Brigitte Miller

Acrylic Painting: Lighthouse Seascape

This is beautiful! First painting? WOW! You're a natural! Looking forward to seeing more! Your brush strokes are lovely! :)

Thank you Joanne - I gave it to my wife's parents.  I need to loosen up a little and have more fun!  I took this and the last one I did today a bit too seriously.  That can come later I reckon!  :)  I see you do drawing? (update - looked closer, my bad, painting!) I might follow your lead and practice different strokes too.  :)

Your painting is great and can't believe first time. Just keep going.

Thank you Carmen :)  I will keep learning.  I guess it never ends :)

Wow, Phil! You obviously understood the assignment! Great work. I am particularly drawn to your brushwork in the clouds, rock formations, ocean and birds. Well done! I love that sun peeking over the clouds, too. Those details really make a difference. It’s true that you can always lighten your colors with white and darken them with black, but you’ll discover as you experiment more, changing values with colors will add a richness to your painting. It will also add more depth which is crucial for the illusion of 3-D on a flat surface. For an experiment, try adding some yellow (just a tiny amount) to your blue and add that to the ocean just at the very bottom of your painting. This will delineate the ocean from the sky a little more and create more depth using atmospheric perspective. Also (like Diana suggested) to make the buildings appear more 3-D, add some shading, but instead of darkening the value of your white with black (making a gray) use blue or lavender. And remember, if these suggestions don’t work for you, you can easily change it back to the original by painting over those areas. :)Thanks so much for sharing. Your painting is beautiful.

Hi Brigitte!  Thanks for your constructive feedback - I will do all of that now.  Next time I do this painting I will do on a larger canvas also to give me some more room for detail I think that might be handy.  I have the colour wheel so will take advantage of that while I am still new.  I also want to improve the mountains and trees, I assume  you can do several layers. I am looking forward to the next lesson!  :)

I can’t believe it’s the first one ever! Well done on the additions — I think it’s very good to try things, but also to know when it’s too much. 

Hey Phil, I think you've done an amazing job with your first painting! As you progress, it will always be enjoyable to look back at this piece and see how much you've improved along the way. Your mountains and trees are really well executed.  One suggestion for improvement would be to add a little shadow-tinted color to the sides of the lighthouse buildings, but even without that, everything looks great just the way it is. Color mixing is one of the most fun aspects of painting to explore. Over time, you'll start to discover which colors mix well together to create new shades, hints, and shadows. To darken colors, sometimes all you need to do is add a complementary color (the color opposite on the color wheel). When using white, it's often helpful to mix in a hint of color to certain areas to create a more natural appearance, which adds depth, especially when depicting light and shadows. I love that you added birds to your painting—I forgot to add them in mine! I'm excited to see your future projects. Brigette is a wonderful acrylic instructor, and I’m sure you will learn a lot from her and the other great teachers here on Skillshare. It's a fantastic community. Have fun!

Thank you Diana! I actually forgot to do the shadow on the buildings completely!  I will add it in now and I want to add some colour to the clouds and ocean.  This is somewhat of an experiment after all so I will have some fun with it. :)  Looking forward to doing all the lessons on Skillshare.  Perhaps one day adding some of my own, in a few years.  Thanks for your excellent feedback and I appreciate the encouragment  :)

This took me about two and a half all up over three sessions - I should have done four I think as the paint was not completly dry one time.  I found the sky and the water the most challenging to make look realistic.  I have to get a few more paints as the blue I had was not great imo.  Also I need to learn how to mix colours!  I used black to darken and white to brighten but read that you don't necessarlity do that!?  Whoops.  Anyway thanks for the lesson Brigitte!  I can't wait to come back and do this painting again after I have done some in person lesson next month :)
 
Update:  I added some things based off of feedback.  Got to a point I felt I was messing up what was already there so called it a painting.  :)

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