How To Paint a Lighthouse: An Easy Tutorial For Beginners
Do you want to draw a lighthouse by the sea, but don't know where to start? Here is a fast and easy step-by-step guide on how to paint your own lighthouse! Feel free to customise it and add your own spice (Girls)! If you’re ready to follow our easy tutorial for beginners, keep on scrolling!
Step 1: Prepare everything you need!
We can’t start our painting without the things we need! So first, check out the items on this list to see if you have some of them at your study if you’re missing some items, you can go to your fave craft store, and look them up:
- Plastic tablecloth or a cover to protect the area under you
- Palette or paper plate
- Cup with water and paper towels
- Paints in colours of blues, teal, aqua, white, red, black, gray, brown, yellow
- Paintbrushes in a few sizes (tiny detailing brushes to 1 inch flat brushes)
- Pencil and eraser
- Ruler
- Easel (optional)
Step 2: Create your outline!
Before you start creating the outline, please refer to some reference photos to understand what you want the lighthouse to look like.
First, sketch the sideline of the lighthouse with a ruler. Start with a primer with a pencil and gently outline the lighthouse, waves, rocks (or whatever you want to put on the bottom). It is light on the canvas and can be erased without much pressure. Be sure to wipe off the eraser shavings so that they will not be painted later.
Draw a rectangle of light coming from the lighthouse and draw a circle in the center. Add patches of rocks, cliffs, or grass, even on simple slopes that run under the lighthouse. This is where you can be creative and decide how you want it to look.
Step 3: It’s time to start painting!
Let's start painting the background! If you are using dark blue, you may need two full coats. Trace the contour with a large and thin brush, then fill with a large brush. If you have visible areas, try to paint on the outer edges, top and sides, and bottom as well.
After drawing the background, let's start the lighthouse! If you want the lighthouse design to have stripes, you can start with a lighter color and then alternate it with a darker color. You can then add a circle at the top of the lighthouse through where the light passes. Use black to add some vertical lines to the area of the light, then paint the railings like a zigzag. Decorate the lighthouse with a little detail brush and make it really stand out! Then add a small window by combining white and black to create gray. Make a small square in the middle to make a window.
Paint the base of the lighthouse in a dark brown shade and then move on to the waves. Use a small brush to add a bright or contrasting shade of blue to the waves. If you haven't created a wave, dilute your paint and add a line in the water. There are wavy lines here and there, adding an undulating bubble-like appearance to the tip of the white-colored wave above the wave, and adding blue or white to the wave as needed.
Add light by using a shade of yellow and creating a stroke perpendicular to the side of the canvas. If desired, you can also add birds using a black color that mimics the small V-shape of the sky.
And that’s how to paint your own lighthouse! If you enjoyed this painting tutorial check out the other how-to guides on our news page for a simpler step-by-step tutorial.
