Working on the Lighthouse

My good friend Dottie asked me recently to paint a lighthouse for her. In the past I had done some work in her daugther's room and she wanted something to spice up her sea-themed bathroom. After doing a quick search on Google images on lighthouses (only 7.9 million of them), I mocked up a few quick drawings with my watercolor pencils to get a feel for what she's looking for.

She liked the layout of #1 but wanted more rocks. She also went with the lighthouse design of #2. Grabbing my craft acrylics and brushes, I set off to work.

The first night I got a good start on things. I liked how the lighthouse started to come together and the blue-green of the water complimented the red of the lighthouse.

The next night I dropped in a light grey sky and put in the sun and it's reflections on the waves. I think that I should have dropped in the sky background first instead of doing all the foreground work, but that's a lesson for the next time. The rocks also didn't have enough contrast to make them pop, so I put in more shadows and highlights.

The final night I put in more details and added the cloud cover. Dottie really enjoys it and want's me to do more in the coming year. Overall, it took me about 7-8 hours of work.

Keyon's Bench

I painted this for my good friend Keyon. He's a big fan of sea turtles and originally wanted this on his bedroom wall. We thought this would be a good compromise. It was a lot of fun to paint this, but it took much longer than I expected. Now his sister wants ponies on her walls!

Acrylic flowers in progress

I'm trying the Open acrylics again, working on getting a feel for how they mix and their drying time. With the colors I have, I thought I'd go for making more flowers. Anyway, here's the current state.

Test driving Golden's OPEN Acrylics

For the past few paintings I've been using a new type of oil paints that clean up with water. This leaves out all the bad smells and chemicals while still leaving the slow drying times and ability to make nice blends that is the hallmark of oil painting. My paintings were going fairly well, but I noticed that the paint dries much more slowly than I was expecting. I'd come back to a painting weeks later to find spots still wet. (I now know that other oil painters expect this and work on multiple paintings at the same time to interleave the drying time!)

Well, I had come across a new art supply store (new for me at least) Lynn's on Odana Road. While browsing through there, I came across a large display for Golden brand acrylic paint. Golden's paints are some of the best acrylics out there and I was interested in this new subsection called "OPEN" paint. After grabbing a brochure or two and a lot of quick digging on the web, I found a paint that I wanted to try.

Normal acrylics dry very quickly. Like in 5 minutes. Not enough time for me to get what I want done especially with all the interruptions that happen in our busy house. Well, the "OPEN" in the name means that these paints will still be workable for a longer period of time, or more 'open' for use.

I went back to Lynn's and bought the starter set of 6 tubes of paint and brought them home to try. I dabbled with these paints for over an hour with stops to put kids to bed, get Mom her juice and let the dog out and back in again. The paint still was workable on the palette and I could still make my blends on the leaves and cube. This is perfect for the situation I'm in. I'm a very happy camper now and I'll set up the next painting very soon. My only issue now is I want more tubes!



Painted with Golden OPEN Acrylics, Alizarin Crimson, Sap Green, Ultramarine Blue, Hansa Yellow Opaque, Burnt Sienna and Titanium White on canvas paper.