Calm Before the Storm. Painting #70

Here’s a painting with a story! You may remember my post about getting affected by Hurricane Michael last year. If you missed it, you can read a little bit about how Hurricane Michael affected me. That hurricane did a number on my home and many homes and businesses all over town. The painting was painted from a reference photo. The photo was taken the night right before the storm hit.

The hurricane changed the landscape forever. Here’s what it looks like nowadays.

My wife has been trying to get me to paint the pre-storm sunset photo for a long time. I’d always be apprehensive because I wasn’t sure how to approach it. Do I use the black canvas technique or not? How do I achieve that cloudy affect? I’ve watched multiple Bob Ross episodes to try to get an idea on how best to approach it.

In the end, I just went for it because on the day I painted it was our 16th wedding anniversary. So I went ahead and painted it as a surprise for my wife. She was quite surprised and it turned out great! One of my best!

I decided to approach it as a normal painting using the liquid white base coat. Then I put in the sky starting with the yellows, then the lavender shades and finished with the blue. I put the clouds in after that. That was the hard part. The easy part was putting in the landscape. You could use liquid black to put it in if you do something similar to this but I think if you mix a bunch of dark colors and use that, it gives it more texture.

I’m certainly pleased with this one! My wife loves it even more. One of the few paintings hanging up in a room other than my craft room. Hope you enjoyed this one. Video will be coming soon. Happy painting!