Posted on August 30, 2019 by Leonard Rooney - Artwork in Progress
Lighthouse Park II, 24″ x 18″ Acrylic on Canvas, in progress. This is my third time painting Lighthouse Park in West Vancouver, BC. This time I’m going to try starting from a black primed canvas. Follow along as paint and comment on each step along the way.
Lighthouse Park ll, 24” x 18” acrylic on canvas, work in progress 1. Starting another small canvas, once again with a black background, which worked so well for my last piece. This time l’m trying a daylight scene, wanna find out how it works out starting from black.
Lighthouse Park ll, 24”x18” acrylic on canvas, work in progress 2. I start filling in the background sky, while being careful to tightly draw in the line of the foreground. I was most concerned about how this sky would look on top of black, but the blue seems to be covering very well. I’ve already painted this scene twice before in the 80s/90s on white canvases and I can already tell that this version is going to be faster and far more interesting to work on.
Lighthouse Park ll, 24”x18” acrylic on canvas, work in progress 3. I continue to draw and block in the rocks of the point.
Lighthouse Park ll, 24”x18” acrylic on canvas, work in progress 4. I continue my first pass blocking in some water colour and blocking/drawing in some foreground rocks. I like the results of even one pass over the black for the rocks, but there’ll be more detail to come. At this point, l like to quickly cover the black background just to get a sense of the entire scene before getting too narrowed in on any details.
Lighthouse Park ll, 24”x18” acrylic on canvas, work in progress 5. My first pass is now complete so I return back to the sky and begin working forward again, adding most of the final details as I go. The sky brightened up considerably with a second coat and is now pretty much finished. The lighthouse is looking a bit dirty, but that’s actually just the first pass/coat. It should clean up by the next time I post.
Lighthouse Park ll, 24”x18” acrylic on canvas, work in progress 6. Another 8 hours adding details, mostly to the lighthouse point, but also to the foreground rocks and sea surface. It’s feeling very close to being finished now, perhaps another 8 to 12 hours should do it.
Lighthouse Park ll, 24”x18” acrylic on canvas, work in progress 7. My design and website projects have been keeping me away from finishing this project for over two months now, but I did manage to fit in just over 16 more hours on trees, water, rocks and everything else. Still a bit more time to go—I keep seeing new details—but it’s very, very close to finished now.
Lighthouse Park ll, 24”x18” acrylic on canvas, work in progress 8. Sold! My design and website projects have kept me staring at screens full of code for the past 6 months or so, so I’m really glad to get back to painting and to finishing this piece. And it really helps knowing that it’s already sold—helps me finish it even quicker. Although there’s now just a few more hours to go.
Lighthouse Park ll, 24”x18” acrylic on canvas. Done! 🏁🍻😊 With design and web projects getting in the way, this took far (half a year!) longer than it should have, but now l’m happy with the result and more than ready to move on to the next painting. Thanks everyone for following along!