Cold Constantinople

As I enjoyed painting the last Winter snow scene I thought that I would paint another as the next painting is planned to be a more involved figurative piece in reds and golds and I am going for a two week holiday in India at the end of this week so I would prefer to get on with that on my return.
I decided to paint an Orientalist picture but instead of a hot dusty scene I chose a freezing cold view of Constantinople in the Winter, a city that does indeed get snow and even when I was there in the Spring some years ago it was surprisingly cold. This is an imaginary view of the Hagia Sophia, a Byzantine church turned into a mosque which I have set on a freezingly cold day with just a wan shaft of sunlight illuminating the dome, everything else is seen in a cold half-light. The picture is based on a blue-green/red-orange complementary colour axis with all the near-neutral tones being mixes of those colours with white. Another potential painting to take to Illuxcon in October....
Oil on linen 16" x 22". There is a step-by-step progress through this painting in previous posts on this blog.