Constructing a work of art takes a lot of patience - and time!
So when taking on such a preserved place of Liverpool's history, Canning Dock, our artist Ian Smith demonstrates the care - and precision - it takes to capture the sky and the water of the wonderful riverfront location.
To start, I begin with the sky and water, applying some acrylic yellow and white and mixing these in with small amounts of water.
I felt the sky needed breaking up with other colours, so here I added a sky blue with white and again diluted these colours by adding some water.
I really wanted the sky to be vibrant, it really stood out to me from the photo that inspired the painting. So I dedicated about two hours(!) to doing nothing more then blending the sky with a damp cloth and brush. There is still much work ahead, including completing the water..... (toil and trouble haha!) but I did also manage to do some more on the small ship by adding a reflection on the water. This was achieved by using acrylic black and, also on the ship, I added a bright orange for the lights. The colours really compliment each other and look pretty effective on the canvas!
I hope you have enjoyed stage two and look forward to doing stage 3 with you with hopefully a much improved sky.
Ian Smith