The Vampire Of San Marco - stage 1

 I now have a chance to get some paintings done to take to IX later in the year (if I am able to get them to the USA now tariffs are complicating things) and thought I would paint another in my occasional series of "Vampires Of Venice". I must explain that I find Venice quite a mysterious place particularly at night and on foggy days and do not associate it with romance! I love walking around it at night and due to the age of the city it occurred to me some years ago that the whole place could be inhabited by vampires who each have a certain campo or canal etc that they haunt looking for unsuspecting tourists like me to empty of blood...

This is set in the sestiere of San Marco on the side of the Grand Canal looking towards the Salute - in fact this is impossible as there are no walkways on the side of the Grand Canal in this section of San Marco but hey it's Fantasy right?!

This is halfway through the initial tonal underpainting and didn't have time today to get it all in so I will finish it tomorrow. It uses my usual mix of Burnt Sienna and Dioxazine Purple thinned with Liquin and applied with a rag and brush.

Oil on linen 22" x 16".

Lunar Triad

 Now that I have finished the series for my upcoming solo show at the Abend Gallery I thought that I would get on with some paintings to take to IX in October and fancied doing another Star Wars Tatooine panorama. Luckily I was doing some research and discovered that it it has three moons in addition to the two suns so that was a perfect theme for this painting. It is quite evident here that it is not much of a jump for me to go from an Orientalist desert scene with a mosque and minarets to a Tatooine Science Fiction landscape - the building style is Futuristic Mosque just as the architecture in the movies is a version of Islamic North Africa where they were filmed. The deceptively simple sky took a long while to paint as it is made up of glazes which I kept adding to until I was happy with the light.

Oil on canvas 31 1/2' x 12".

There is a step-by-step progress through this painting in previous posts on this blog.

 

Lunar Triad - stage 9

 Painted in the foreground rocks at left and made a start on the buildings/space port ready to hopefully finish tomorrow. Glad I've managed to get some variation of colour in the landscape.

Lunar Triad - stage 8

 Managed to paint in the landscape at right with some variation in colour that I wanted and will now move on to the landscape in the left corner before I finish with the buildings/space port. I guess the sky is finished.... maybe.

Lunar Triad - stage 7

 Just had a couple of days away from painting so glad to get back to it today. I decided to work on the central section of the landscape first whereby I worked out the colours to use which I will now continue with for the rest of the painting - basically bringing in a kind of blue into the highlights that aren't picking up the sunlight. This gave me the variation in colour that I was looking for...

New colours used: Pale Violet and Naples Yellow.

Lunar Triad - stage 6

 I may well tweak the sky as I go along but it's good enough for me to be able to start on the landscape now so today I managed to paint in the background. Good to stop here so that I can evaluate the colours I'm using etc as I will be away from the studio tomorrow and will get back to it on Wednesday.

New colours used: Manganese Violet, Brilliant Pink and Yellow Lake Deep.

Lunar Triad - stage 5

 Still faffing around with the sky after I realised that the area near the horizon was too dark for when it came to painting the landscape so changed it today. Nearly there, should be able to make a start on the distant mesas even if the sky is still maybe not quite finished.