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 | |  | | Bill Mitchell Lighthouse Art is a family run, small business that sells copies of Bill Mitchell art. Bill's favorite art medium is black and white pencil sketches, and he specializes in lighthouse pictures. While Bill has sketched some East Coast lighthouses, he has sketched many Great Lakes lighthouses with Michigan lighthouses being his favorite. Bill packages his pencil sketches in lighthouse note cards, lighthouse matted prints and lighthouse calendars. Please click the tab Bill Mitchell Lighthouse Art Products for more information. | |  | |  | |
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| | | | I picked up a large dose of sketching ability from my dad Tom Mitchell, a very talented regional artist in the Mason City, Iowa, area from the '50s into the '90s. He dabbled in lots of art forms, but I always thought he was at his peak when he sketched either with pen or pencil. His signature scene was Pilot Knob, near Forest City, Iowa, which he must have sketched or painted a couple dozen times. Although Pilot Knob, strictly speaking, is not a lighthouse, standing on a hill with its cylindrical stone wall it has the look of a lighthouse. When you climb to the top, you have a wonderful, ten mile view of rolling Iowa farmland. Just for fun, and to honor Dad's memory, I also have sketched Pilot Knob. One of Dad's many versions is on the left below; mine is on the right. | | | | | |
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| | | | In 2002 my wife and I semi-retired and we relocated to a home in the woods near Ludington, Michigan. I started Bill Mitchell Lighthouse Art, a cottage business, and now I spend a lot of my time with lighthouses and sketching. Big Sable 2, shown on the right below, is probably my favorite lighthouse sketch to date. My wife and I also volunteer at Big Sable, and the lighthouse is very close to being on the same line of latitude as is our house. About the time I did the Big Sable 2 sketch, I changed my sketch style from a two hour effort, real time at the sketch location, to an eight hour effort, after-the-fact in front of a photographic print. I usually sketch on 9x12 paper which I grid into 108, 1x1 smaller sketches. Of course, with this style I obtain much more detail than I did previously. The gridding provides excellent overall proportion of the scene, and from a distance the sketch almost looks like a photograph. I especially like the ability to capture shadows at a particular instance in time. In the pictures below old style is left and new style is right. | | | | | |
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Bill Mitchell Lighthouse Art 
