Castle of Lost Souls - stage 6

 Knocked back the towers on the castle and then made a start on the foreground. Feeling my way along as I work out what colours to use, I think I have done enough as a base to work on in a couple of days time to finish.

Castle Of Lost Souls - stage 5

 Finished the castle and rocks, just need to knock the central towers area back and then I will start on the foreground - I will paint the shipwreck last.

It's becoming obvious to me that my main influence at least in my Fantasy/Imaginative Realism work is paintings from the later Victorian era and Golden Age American Illustration.  I can see so many artists work from that period from Ferdinand Keller, Scandinavian Landscape painters, Symbolism, Tonalism and then onto people like Maxfield Parrish....

Castle Of Lost Souls - stage 4

 The sky is mostly finished but am waiting of finishing the castle and rocks first for final adjustments. It has been tricky working out the colour transition as the castle and rocks go from left to right and meet the sky. Not a good photo actually as it all looks a bit rough here..

New colours used: Naples Yellow and Manganese Violet.

Castle of Lost Souls - stage 3

 I have roughed in some colour over the whole painting using a desaturated blue/green on the castle and cliffs. The sky is looking warmer than I intended at the moment so will have a look at it over tomorrow morning's breakfast coffee and make decisions about the sky then.

Colours used so far: Dioxazine Purple, Phthalocyanine Blue, Phthalocyanine green, Burnt Sienna, Permanent Orange, Yellow Lake Deep, Yellow Ochre Deep and Warm Light Yellow.

Castle Of Lost Souls - stage 2

 Finished off the tonal underpainting ready for the desaturated blue wash tomorrow. I used the basic structure for the castle that I drew up yesterday and let the brush suggest shapes within it to elaborate the buildings and the cliffs and rocks that it sits on.

Castle Of Lost Souls - stage 1

 Continuing with my marine theme this one will be quite different to "Sea Of Light" in that I return to things melancholy and beautiful. Hopefully a very moody piece based on a desaturated blue and orange complementary, it has a shipwrecked sailing ship at the base of cliffs leading up to a melancholy fortress... all ye abandon hope here... 

As with all these marine paintings they are partly an exercise in learning how to paint ocean water better, when happy with the results from what I have learnt this will inform the next gallery paintings in my "Point Of Light " series.

This is the preliminary pass on the tonal underpainting which I will finish tomorrow before a desaturated blue wash goes over it. As usual I have used a mix of Burnt Sienna and Dioxazine Purple thinned with Liquin and applied with a rag and brush.

Oil on linen 22" x 16".

Sea Of Light

 The companion painting to the previous "Sea Of Shadows" is another one that is focused on me getting better at painting water in particular ocean water. I wanted to flood this one with light to reflect the title and give it an optimistic feel as opposed to my usual beautiful melancholia. The light burst was thrown into the mix as I was doing the tonal underpainting and is a theme that I will continue to develop as I would like to use it in my gallery work series "Point Of Light"... not quite sure how yet and it might necessitate a change of title for the series... It was interesting working out how to paint the clouds as they needed to be dramatic but not dark and threatening and possibly broke some new ground with this.... it seems I learn something in every painting.

Oil on linen 22" x 16".

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