grey, but I was a little lazy. It was all looking a little boring so I added violet to the shadows to make it all a little more exciting. Carmine and rouge vermillion were used for the roof. The shape of the lighthouse was surprisingly hard to get right - with so many concentric oval forms, it really needed proper perspective to look realistic. Especially since I'd made the clouds rather photorealistic, I couldn't get away with my usual loose impressionist brushstroke style and had to take more care using finer brushes to add the final details to the top of the lighthouse.
