Roanoke Marshes Lighthouse

6"x8" oil
You can view or bid for this painting here.

I painted this for DPW's "Landmark" challenge. Technically, I don't live in Manteo, but it's the same state, so that's close enough.

This lighthouse is crazy symmetrical. After playing around with the composition forever, I decided to give in and go with it. Anything I tried in order to counteract the formality of the design just looked forced.

I've got lots of progress shots of this one. I'm probably the last person in the 21st century to get a smartphone, and the main feature I'm using is the camera. My old Flintstones-era flip phone didn't even have one. So far I've taken about 4 dozen photos of Igor (all blurry and badly lit), a dozen useless shots of random things (oh look, a bird!), 1 photo of my husband, and a gazillion progress shots of paintings.

Anyway, I went with a sort of Cape Cod approach of laying out the warm and cool (sun/shade) areas, then doing another couple passes with real color. Then a fourthly pass with details and adjustments. I'm pretty happy with it.

All those light areas are where I had to wipe out sketch mistakes.

Putting in the cool/shadow areas. I like the way the white building actually looks very glowy blue.

Sunlit areas, yellow and oranges, a pink for the sky because it's the coolest lit area.

I did the true-color version of the roof first because it is such an important feature.