Midnight Mahal

The fourth in a series of five nocturnes, this one was conceived to be very dark with no light source showing so the colours have to be pretty saturated to make it look interesting. It is based on reference photos I took at the Taj Mahal when I went to India last year. This is an imagination of how it would look on a barely moonlit night, although it is very hard to photograph and doesn't really show how the finished picture looks, it is darker and moodier than it appears here with much more of a blue/green cast to the colour. As the painting is pretty dark getting the values right was crucial and I can only hope that the scan will show it better (when it's dry).
18" x 24" oil on linen. There is a step-by-step progress through this painting in previous posts on this blog.