Imrryr

 

Apologies for lack of posts over the past couple of months, I was working on a new book and a private commission that took a long while to paint as I had a cataract op just after I had drawn it up that left me having difficulty in focusing on detail and initially my eyes were getting tired after an hour or so of painting. This has now been remedied by new working glasses and have already started on a new painting, posts to follow. I have waited until the buyer has seen the finished painting and is happy (very) with it before posting on this blog and social media as I think they should see it first.

He asked me to reinterpret a painting I did in the 1980s for a Paper Tiger book called "Realms Of Fantasy" of Imrryr the main city on Melniboné in Michael Moorcock's Elric books which was also used for the cover. He understood that I don't paint the way I did in the 1980s (hard edge acrylics) and was happy for me paint it in oils in the softer more atmospheric way I do today.

I kept the light source in the same place behind the city but made it more atmospheric by lighting the whole picture in a misty morning light with the sun hitting the tops of the towers in the city and the surrounding battlements that come round to the foreground, the rest is in shadow. This helped me separate the foreground tower bathed in morning sun from the bottom of the cliff where the maze walls are with a ship passing out of them to aid the sense of scale. I actually kept the basic structure of the original, the main difference being changing most of the straight lines into curves and the lighting into morning light.

The buyer is very happy with it and indeed has bought two more, an old book cover painting and a more recent oil painting details of which I will post up separately in a later post.

Oil on linen 30" x 20".