Split Rock Lighthouse – I Learn Painting

12*12 oil on stretched canvas May 2015

It was then turn of Minnesota’s best known landmarks to be painted 🙂 I’ve been there several times and every time i was amazed by the beauty of the remote and truly spectacular setting! Minnesota is beautiful with its magnificent views, picturesque settings, and interesting history!

I found a nice photograph of the lighthouse at google images as usual:

Beginning with the background – is the golden rule of an artist (at least from my experience). This time I used regular oil paints with some linseed oil, which I purchased from a local crafts store. Turned out joanne’s offers the oil at a significantly lower price than Amazon. Anyhow, i liked the consistency of the paint. With a little linseed oil it was much less stiff compared to the out-of-the-tube consistency:

I then worked on the sky a little adding it some light white clouds:

The color of the water was much darker than the sky’s. The rocks were such a delight to create! I mixed all kinds of colors on my palette and used exclusively palette knife to create the sharp nature of the rocks.

The forest was a pleasing task to fulfill as well. It was done with palette knife too. I used a lot of mixtures of colors to create the vibrant character of the trees and other plants. Adding some foam at the shore line was straightforward because I already did similar water related tasks with my previous paintings. The lighthouse itself was a bit complicated only due to its small size.