The Process of a Painting - The Lighthouse (New Beginnings) by Lee Papworth

Original oil painting 'The Lighthouse (New Beginnings) by Lee Papworth 2018

This post is all about the process of creating a painting. In this case I am using oil paints.  The finished painting above was created to coincide with a painting course entitled 'Painting Lighthouses.' I started with an idea of what to paint and researched my subject.  Then I purchased the correct size of canvas for this painting.  DO NOT treat this part of the process lightly as it is vitally important to choose the right size support (canvas/canvas board) for your work and not try to fit your work into the wrong size/shape of canvas.  I produced numerous sketches from my research and a few are shown below:

From the sketches I worked up the watercolour sketch seen below:

My next step was to prepare my canvas.  I put the stretchers in the corners of the canvas using a hammer (when buying a canvas you must make sure that it comes with stretchers which are small triangular pieces of wood).  The stretchers keep your canvas taut and increase the longevity of your work.  

 Next was to put a ground on the canvas (a base colour to work from).  A ground can be any colour - traditionally they would have been earth colours such as burnt umber and raw umber.  I say they can be any colour, but please bear in mind that whatever colour you use will influence the colour of the paint you directly apply on top of the ground and thus effect the harmony of the overall painting.  With my ground I chose to use yellow ochre which I liberally applied and then used a technique called 'tonking' to remove excess paint and leave behind a mottled surface. The photographs below show how I used newspaper to remove the excess paint (tonking):

I then started blocking in the final composition onto the canvas:

Next I started the actual painting by adding the sky.  Note how the warm ground influences and complements the blues of the sky:

At this point (session two) I decided to roughly paint in the main colours and forms.  

I then started building the painting by adding details.  See the photographs below to watch how the painting develops into its final state:

The last photo is my finished painting 'The Lighthouse (New Beginnings).'  It took eight sessions - roughly ten hours work - to complete.  I also took a photo of my palette to show you my process of colour mixing and that you should always mix up your paint using a palette knife rather than your brushes as this will save damaging your expensive brushes.  

If you would like to join one of my art courses or have one-to-one tuition please contact me using the blog contact form.  The next two courses are in May and June.

Happy Painting!

Lee Papworth 🎨

All photographs and images copyright of the artist Lee Papworth 2018